Wacek Kornblum with his wife Janina, brother Wladek and sister-in-law Lina

Wacek Kornblum with his wife Janina, brother Wladek and sister-in-law Lina

This is me, my wife, my brother Wladek - Borus and Lina, my sister-in-law. It was made on my brother’s birthday. We celebreted it in Warsaw on 6th June 1994.

My wife, Jasia [Janina], maiden name Aneksztejn, was born in Warsaw in 1923. She was the only child in an assimilated family, her father worked in the American Embassy and was far from Judaism, like her mother. She went to a Polish gymnasium on Miodowa Street, but had Jewish friends. She had aunts, one in Holland, and another one, who survived the war in Russia, then went to London with her husband, we used to go there. We got married in 1950.

My brother Borus was born in 1932. Borus derives from Ber. Dov in Hebrew, which means a bear. Now he uses also his Polish name Wladek, or Wladzio - Wladyslaw. When we wanted to escape from ghetto. there was a problem with Borus who had a very dark complexion. I don't know if he looked like a Jew as a child, but he surely stood out. And Dad also knew he had to save both his children, he knew he didn't have a lot of time. He was afraid that if I left first, he'd lose touch with Feld and Borus wouldn't leave. (Jehuda Feld used to come visit Dad from the Aryan side. He had something to do with the Bund underground). 

It was easier to send me away at the last moment because of my looks. That's why Borus was to go first. Dad talked to Feld and Feld found on Gilarska Street, in Praga, a railway man, Polish, his name was Duriasz, who agreed to take in a Jewish boy from the ghetto, for money. It was the beginning of December 1942. We said our goodbyes and Dad took him to the gate and Feld moved him. On the Aryan side a woman was waiting for him, probably that Duriasz's wife. Duriasz, of course, was getting money only for some time, later he wasn't, but he was a very decent man, as opposed to his second wife. And Borus sat there in a shed and lived out his own, huge, story.

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