Probably the grandfather of Maria Szwarc

I am not sure whose studio portrait this is. Probably it is the grandfather of my mother, Maria Szwarc, nee Biber.

This picture survived the war due to a fortunate incident: before the war, my mother had mailed it to her sister, who was living in the USA.

I know nothing about my grandparents and great-grandparents. Unfortunately, none of my grandparents, either from my mother’s or from my father’s side, were alive by the time I was born.

I do know that one of my grandfathers was named Daniel, and I suspect it must have been my mother’s father, because there was a tradition of naming boys Daniel in that family.

My mother’s family comes from Lodz. Mother’s name was Maria Biber. She was born on 25th March 1899 in Lodz. She had lots of siblings: three sisters and two brothers:

Sala, Hela, Ruta, Leon and Motek. There were six children altogether. I knew all my aunts, except Ruta, and uncles. My mother’s father died young and her mother died in 1919. The children were left on their own.

In the United States there lived an aunt of my mother’s, who had several children. She decided that since there were all these orphans left behind, she would take one of the children to live with her.

And my mother was supposed to be the one to go. But she wrote to her aunt saying that she couldn’t go to the States, because she had already given her word to a man, her future husband, and so she couldn’t do it.

As a result, it was my mother’s younger sister Ruta who went to the USA in 1919.