Tag #108800 - Interview #78427 (Janina Wiener)

We had a nanny at home, my mother’s wet nurse. In fact, she had been with Grandfather’s family in Vienna, and it was her who actually brought me up. When I was born in 1922, she had been with the family for 22 years. Her name was Jula. What was her last name? I don’t know, to us she was always simply Jula, Nanny Jula. She was Polish, the illegitimate daughter of a landlord and a governess, I remember that, but I don’t remember where her father’s estate was. She lived in the same house as us. We lived on the first floor, and she lived on the second, in something like a studio. She had been given it for life. And she virtually governed the whole house. The relationship was such that she’d give mother a free hand to do this or that, but she wasn’t a harridan. She was simply extremely devoted to my mother and my mother was the most important person in the world for her.

She brought me up, and she brought up my brother. I remember how she used to tell him bedtime stories and I would listen in.