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Today I can hardly understand how we could live there. One large room and a large kitchen! I guess the size of this room must have been about 20 square meters. The view was onto the street. I think there was some wallpaper on the walls. When you entered the room, you had a stove on your left, two beds, and a laundry basket to the side of my father’s bed. Between the stove and the wall was where my father kept his tools, he had some shelves built in there.
There was a table – seven persons could sit there comfortably, so it must have been big. Around the table there were seven chairs and an arm-chair for Papa. And behind his arm-chair there was a large mirror. Opposite the door – two wardrobes. And two beautiful, huge portraits of my father and my mother were hung on the opposite wall.
In the kitchen my father made this partition – he made the kitchen smaller so that my sister Fela could have her sewing workshop. It was called ‘the little room.’ My sisters slept there, and there was a folding bed for my brother as well. The little room had a window.
So altogether we were eight persons living in this one-room apartment: five kids, mother, father and a woman who helped run the household, before the war you would call her ‘servant girl.
There was a table – seven persons could sit there comfortably, so it must have been big. Around the table there were seven chairs and an arm-chair for Papa. And behind his arm-chair there was a large mirror. Opposite the door – two wardrobes. And two beautiful, huge portraits of my father and my mother were hung on the opposite wall.
In the kitchen my father made this partition – he made the kitchen smaller so that my sister Fela could have her sewing workshop. It was called ‘the little room.’ My sisters slept there, and there was a folding bed for my brother as well. The little room had a window.
So altogether we were eight persons living in this one-room apartment: five kids, mother, father and a woman who helped run the household, before the war you would call her ‘servant girl.
Period
Interview
Halina Najduchowska