Andrzej Migdalskiat the airport in Israel

Here you can see my son, Andrzej Migdalski, with the second wife of uncle Noach Dajbog, Bronislawa, at the airport in Tel Aviv, Israel. This photo was taken in 1996. My son Andrzej, born in 1959, had been talking about biology from the day he was born. And of course he went to study biology. Today he works at the Polish Academy of Sciences's Biophysics and Biochemistry Institute. He got married but they divorced. They have no children. They have long been divorced and now, for instance, she is in America, her parents are here, and he's taking care of them. He's generally a successful man. After the war, uncle Noach worked at the Defense Ministry's bookkeeping department until about 1955. Then he worked for a couple of years at Jewish cooperatives. He had two sons. In 1968, Marek was in his second year of studies, and Julek hadn't yet completed high school. Uncle said there was still time for at least them to have a peaceful life. That he no longer wanted the shocks, things like the Kielce pogrom, the Jewish Doctors' Plot, and all those things he had to go through. His wife was Jewish. Basically, she was most Zionistic of us all. Uncle Noach had been a Zionist in his youth, but no longer at the time. But he said, well, he'd surely not create a new life for himself, to the contrary, he'd be changing things for worse as he was living on a retirement pension and he'd not transfer the pension to Israel - but at least he'd take the boys out. And in 1968 he emigrated with his sons and wife to Israel. For me, that was an incredible shock. In 1996 I was with Andrzej in Israel to attend the wedding of Marek's daughter, Michal. I spent two months in Israel then, Andrzej spent two weeks. I was taking single-day and several-day excursions throughout the country; I had very many friends there, so I had places to sleep in Haifa and near Haifa, in Tel Aviv, in Jerusalem. I was partly driven about. And I spent those two months very actively. I liked the country very much. I've never tried to go again, for various reasons. Andrzej has very nice memories of the trip. He'd join English-language tourist groups and do a lot of sightseeing. At the wedding, Michal held the chuppah, which made him feel very proud.

Photos from this interviewee