Travel

Regina Grinberg
Sofia
Bulgaria
Interviewer: Svetlana Avdala
Date of interview: December 2005

Regina's favorite subject at school was mathematics. And indeed, the world that she reflects upon presents itself with mathematical clarity. This is due not only to her good memory, but also to her curiosity, her interest in the new, the unusual and the colorful. In her childhood, she would grab the camera and take pictures, capturing the unique moments that were alive to her. For me, this meeting was particularly interesting for two reasons. Firstly because the details demonstrate the interaction between three cultures - Jewish, Bulgarian and Turkish -and secondly because her life clearly shows the gradual disintegration of a very traditional, patriarchal way of life.

My family background
My parents
Growing up
Our religious life
My school years
During the war
Married life
Glossary

My family background

My name is Regina Emanuil Farhi [now Grinberg through marriage]. I was born on 23rd February 1924 in Shumen. [Editor's note: Shumen is a Bulgarian town in Northeastern Bulgaria where Jews moved as early as 1730. The town was founded in the early Middle Ages as a fortress with a village in the region of Hisarlak. In the 11-12th century it was known as Misionis. The first Jews settled in the town in 1730 with the permission of the local pasha, as Shumen was then under Turkish rule. They lived in some houses in a large yard - something like a ghetto with gates - that was locked every evening. There were four charity organizations in the town at that point in time, two Jewish schools supported by Alliance Israelite and a small synagogue. By 1905 200 Jewish families lived in Shumen, and by 1912 there were 2,000 in addition to 4 Jewish charity organizations and a small synagogue.] My ancestors are Ladino [Sephardi] Jews 1 2. My sisters, Senyora and Sharlota, and their children in Israel researched our family tree and discovered that our roots on our father's side originate in Spain and those on our mother's side come from Venice. I cannot say how they discovered this information, as I only know that my cousin Yako Farhi went to Spain to research this.

I remember my maternal great-grandmother, but I cannot recall her name. I called her Bizvava, which in Ladino means 'grandmother of my mother.' When I was sick she came to my bed and told me stories and spent whole days beside me.

The mother of my mother, my grandmother Sara Ashkenazi [Kalmi through marriage], lived in Ruse but was originally from Shumen. We called her 'Gran mama.' She was a beauty with blue eyes and black hair. She dressed very stylishly and everything in her house was very neat and arranged with a European taste. I remember her well because she visited us very often, and every year I spent a month with her in Ruse. She was a great housewife. Everything had to be spotless; the blankets had to be starched and everything done as it should. I remember her nice big house, which was close to the Danube. It was not in the Jewish neighborhood. It had exquisite furniture, including a particularly interesting room with beautiful mirrors. The river brought a more open atmosphere into the house, compared to the one in Shumen, at least. Ships were sailing all the time, military men in elegant uniforms arrived, and women were dressed in the latest fashion. The streets were always full of people 3.

My grandmother's husband, grandfather Yakov Kalmi, rarely came to Shumen. His familial roots are in Ruse, and I remember him from my visits to that city. He was always singing songs. He was a 'sarafin' when he was young, and he got quite rich. [Editor's note: a 'sarafin' was a kind of a money dealer. He or she exchanged various currencies. At that time, in addition to banks, private individuals such as these could obtain a bank license and make such financial operations.] After the wars, namely the [First] Balkan War 4, the Inter-Allied [Second Balkan] War 5 and World War I 6, he sold lottery tickets. During the Holocaust he made notepads, working right up until his death in 1948. I recall that one day he gave me a lottery ticket and told me that I would win something. I did indeed win something.

Grandmother Sara had four daughters, Ernestin [my mother], Blanka, Sofi and Rebeka, and a son, Eliezer. The husband of Tanti [aunt] Blanka was Avram Daniel. He died when their son Leon was six months old [later Leon Daniel would become a famous theater director]. Blanka lived separately from her parents in another family house. She rented a part of the house in order to support herself. Tanti Sofi married Zhak Semantov, who had a glass shop in Shumen. Later he went bankrupt, and the whole family moved to Targovishte [a town located in southeast Bulgaria, approximately 339 km northeast of Sofia] in the 1930s. Tanti Sofi and Zhak had two children, Marko and Sharlota. Later - I do not remember when - they left for Israel.

The third daughter of Sara was Rebeka Kamhi. She died at childbirth. I do not remember the exact date, although it was probably in the 1930s. Shortly after the death of her daughter, my grandmother Sara, upset by the death, also died. I do not remember exactly when. Eliezer Kalmi, her only son, had a shop in Shumen. He also eventually left for Israel and died there. Only Tanti Blanka died in Bulgaria; she passed away in Sofia at the age of 85 in the 1980s.

My paternal grandmother, Senyora Fintsi, was born in Razgrad in 1858 and died in 1930. [Editor's note: Razgrad is a town located in northeast Bulgaria, around 375 km from Sofia. Razgrad was the site of an old Jewish municipality dating back to the 4th century, when there was a cult towards the Semitic God 'El' (synonym of Jehova). No information is available relating to the presence of Jews in the city until the 12th century. In the 13th century the first data regarding Jews settling in the neighborhood of Varush appeared. By 1865, 9,723 people lived in Razgrad, of whom 90 were Jews. During the Russian-Turkish war the Jews from Razgrad, numbering 234, moved to Varna and Shumen. The Jews who stayed in the town moved from the Varush neighborhood to the Armenian neighborhood and the Turkish neighborhood in the southern part of town. There was one synagogue in town and one Jewish school, where Ivrit was taught. The school was closed in 1923 due to the small number of Jewish families and the lack of resources to pay the teachers.] Her family name through marriage was Farhi. Senyora was a commanding woman. She was the head of the big Farhi family because my grandfather Yakov died long before I was born. He had a ranch 15 kilometers from Shumen and raised 3000 horses there. When Stefan Stambolov 7 issued a law on the possession of land by Bulgarians, however, he was forced to sell the ranch and subsequently died of grief. [Editor's note: there is no information on this particular law, which probably concerned the Vakaf lands and those of Turks who had left Bulgaria.]

My grandparents had five sons, my father Emanuil, my uncles Avram, Yosif, Leon and Sami, and three daughters, my aunts Viza, Reyna and Simha. Avram married Regina, and they had two children, Yako and Sivi. Yosif married Mika and they had three children, Yako, Moni and Estrea. Leon married Sarina and fathered Sami and Jaklina. The fourth son Sami killed himself; I do not remember when. My aunt Viza married Sinto, whose surname I do not remember, and they had three children, Mika, Eliezer and Mati. Reyna married Mamo - I do not know the family name - and they had two children, Sinto and Viki. Simha married Baruh and they had three children, Suzana, Senyora and Nissim.

My grandmother lost her husband very early, when she was 40 years old [in 1898]. My father was 13 years old at the time. She had to be the head of the family and thus had a lot of power over her sons. I remember that when her sons would return home in the evening, for example, they would go to her and tell her how their day went. Together they solved their problems, and she told them who they should consult and where they should study. The family was very stable financially. Senyora's sons had a shop and the business was running smoothly. Our large Shumen family Farhi was thus quite well off.

My parents

It was not accidental that my mother married my father. This is an interesting story, actually. The sister of my grandfather Yakov Kalmi, Reyna Farhi, married the eldest brother of my father, whose name was Avram. He died. According to Jewish tradition, Reyna had to marry the bachelor in the family [many of the interviewees speak about this tradition among Jews. Most of them explain that, on the one hand, this rule was followed in order to keep money in the family. On the other hand, if such a marriage was not possible, the brothers had the obligation to take care of the widow and her children until they were ready to take care of themselves.]. The only remaining bachelor was my father, but since there was such a big age difference between the two, Reyna suggested that my father marry her niece - my mother. In that way the Kalmi family was sure that my mother would be supported.

My mother was Ernestin Yakov Farhi, née Kalmi. Born and raised in Ruse, she was a wonderful woman and mother. She knew three languages - Ladino, Bulgarian and French. She was a great cook. She organized her time perfectly and had time for everything. She could not only do embroidery, but also make things from satin. She could also play the piano and paint.

She graduated from the French College in Ruse 8. The teachers there wanted her to study in the Musical Academy in Bucharest [Romania] because at that time there was no such academy in Bulgaria. My grandfather Yakov Kalmi did not allow it, however, because he thought she would become a 'shafrantia' [meaning a woman of easy virtue]. Instead of leaving for Bucharest when she was 17 years old, she was thus married to my father, who was 34 years old at that time.

My mother came to Shumen from Ruse with her fashionable clothes, her refined tastes, the piano, ancient music sheets and her French books, and suddenly found herself in a patriarchal, provincial environment. Being very young at the time her wedding was arranged for financial reasons, she accepted her fate. She never acknowledged to me that the environment in the Farhi family oppressed her. She rarely shared anything and did not like to bare her soul, nor did she require us to confess our heartaches to her. Nonetheless, all her actions were infused with her own independent spirit. She fought for a long time to free her family from the dictatorship of Grandmother Senyora, my father's mother.

My father, Emanuil Yakov Farhi, and his brothers had two textile shops. At first, after the ranch was sold, the large Farhi family had dairy farms. Gradually they abandoned them - I do not know why - and started trading with textiles. One of the shops in the center of Shumen is still owned by the family to this day. The other one was sold.

My father, a Ladino Jew, had a basic primary education and took part in the Balkan War and World War I. He was kind, tolerant and always ready to make a compromise. Everyone loved him because he helped people in many ways. His fellow citizens in Shumen called him 'bai [uncle] Manoli.' He was about 1.80 meters tall, thin, and he never put on weight. He wore suits, and under his trousers he wore a red wool girdle to keep him warm in the large and cold rooms where he worked. I remember that girdle very well; it was probably influenced by Bulgarian culture. He wore it until it was all in pieces, and then he bought a quilted jacket. He balanced the family and never went from one extreme to the other. When my mother got angry because of the family - though that happened rarely - he always found the right way to calm her down. He never missed the minyan, and he was always on time for synagogue services. This was an important duty for him.

I have two sisters, Senyora and Sharlota. Senyora was born in 1915 in Shumen. She is still alive and lives in Israel. She graduated from the French College in Ruse. In 1936 she married Haim Geron, who had a glass shop. They have two children, Sami and Ernestin. In 1949 they left for Israel. Now my sister has a lingerie shop in Yafo and, although she is 90 years old, she still goes there once in a while. As a child Senyora was a very beautiful girl - tall, slim and blue-eyed. She dressed elegantly, but not extravagantly, given that our mother taught us not to strive to stand out among the others. She was very sociable, and that quality was of great help to her in the business she ran later.

Sharlota was born in 1919. She graduated from a vocational school, but I do not remember where. [Editor's note: At that period the Agriculture Ministry established several vocational schools with various profiles and professional courses. But at the same time this name was also used in reference to economy schools, later called economy secondary schools. It is not clear which kind of school is meant in the text.] She married Nissim Levi in 1942-43. They lived in Sofia and had two children, Avram and Ernestin. The whole family left for Israel in 1949. Despite the early death of her husband in Israel, Sharlota did not start working and chose to remain a housewife.

Growing up

The Farhi family, as I have said, was well off. Food was always aplenty, and we always had a lot of clothes. Given this relative freedom, everyone was able to decide how much they wanted to study. All of my father's brothers and their families lived in four old family houses. My grandmother lived in the biggest house. I remember that we also lived there at first. Then we moved into the smaller house that was alongside it, and my uncle Yosif and his family lived with my grandmother. The small house had three rooms. My parents lived in one of the rooms, my sister and I in the living room, and my eldest sister was sent to study at the French College in Ruse. We also had a guestroom. The toilet was in the yard, a special building covered with bricks. It was used by those who lived in both the big and the small house. It had separate compartments for the men, the women and the children.

When a part of Uncle Yosif's family left for Palestine in the 1930s, we went back to the big house. I remember that Uncle Yosif, who could not bear the fact that his eldest son Yako - influenced by Zionism 9 - left for Palestine instead of inheriting the family business, died shortly thereafter. With his death, that of his wife Mika in 1934 and his daughter Estrea in 1935, my family moved into the big house. I lived there until I was eleven years old.

The furniture in the small house was stylish; Vienna chairs covered with red plush, large extending tables, wardrobes and chandeliers. We had electricity installed in 1928. We installed it the same year it was introduced in Shumen, and the gas lamps remained only as decorations. There was a piano in both the small and the big house. My mother had brought with her valuable music sheets and her whole library from Ruse. She also had a lot of French books.

My mother Ernestin knew three languages, but since she communicated mostly with my father's family, she spoke mainly Ladino. My father, his brothers and later my sisters and I read newspapers and books in Bulgarian but spoke mainly Ladino amongst ourselves. We spoke with the servants, the doctor and the workers who took care of the house in Bulgarian or in Turkish, having studied these languages in the Jewish school.

My father loved reading newspapers, and our house was full of them. I particularly remember the newspaper edition that mentioned the death of Hristina Morfova 10, the famous Bulgarian singer who died in a car accident. I could hardly read at that time, nor had I ever seen an opera, but her death was discussed a lot at home and I was very impressed. I went to the opera for the first time 20 years later, when I came to study in Sofia.

Both of the houses in which we lived shared a yard. It was quite large and full of orchards, vegetable gardens, trees, vines and a large oak tree. My father and my uncles loved to work in the garden after work. This relaxed them. We also had a vineyard outside town that was looked after by a Turkish man, which enabled us to make our own wine. We also had some big dogs that I often played with.

We always had servants both in the big house [a whole family] and in the small house [one person]. Our first servants were Jews, but later, when they had saved some money, they moved away and were replaced by Turkish girls. After some time these girls were replaced by Bulgarian girls from the nearby villages. At that time it was not very expensive to have servants. The last maid we had was from a village nearby and was one year older than me. She came to us wearing only one dress and did not even have underwear. We had to provide her with food and clothes. When it was time for her to leave, we gave her clothes, underwear and money. We gave the money to her father.

The small and the big house were in the Jewish neighborhood in Shumen, but not in the center. They were in fact at the end of town, after Tumbul Mosque 11. They were also amongst the first buildings in town, and they now have historic value. My father sold the four houses to a Russian in the 1950s after he decided to leave for Israel, but one month before the date of departure he passed away.

The historical value of my childhood homes was such that the Shumen authorities decided to preserve and restore the houses as historic monuments. The house in which we lived last and the first two houses are still preserved. Out of curiosity, I went to Shumen recently and saw that a family of Albanian origins now lives there. The toilet has also been turned into a house. A Bulgarian who spent a lot of time in Russia came with his wife to Bulgaria, and the two of them live in what was formerly our yard.

Our next house was in the center of the Jewish neighborhood opposite the Jewish community house. Behind this house was our fourth house. At that time my sisters had already married and only the three of us - my mother, father and I - were at home.

At that time Shumen was a quiet, colorful and clean town. The streets were paved and the river-bed [one of the tributaries of the Kamchia River passes through the town] was covered with stones. There were four neighborhoods in Shumen, a Jewish one, a Gypsy [Roma] one, an Armenian one and a Turkish one. Turkish houses surrounded the Jewish neighborhood. There were all kinds of professionals, including leather workers, craftsmen, merchants and tailors. My husband, for example, was from a family of tailors. One of my uncles, Sinto, was also a tailor, but after he married a woman from the Farhi family [Aunt Viza] he received money and opened a two-floor store for ready-made clothes. That was something new for the town at that time [1934- 1935].

In the Jewish neighborhood there was also a grocery and three butchers. The rabbi was mostly responsible for slaughtering the meat, or, more precisely, his assistants [Editor's note: the interviewee probably means the shochet, a trained religious person who could slaughter animals painlessly in compliance with the Torah laws]. Jews owned almost everything in the neighborhood, and we did not look for help outside of the community. Indeed, we lived in a closed world. Only the cafés were Turkish. They served coffee with white sweets while Jews played backgammon and cards. The doctor in the neighborhood was Dr. Smyadovski. If one of us got a fever, he came straight away to treat us. There were, however, no Jewish doctors. Those Jews who did study medicine eventually went to Sofia or to the other big cities. Women in Shumen gave birth in their homes with the help of midwives, who were Bulgarians. I myself was present at the birth of my niece Erna.

The Jewish municipality was led by a Jewish board. I remember that at one point my father was a member of the board, but I do not recall as to exactly when. I think the Jewish municipality collected some membership fee, but I cannot be sure. I do not know the nature of the relationship between the town municipality and the Jewish board in the town. There was a Jewish community house, which stood opposite our last house and often organized evening get-togethers and dances. My parents visited it often, and we often borrowed books from it. I remember that I once borrowed a book by Edgar Allen Poe, but I got sick and was late returning it. [Poe, Edgar Allen (1809-1849): classical American writer, who virtually created the detective story and perfected the psychological thriller.] A man came from the community house to take it because it had some special value. The Jews in the neighborhood also had a Jewish orchestra, in which my brother-in- law, Haim Geron, played.

The family business went well until the 1940s, and no one wanted to separate from the family. Only my mother decided at some point to move away from the big house in which we lived at first. That was a real revolution. She did not want to have lunch and dinner with all my father's brothers and sisters every day and sought to have her own household. My grandmother felt very hurt after that, and the two of them did not talk for a long time. It was a real matriarchy at my grandmother's home, and even my father felt very uncomfortable in front of the family.

Regardless of that, every Saturday, we, the grandchildren, dressed in our best clothes, went to kiss our grandmother Senyora Farhi's hand as a sign of respect. We waited in line in front of her door. 'Do not come in yet,' my aunt would say, 'so-and-so is inside. Wait for them to go out first.' My grandmother would smoke a shisha when we entered. We came in, bent and kissed her hand without much talking. There was no time for conversations, as the grandchildren were many and she could not talk long with all of us. Those were the last years of her life. When I was six years old, she died of pneumonia [1930]. I remember that moment. All her daughters-in-law were standing beside her silently. I was not present at her funeral because, according to the Jewish rituals in Shumen, children did not go to the graveyards.

After the funeral there was a seven-day ritual [a ritual known as 'insieti' in Ladino - meaning seven days]. Every day the men were invited to eat boiled eggs and pastry. We ate only salty foods and nothing sweet. Later when my uncle died I remember that they brought small, low tables from the synagogue and small stools. A man, like the sexton, brought them in. We call him shammash. Every day during the week the daughters-in-law took turns preparing and serving lunch. Around the table sat only those who were grieving most: brothers, children and other relatives. Their voices were muted, their movements restrained. Someone would read the prayer and the daughters-in-law and more distant relatives brought the food. I do not remember what the ritual foods at the funerals were. After the funeral we ate neither sweets, nor meat, only boiled eggs and salty foods. There was also 'rakia' [brandy].

Our religious life

We observed all rituals during the holidays very strictly until I was seven or eight years old, that is, shortly after my grandmother's death. On Pesach and Rosh Hashanah all the family gathered in the big house around an enormous table with candlesticks, placed in the center of a big hall as big as my apartment today [100 square meters]. We, the children, would dress in special clothes. Every one of us had a chair, and we were even taught how to read the prayers in the Jewish school. We gathered around that large table not only on holidays, but also during difficult and emotional periods for the family.

Following the death of my grandmother, the life of the family did indeed change. Some people died, others left for Palestine. Gradually every family started celebrating the holidays alone, and Pesach became a holiday for the immediate family. I remember a Pesach when I was 14 years old. My father did not have a son and he was very unhappy. My mother would tell me, 'please, say the prayer.' I knew how to read because I had graduated from a Jewish school, and my mother would give me the book to continue reading because my father tired easily; he was already 56 years old at that time.

On the whole, we had a very good time during holidays such as Purim, Chanukkah and Fruitas 11. On Fruitas the other children and I received purses full of fruit from my aunts and other relatives. Everyone in the neighborhood bragged about how many purses he or she had received. On Yom Kippur, as is tradition, we fasted. On Purim the entire family - some 80 or 90 people - gathered in one of our family houses. I particularly remember our stay at Tanti Viza's home. We lit candles in all of the windows and waited for the masked people to come, having prepared sweets and fruit for them. Finally, they came singing and playing tambourines. I dressed in a Bulgarian folk costume that my mother had bought for me at Varshets resort [92 km north of Sofia] when we went to the mineral baths there to treat her rheumatism. We also went there once with Tanti Blanka. I must have been five or six years old at that time.

Besides the folk costume I also put on a mask for Purim. I was always angry because I expected the others not to recognize me, but they always did. Once I dressed up as a Japanese person in a kimono, which was great fun. We sang, danced and played. Rabbi Azus, who had come from Turkey and served in the Shumen synagogue, was always present at our family gatherings. He sang at every wedding and family meeting. We danced while he sang. He often joked that he had become a Farhi family member. This is what I remember most from my childhood.

On a market day Shumen was very colorful and noisy, full of people and carts. I remember that I had to bring food to my father because he worked in a shop in the center of town. I passed through lots of stony paths, taking care not to fall down and spill the food. Once a cow crossed my way and I waited for ten minutes for it to move. Finally a 'kadana' [meaning 'a woman' in Turkish] came out and asked me, 'why are you standing?' 'Well, the cow is on my way,' I said. 'Hit it!' 'How can I hit it? It would kick me back?' Then she took a stick and hit the cow. It was not difficult to understand her Turkish because we all knew a little Turkish, too. As I have said, there were a lot of Turkish families around the Jewish neighborhood, and we had Turkish gardeners and Turkish servants at home.

Going to the big Turkish bath near Tumbul Mosque was a big event, a ritual of sorts. We went there once a week. Usually we prepared a big bag specially embroidered by my mother. Everyone put his or her robe inside, as that was the fashion at the time in Shumen. A Turkish woman welcomed us in the bath and took the bag from my mother. She took us to a bed in a special room and took care of us. She bathed us. These baths lasted three hours. Very often in the middle of the room there was a round place, where it was the hottest. The women 'teliaks' sat there. [Editor's note: a 'teliak' is a person who takes care of the body of someone else, similar to a masseur or a bath rubber].

Turkish weddings also took place in the Turkish bath, and even my sister Senyora was bathed there before her wedding because there was no mikveh. [For this ritual Jewish bath, only rainwater is collected. It is used to bathe the women before their wedding. They go there with their mother and future mother-in-law, among other women after their monthly period and before they take up their family duties.] I remember that very well because I was a 12-year-old girl when my elder sister Senyora married Haim Geron. She was taken there a few days before her wedding. Everyone looked at her closely. The Turkish rubbers danced Turkish dances and in the middle they laid a table with chocolates, sweets etc. I was so nervous I could not eat anything. I remember that in the end they gave me luxurious soap as a present. Everyone received some gift, often either soap or a perfume. I got French soap, which smelled wonderfully but was too strong for me. Unfortunately I remember nothing of the other part of the ritual, which was probably in the synagogue.

There was only one synagogue in town. [Editor's note: There is no information regarding the destruction of this particular synagogue, which probably took place after World War II when many Jews left for Israel. What is certain is that its destruction was not on purpose. It fell apart because no one took care of it.] Now it is no longer there, but I recall that it was very big and beautiful.

I was very religious from age nine to 15, having come under the influence of a very religious man who was also a distant relative of mine. His name was Kohen. One of his daughters had left for Palestine and the other was in Sofia. His third daughter was married somewhere in Vidin, and he was thus all alone. My mother made me accompany him on Saturdays because we did not go to school on that day. I remember her telling me, 'you will not waste your time with friends, you will keep him company.' His nervous system was in bad shape, and I had to be with him just in case something went wrong. He was very religious and loved the mountains. Interestingly enough, I still carry in me the desire to take care of someone, a desire that I gained during this period of my life.

I learned many things from Kohen. He acquainted me with every piece of grass, every stone, every flower and every tree in Shumen. He taught me their Latin names as well. He taught me to love nature, and he obliged me to go to the synagogue regularly. On Friday evening I was the only girl in the synagogue. And since I felt uncomfortable being all alone, I made my friends come with me. There was a separate place in the synagogue for girls.

My school years

In addition to the synagogue, there was also a private Jewish kindergarten in the Jewish neighborhood that I attended as a child. The Jewish municipality supported this kindergarten. I have vague memories of the elementary classes, but this period escapes me for the most part. At first the school also had junior high school grades, but when the number of Jews decreased these grades were eliminated. We did not study on Saturday because of the Jewish holiday [Sabbath] or on Sunday because of the Bulgarian one. We were ten students in a class. We studied mostly three languages - Ivrit, Bulgarian and French. Our teachers in Bulgarian class prepared us very well, and I did not have difficulties when I went to junior high school. My Bulgarian teacher was called Katya. Jewish women, whose names I cannot recall, taught us Ivrit. Later they left for Palestine. Our teacher in French was Adon ['Mr.' in Ivrit] Behar, who was paid not by the Jewish municipality, but by the Alliance Francaise 13.

I was always an excellent student, and I always did my homework and knew all the lessons. My mother taught me up to work hard and be independent. Every morning I got up and prepared my breakfast. My mother never prepared my breakfast for me, nor did she fuss around me while I was getting ready for school. She thought that I should take care of these things by myself. Indeed, she never shouted at us or told us what to do. That is the best thing I can remember about my childhood. My mother thought that I should develop by myself and show what I can do. She also felt that I should get what I want by myself and achieve my goals on my own.

At first I did not have any breakfast in the morning, and when she found out she gave me 20 stotinkas [1 stotinka=0,01 lev] to buy something at school. But instead of doing that, I started going to the cinema every day. And while she never told me to stop going to the cinema, she did eventually stop giving me money.

The cinema. I was there every day. Shirley Temple, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Sonja Henie [popular film actors at that time] and other famous actors took me into another world. I was totally engrossed, and at one point I even wanted to become a dancer like Fred Astaire. Thanks to the cinema, I familiarized myself with American culture. When I went to live in the USA, I even sought these old movies. When I watched them again, they seemed very naive to me. But when I first watched them, they were something else, something different from the world in our Jewish neighborhood, in which everything was narrow and fixed and you had to live like the others. There was something suffocating about that patriarchy, in which every rumor spread very fast and everyone appeared to be watching you. My mother taught us that we should not comment on what our parents said at home, so that people would not spread rumors about us. We dressed modestly so as not to stand out, and we did not befriend boys before we gathered information about them. But that world would slowly start to change.

Every Friday we went to the synagogue. On Saturday evening our mother prepared a gravy beef soup with carrots, celery and potatoes. On Sunday we went to a restaurant in the 'Kyoshkovete' park [from the Turkish word 'kyoshk,' meaning a light wooden building] to eat 'kebapcheta' [grilled oblong rissoles]. We frequently invited my mother's relatives from Ruse to eat with us. They were beautiful women and always fashionably dressed. Next to them, we looked like villagers.

Ruse is not like Shumen. It is a European city. It was only there that I actually met Bulgarians, in fact. Once a year I visited my aunts in Ruse. Two or three times a year I would see my other aunt Sofi in Targovishte. We never went to the mountains or the seaside on holiday because my parents did not have many other friends besides our relatives. They communicated entirely with Jews and with very few Bulgarians; the Bulgarian teachers from the Jewish school, who were lovely women, were among the few.

Upon graduating from the Jewish school, I was thrust into a Bulgarian junior high school, and I suddenly found myself in a class with 40 students. The shock was enormous. When I started going to the Bulgarian school I also began going to the Orthodox church because of Mrs. Kutsarova, our class teacher. She did not like me much and made me go to the Orthodox church. Can you imagine that? On Friday evenings I went to the synagogue - I even hummed the prayer because I knew all the melodies by heart. Then on Sundays I was made to go to the Orthodox church with the whole class. When I told Mrs. Kutsarova that I had also gone to the synagogue, she said, 'I cannot excuse you, you must come with the whole class.' 'But I am a Jew,' I said, 'I go to the synagogue.' 'It doesn't matter,' she said, 'you must come with the whole class.' I did not dare to oppose her because her daughter was a friend of mine. She was a very nice girl who studied medicine.

Later, around my 13th birthday, when I went to high school, I fell under the influence of a particular group of girls - socialists. Together we became partisans, and I was totally cut off from the church and the religious feelings instilled in me by Rafael Kohen. When I entered high school, I did not want to meet with him any more. The world was changing. But even today I keep in me that feeling of admiration for nature that he taught me. I still go to the mountains and know every part of the 20- kilometer area around Shumen, which I often visited with him.

Beyond my ever-changing religious outlook, I also made my first Bulgarian friends in high school. My world started to widen. I loved mathematics and the teacher who taught it, my class teacher Kutsarova. School holidays were also new and exciting. We wore white collars and laid wreaths at the monuments of patriotic Bulgarians in Shumen. Bulgarian Revival figures were very much admired in Shumen, and we often sung patriotic songs, listened to speeches and attended poem recitations relating to Bulgarian history and culture.

In many respects, my life during this period was divided between my Jewish heritage and my Bulgarian schooling. As I said earlier, for example, I went to the synagogue on Saturdays and to the Orthodox church on Sundays. When we celebrated Jewish holidays we, the Jews, were exempt from school, but we also celebrated the Bulgarian ones. During the day I was at school with my Bulgarian classmates, while after school I did sports activities through the Jewish sports organization Maccabi 14, which I visited from the age of 14 to the age of 17. Maccabi was mostly a sports organization, and I loved physical exercises. Unfortunately, and I do not know exactly why, the organization slowly died away over the years as many of the original supervisors left for Palestine.

Beyond Maccabi there were precious few Jewish civic organizations in Shumen. There were a few Betar 15 members in town, but they were not popular and could not attract young people. There was also a WIZO 16 branch, of which my mother was a member, but I cannot say anything about this organization. I remember that we did some sort of charity project once, but I do not remember why. In my last years of high school I tried joining Hashomer Hatzair 17, but I did not like it. I thought that they were too limited. They agitated us all the time, asking 'when shall we go to Israel, when shall we go to Palestine?' Despite all of this rhetoric, not one of them left. I thought they were very hypocritical, and I subsequently stopped attending their functions.

During the time I was in junior high school I did not notice any anti- Semitic attitudes towards me. All of my teachers were very kind to me, and my Jewish origins did not influence my grades in any way. Even my high school teacher in physical education, who was a Brannik member 18, asked me to demonstrate the exercises to the other students because I did them so well.

In high school I always sat in the first row because I was short and thin. Right in front of me there was a poster aimed against Jews, but I did not think it was aimed at me. I did not feel different, unwanted or isolated until a close friend of mine started telling the whole class that Jews were bad people. I objected right away, responding that there were good and bad Bulgarians and good and bad Jewish people. 'No,' she said, 'all Jews are bad. You are the only exception. That does not refer to you.' I blushed and could not sleep for a couple of nights. Then this same friend of mine went to study in Germany, where she saw the true face of fascism. Disgusted, she came back to Bulgaria. Later, when she was already working, she apologized to me on a number of occasions and thanked me for not spreading the word about her opinions.

During the war

At that time [1939-1940] many Jews from Austria and Germany traveled to Palestine along the Danube by ship, stopping off at Ruse and then going to Shumen. They came to the synagogue and we welcomed them with food and money. We also helped organize their onward travel to Burgas and Plovdiv and on through Turkey to Palestine. My father was among those who went to the synagogue and met with them. The whole organization was in fact a secret channel, and he did not speak in front of us about what was actually happening [from the beginning of World War II a large number of Jews passed through Bulgaria - approximately 15 000, with transit visas. They subsequently reached Palestine and the USA by ships. One of the routes was along the Danube and then to Kyustendja [Romania]. A second route went through Varna, while a third went by sea through Turkey.]. It was only later that we found out that there were concentration camps and that fellow Jews were being tortured and killed.

The world around us was changing. People started breaking the windows of Jewish shops, our family shops were closed down and insults were written on our walls. Finally we were made to wear badges [yellow stars] 19. The Turks who lived around our neighborhood suddenly became very vicious and started calling us 'chifuti' 20. We were even forbidden to travel. During the course of the Holocaust my father went completely bankrupt and even lost his vineyard. The head of the police bought it for an insignificant sum of money, but eventually paid us the real price for that vineyard after 9th September 1944 21. Imagine that. Haim, my sister Senyora's husband, was also broke. He had a glass shop that was closed down by the authorities. He had no money and was forced to sell his clothes. Every year he was sent to labor camps 22, as were all healthy, young Jewish men.

In 1942 I graduated from high school and wanted to study abroad, but I was not allowed to travel. I was only permitted to study economics in Varna, but I chose not to. By accident, and much to my good fortune, I met a dental mechanic who offered me work in his laboratory and paid me quite well. At first my father was not happy that I had become a worker, but later he and others started admiring me for finding the job.

At that time I had fallen under the influence of socialism, and I became a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party. Life was changing, and so too were our priorities. I realized that things were not as they had been on the Jewish street. I was the youngest of my three sisters, and I can say that I was truly a child of a different generation. My sisters did what their parents expected of them. For example, my elder sister Senyora did not marry out of love. Instead, she followed my mother's advice to trust the decisions of her elders. The family chose Rafi Kohen to be her husband. When the boy came to ask for her hand, she only made a wry face but obeyed. After an engagement that lasted a year [to see if they could live together], they married in the Shumen synagogue.

Rabbi Hananel 23, who arranged the marriage between Senyora and Rafi Kohen, also arranged the marriage of my younger sister. We were somehow related to the Hananel family. My mother shared with him that my sister could not find a husband in Shumen, and he said, 'send her to me.' My sister stayed at his place for three months. Life in Sofia at that time [1942] was hard for Jews. Their movement around town was limited, but Rabbi Hananel and his family showed my sister everything. This included the nightlife, even in spite of the curfew that existed at the time. I even remember my sister telling me that the nightclubs were open for Jews from 4 until 7 am, so that the wealthiest Jews could see the shows and give them their money. [Editor's note: the curfew was in fact in accordance with the Law for the Protection of the Nation. The Commissariat for Jewish Affairs specified the places where Jews were not allowed as well as visiting hours for those places where they were allowed to go.] It was in one such place that she met her future husband, Nissim Levi. Their wedding was subsequently held in the Sofia synagogue, and she left to live in Sofia soon thereafter. Unfortunately, I was not present at the wedding because we were not allowed to travel at that time.

While my sister was being introduced to Nissim Levi, I was falling in love with my future husband, Baruh Grinberg. Unlike my sisters, however, this was a choice that I made on my own. I had known Baruh ever since my childhood in the Jewish neighborhood. I met many boys growing up, but, acting on my mother's advice, I did not get close to any of them. In the case of Baruh, however, I researched his life and knew a lot of things about him. He was an anti-fascist hurt by the struggle, and my compassion and his views strongly attracted me to him. None of my relatives understood me, and some even tried to separate us. My mother advised me not to marry him, but I was a child of another generation.

The ancestors of my husband Baruh Grinberg were very religious people. His paternal grandfather, Baruh Grinberg, was an Ashkenazi Jew. He originally came from the town of Odessa [today Ukraine], before settling in Ruse and becoming a rabbi. His son, my husband's father, Moshe Grinberg, was also a religious man. He had a fashion atelier in Shumen with eight workers. The father of my mother-in-law Buka, whose name was Moreno Samuilov, was a Sephardi Jew born in Targovishte. He was also very religious and sometimes went to extremes in the observance of religious traditions. He knew Ladino very well and read the Bible [Old Testament] all the time. Despite all of these religious influences, however, my husband Baruh was never a religious man. He wanted to become a physicist as a child, and he and his father argued all the time about the existence of God.

In 1943 the Jews interned in Sofia 24 came to Shumen. We emptied the big house and accommodated five families there free of charge. They slept on mattresses in the big hall. Everyone had two square meters to live on, and they kept the space neat and tidy. For meals, they cooked food in a big cauldron. We decided to organize a full-time kindergarten for the children of the Sofia Jews in the 'Kyoshkovete' park, with breakfast, lunch and Ivrit classes included. I was the person who organized this.

As the war went on, I became increasingly restless. I just could not stand still. I had to do something. I was ready to go to the battlefront or become a partisan, even going so far as to prepare my luggage. Six of us - all girls - decided to go to the Balkan as partisans, but the leader of the Shumen garrison, who was a brother of one of the girls, laughed at us and said that the partisan war was not for women.

After 9th September 1944 I became a clerk in Shumen for ten months to help the anti-fascist authorities. Then I left for Sofia to study dentistry at the Medical Institute. At first I lived in a rented attic room, but then I went to stay with my sister Sharlota, who lived on Iskar Street. There I shared a room with Greti, the future wife of my cousin Leon Daniel.

Married life

Baruh studied law while working for the Shumen municipality. We loved each other very much and married in 1948, at which point I was already pregnant with my first child. The wedding was very modest and not religious. I remember that I was studying for an exam in physiology at the time along with seven or eight other students in one apartment. Suddenly, at 10 o'clock, I said, 'excuse me, I have to go out for an hour.' 'Where are you going?' they asked me. 'Our exam is in two days and you decide to go out. You cannot do that. We must prepare for the exam. It is important and 50 percent of the students fail it.' 'I'm going to get married,' I said. They were all in shock. Our witnesses were some Jewish friends of ours. None of our relatives was present.

Haim, the husband of my sister Senyora whose shop was closed during the Holocaust, eventually became completely broke. He and his family could not remain in Bulgaria any longer and left for Israel in 1949 [see Mass Aliyah] 25. My sister Sharlota and her family also soon left.

In 1949 my first daughter, Beti Grinberg, was born. By that time my parents had accepted my marriage. But while they loved their newest granddaughter, they still could not understand me. My mother always said that my life was a mess, and our relations were strained. Nonetheless, my husband and I pushed forward with our lives. We moved to Bratia Miladinovi Street and lived there with my mother-in-law, Buka Grinberg, and Baruh's brother. His name was Avram. A number of times I raised the question of Jewish holidays, but my mother-in-law did not say anything, nor did she appear eager to celebrate them. I do not know why. When Baruh and I left for the USA our life changed, and we gradually neglected these traditions altogether.

As soon as I had graduated from dentistry school, I started work as a dentist in Pernik. In order to help my poor parents, I sent them half of my salary each month. My husband started supporting his family, too, and worked two jobs. He slept only four hours a day. During the day he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at night as an editor of a newspaper. [Editor's note: the interviewee does not want to go into details.] In our first years as a couple we could not even afford to go on holiday together because we did not have enough money. My husband had to go to the seaside for health reasons relating to the abuse he had received in labor camps during the war. He went there alone, and I went to the mountains with our daughter.

At the beginning of the 1950s my father, who was quite poor, decided to leave Bulgaria and move to Israel. He sold the family houses. Most of his brothers and sisters had already died, and the others, including their children, had moved to Israel. One month before he left, he suddenly died, and we buried him in Shumen in accordance with all religious rituals. My mother then came to live with us in Sofia. She spent a few months with us before she decided that she had nothing to do in Sofia and in Bulgaria. She left for Israel in 1954 and died there in 1958.

Although our first few years were very difficult, I was very ambitious and believed that we were creating a new, humane society. It was only after the events in Czechoslovakia 26 that I gradually became disillusioned, but that was still many years away. In the interim period I was very satisfied with my life in Bulgaria. My colleagues in Pernik and in the First Workers' Hospital, where I went to work, respected me and loved me. I never had any problems on account of my Jewish origins, and for some time I was even chairwoman of the trade union committee in the hospital.

Had I had changed my name I could have made my life even easier, but I did not do that. For the record, I want to make it very clear that no one asked me to change my name. Some Jews did so by choice, especially if they worked in public posts. I, however, was never ashamed of being a Jew, nor have I ever felt threatened because of my origins. I found my place here in Bulgaria, and, although many of my relatives went to Israel, I never wanted to follow them. This is not to say that I don't understand them. They did not find their place here in Bulgaria because they were used to living in an isolated Jewish society like the Jewish neighborhood from my childhood in Shumen.

We left for the USA in 1955. My husband was invited to work there as a diplomat, and we stayed there for twelve years. In 1956 our second daughter was born. Her name is Emilia. [Editor's note: the interviewee is reluctant to talk about her daughters, both of whom have passed away.] My children grew up in an environment in which the emphasis was not on Jewish values, but universal ones. Through my husband's work my world also widened. I went to a lot of cultural events. I remember going to see 'Fiddler on the Roof,' which made me cry ['Fiddler on the Roof' is one of the most famous stage and film musicals, opening on Broadway on 22th September 1964 with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. The musical is based on 'Tevye and his Daughters,' or 'Tevye the Milkman' by the Russian Jewish author Sholem Aleichem, originally published in 1949.]

The change of environment also changed the thinking of my children. Beti graduated with a degree in English Philology from Sofia University, while Emilia studied chemistry. They both married Bulgarians. They celebrated both Jewish and Christian holidays because they thought that it was very nice to have a lot of holidays in the house. Beti has a son. His name is Nikolay Todorov. He is an actor and a freelance director. At one point he lived in Chicago, but now he lives in Germany.

I am very happy that the state of Israel exists. I was a Maccabi member and grew up in a family of Zionists. Half of my relatives went to Israel before the state was even founded. I, however, had thought that they would create a unified state with the Arab community. We cannot just banish these people and just force them to leave their homes. It is simply not right. Look at how Bulgarians and Jews live here in Bulgaria. I thought that the Jews and the Arabs would live in the same manner, and I just can't imagine how relations between the two communities deteriorated so quickly. The more the crisis deepened, the more I got angry with the politicians. I read the book by Shimon Peres, for example, which never mentions the Arabs. He acts as if Palestine was empty when the Jews arrived and settled the land. It was not like that at all. The policy towards the Arabs was not right; now the crisis has escalated to epic proportions. Al Qaeda has appeared, while Palestinians blow themselves up to demonstrate their unhappiness. It gets worse and worse. At least that is what I think; I am just a dentist after all.

In 1989 I was in Israel visiting my relatives. They also come to visit us in Bulgaria on occasion. I was in Israel when I heard the news about the coup on 10th November 1989 27. I am pleased with what has happened in Bulgaria since 1989, even though we, as pensioners, live more sparsely. But this is life. All pensioners around the world feel neglected because the respect they felt while they worked has gone. The important thing is to have economic freedom, to be healthy as long as possible and to be able to support yourself. If you start moaning, no one will respect you.

Many of our Bulgarian friends have died, and our social contacts have gradually decreased. That is why I am happy that the Jewish Home [Bet Am] 28 has resumed its activities and restored the traditions that we had started to forget. Now we go there every Saturday. [The interviewee is referring to the 'Golden Age' club, established in 1999, where 30-40 Jews gather every Saturday. They invite famous personalities, musicians, artists, economists and politicians as guests.]

Glossary

Krystyna Budnicka
Warsaw
Poland
Interviewer: Anka Grupinska
Date of interview: August 2003

Krystyna Budnicka, formerly called Hena Kuczer, is a retired teacher and tutor of handicapped children. Since the fall of communism she has been an active member of the Children of the Holocaust Organization. In 1939 she was just seven years old. She remembers many surprising details, less so the coherent whole thread of a story or event. She has lived in Warsaw all her life: on Muranowski Square in the Jewish district before the war, later in the ghetto and in hiding 'on the Aryan side', and after the war in a series of apartments. We had several talks, both in the headquarters of the Children of the Holocaust Organization in Warsaw's only surviving synagogue, and in her one-bedroom apartment in a tower block on the site of the former ghetto. Krystyna told me of the worlds to which she belongs and asserted that she is consistent in the choices she makes.

My family background
Growing up
During the war
Post-war
Glossary

My family background

My name is Krystyna Budnicka, my true family name is Kuczer, Hena Kuczer. I first used my Polish name when Mr. Budnicki, a Pole, who had been looking after me, handed me over to some nuns who ran an orphanage as we were leaving a burning Warsaw after the Uprising [Warsaw Uprising] 1 in October 1944. When the nuns asked my name I didn't hesitate for long. Krystyna Budnicka, I said. And it stuck.

I was born in 1932, on 8th May, in Warsaw and lived in Warsaw at 10, Muranowski Square. My father was a carpenter. I was the eighth and last child in my family; I had six brothers and one sister. When I was born, you could say my parents were of advanced age - I was 21 years younger than my eldest brother. Five of my brothers were already completely grown-up, while one of them was only a year and a half older than me. The eldest was Izaak, we called him Icie, and later came Boruch and Szaja - familiarly they called him Sewek. Then there was Rafal, his full name in Yiddish must have been Ruben, Ruwen, Riwen or something like that. The fifth was Chaim, and the youngest Jidl, or Jehuda. My sister's name was Perla; she was older than Chaim.

My father, Jozef Lejzor Kuczer, was born in Siemiatycze [a town not far from Bialystok, eastern Poland], probably some time around 1880. That's how I calculate it, anyway, because when he died in 1943 he was around 60 years old. He ran a woodworking shop, he did carpentry and also some construction work. In the workshop there was what we called a 'krajzega', that is a circular electric saw. The workshop was in the basement of the dwelling house in which we lived; we lived on the first floor above the workshop. Our family wasn't exactly rich, but we weren't particularly poor either.

My father's family came from Siemiatycze. When they moved to Warsaw I don't know. What I do know comes from a cousin who lives in Israel, whose mother was my father's sister. My grandfather's name was Abraham, he was a carpenter, too. I don't know anything else about him, except that he probably came from Siemiatycze, too. I have no idea when he was born or when he died. I learned that the maiden name of my grandmother on my father's side was Grinberg or Grynberg. Chaja Grynberg. My father's brother, Ber Kuczer, also lived in Warsaw. He was a journalist, wrote a newspaper column, texts for small variety houses. What exactly, I don't know. I met him after the war. He wrote a book in Yiddish entitled Once There Was Warsaw. Ber Kuczer and the cousin from Israel survived the war in Russia. Ber died in Israel.

There is nothing I can say about my mother's family, I know nothing about them. Perhaps my grandfather, my mother's father, lived with us - I remember an old man lived with us and I know that he died. I must have been very small then. I know that mother had some siblings but somehow I don't remember any of them, there was an aunt, but I know nothing of her. I know more about my dad's family thanks to the cousin from Israel - he used to visit us at home, he still remembers me as a small child. That's all I know about my family.

My mother's first name was Cyrla, and her maiden name was Bzura. I know that she married very young. She could have been born around 1890. I don't know where she was born. She must have come from a religious family - I remember that on Saturdays she wore a wig, and on ordinary days she went around in a hairnet. Father always had his head covered. He didn't have sidelocks - he was no Hasid 2, but he was a pious Jew, and he had a beard, a beautiful long silvery beard, which parted at the bottom. He didn't wear a hat but a kashket, a kind of a small cap with a peak. My father was some sort of elder at the synagogue.

Only one of my brothers, Boruch, was religious. He had a pious wife and he wore a kashket too. Boruch was a carpenter, like father. He lived on Twarda Street. I guess he was born in 1913 or 1914. Boruch already had two children before the war. I think the name of his son was Abram, Abramek. Also this I remember very vaguely. And his little girl's name was Dobrusia, or Towa.

My eldest brother, Icie [his official name was Izaak] rented a studio flat on Miedziana Street and had a reading room. I used to go to his place. I remember he had a funny washstand. It was concealed, in a kind of small cabinet, and on top of it there was something that looked like a shelf with books. When you opened the cabinet, there was a washbasin inside. Icie passed his high school finals before the war. As I calculate it, he was born in 1911. Uncle Ber helped my brother set up his reading room. It was the Jewish reading room called Parnas on Nowolipie Street. When the war started, Icie brought the book collection to our house and deposited it in our basement, where the workshop was located. I learned to read from that book collection myself. At that time I didn't go to school, and I recall reading in Polish: Little Jack's Bankruptcy [by Janusz Korczak] 3, The Heart of a Boy by Amicis, Korczak's King Matt the First. [These were all popular children's books]. So there must have been Polish books, too. I don't think I could read in Yiddish, although I'm sure I could speak it. Today I don't even recognize the letters, I know what the alef looks like and nothing more. I'm very ashamed of this, since I could have found the time to get interested in it somehow, but as in many matters I frequently tell myself, 'Oh well, it's not worth it'.

I remember Icie had such a beautiful tan - he used to spend time in Zakopane, in Sopot [Polish mountain and sea resorts], he was like a bit of a stray from the rest of the family. He wore bright clothes. He was certainly Mother's favorite. More of a dainty, compared to, for example, Rafal who was brawny, strong, made for physical labor. Icie was cut out for books.

The third one, Szaja, was into communism. He also married before the war, they didn't have any children. I remember Szaja's wedding. The year might have been 1938 or 1937. I remember how I was dressed. I wore a red bow in my hair and a plush maroon velour dress that had been taken out. And I also recall that it must have been May or June. That wedding took place in our home. I don't know what business Szaja was in. Religious he certainly wasn't. My cousin from Israel, Szymon, says that Szaja belonged to some party. I don't know where he lived.

Perla had been the only daughter for a long time. She was slightly-built, slender and had curly hair. She was a great help to my mother. I don't remember which school she went to, but I know that she attended a corset- making course, which was the reason why a Singer sewing-machine arrived in our home. That Singer machine later came to play quite an important role, for it was sold for two buns in the ghetto. Perla was probably younger than Rafal, perhaps 20 in 1939, and Rafal maybe 24. She didn't get married, much to my mother's chagrin, as Perla was already considered a spinster. Perhaps it runs in our family! [Krystyna has never married.] There was talk of match-makers, but I don't remember much. I remember that Perla once took me to some Zionist meeting. Because I recall a song in Polish that went, 'We Jewess-patriots have paws like pussy-cats...' and more about us having something to do with the Arabs.

For me, Rafal was the most important one. Later on, in the ghetto, when we were living in the bunker, he was our leader, and gave us a sense of security. He was our 'captain' - we even called him that. And when everyone else had gone, Rafal was all I had left. He was the last one. As far as I remember, Rafal graduated from a technical school - either Wawelberg's or Konarski's. He worked in the shop along with my father. I remember that once they made a crate at our shop, I don't know whether it was for flour or something else, for Dr Korczak, for his orphans. Rafal wasn't religious. It must have pained my mother very much that her children weren't religious. Rafal was still living at home. He got married in the ghetto.

Chaim was much younger, he had to be much younger than either Rafal or Perla. He was some ten years older than Jidl. I know that Jidl was born in 1931 and Chaim in 1920 or 1921. He finished some school and worked with my father as well. Jidl was a year and half older than me. We hung out, fought, and played together. He was very attached to his brothers, followed them everywhere like a little puppy.

Growing up

Very early, perhaps at the age of three, I was sent to freblowka [kindergarten] on Sierakowska Street, near Traugutt Park. That street is no more. In the morning, a child caretaker would make the rounds to take children to the kindergarten. I stayed there until I was six, when I started school. The school was located on Barokowa Street, next to Krasinski Park, and it was a Jewish school with instruction in Polish. There was a religious studies class, and I remember a gentleman who was probably grade tutor and wore a smock frock and oversleeves; he must have taught all the subjects. I remember a handbook for the religious studies class, it was called Little Biblical History. I don't recall whether only girls or both girls and boys studied at this school. I was there for just one school year.

The house in which I lived was five floors high. It was the house on the corner of Muranowski Square and Sierakowska Street, and it had two staircases, five floors, and on each floor two families. Only Jews lived in our house, only the caretaker, a woman, wasn't Jewish. My mother once sent me to the caretaker to pick up the key to the attic. She told me not to look around at the walls, that it was forbidden to look at them. 'Remember: take the key and leave,' she said. But I did look around. I think there was probably a cross hanging on the wall. I remember the feeling of guilt, of sin: I wanted to see what it was that I wasn't allowed to look at. Adjacent [to Krystyna's house] was a restaurant, run by a Pole, his name was Gojski. I remember that he had a very good-looking son, older than me. At the corner of Sierakowska and Muranowski Square there a was shop in which I bought chocolate-covered khalva [syrupy walnut dessert] for 5 groszy.

We had two rooms on the first floor. I think that it had originally been just one large room, divided in time in two, and there was a fairly big kitchen. There was a toilet, and just before the war even a bathroom was put in, with a bathtub. I still recall bathing in the washtub after a grand laundry wash. The washtub was usually stored in the cellar, but once it had been brought in, we had such solemn ablutions. Well, usually we washed in bowls. And there was hot water, there was a boiler above the kitchen stove; it was a coal stove, with a sort of coil pipe that served to heat water. The bathroom was built by Rafal.

The entrance to the kitchen was directly from the corridor, there was no hall at all. In the kitchen, on the right hand side, there was a sink; we children constantly had to wash our hands in the sink. There were no double washbasins or bowls for washing the dishes - those I don't recall, but I do remember koshering dishes before Passover. That was done in the courtyard: My mother put the dishes into a large vat of hot water and then put in a sizzling flat iron heater, fiery-red, and the water swirled, swirled, and then it was all ready. In the kitchen there was a large cupboard and a table where we ate every day, since the entire family didn't really sit down for a common meal on ordinary days, there was no time for that. In the cellar my mother kept some stocked provisions: cabbage or potatoes for the winter.

My parents' bedroom was a small room with two traditional old-fashioned beds pushed together. We gathered the bedding from the entire apartment, placed it on those beds and covered it with bedspreads. And a grand cupboard stood there; it was probably made of oak, massive-looking, with drawers. The wardrobe stood in the first room. Also in this room was a large folding table - solemn Sabbath suppers and everything else took place there. Then there were also window shutters, for we were on the first floor. They were locked with a sort of bolt from the outside. In the first room, the dining room, the walls were painted navy blue with patterns, which to me seemed like macabre scenes, as I slept in that room. An iron bed stood in the kitchen, on which my two youngest brothers slept.

Everyday food was simple. How much food my poor mother had to prepare for so many people! Soups were rather simple. I remember cabbage soup since I didn't like it, and it had to be strained because it contained 'tatters'. I remember the borsht, and a dish in aspic, called 'cold feet', made from beef, that I didn't like. For breakfast we got some kind of milk soup, I liked very much, stale challah soaked in milk. Even now I prepare such pap for myself. My mother baked challot and cakes. She didn't make braids on the challah, she just folded it in two. I recall cheesecake and drozdzowe [yeast-based sweet bread] with crumble. My mother's specialty was raisin wine. I remember that there was always a demijohn of fermenting wine on the windowsill. I remember that during the occupation kosher food was hard to get, and my mother agonized over breaking the precepts. At the beginning she wouldn't take anything treyf into her mouth.

The solemn supper was on Fridays and Saturdays, when we ate together in the dining room, on a white table cloth. I remember that on Fridays my mother served hot fish with challah. And we dipped the challah into a warm sauce. Chicken soup was mandatory. And I remember cholent being carried to a bakery at Sierakowska Street. The pot was wrapped with paper, with our surname on it. The caretaker usually came to turn off the lights, until my brother Rafal designed a switch that he could set for a specific time. I remember the gray hours on Saturdays, when it wasn't yet permitted to turn the lights on, even though it was already twilight. We would sit by the tiled heating stove, and my mother told us fairy tales. Or my father would tell us biblical stories. He certainly talked to us in Yiddish. He couldn't have been telling his children about the Bible in Polish, could he? And my mother's fairy tales were probably told in Yiddish, too, although I can't say for sure. When I hear Yiddish spoken today I understand a little of what is being talked about. At home, there was a plywood board with the Hebrew alphabet on it, and my mother used to teach a little of it to me. I also remember some Yiddish songs.

My father treated my mother as if she were a queen. I never heard him raise his voice. We used to address her, 'Would Mother be so kind and...' I used to say, 'Would Mother be so kind and give me something or do something for me?' There was an incredible respect for her. Cyrle, Cyrle - that is how my father addressed my mother. I recall that good atmosphere. For others, my father must have been a figure of authority. They came to ask for his advice. I know that he used to do the cupping on people. They turned to him in all kinds of matters.

I haven't mentioned yet that we had a telephone, which is very important - at that time a telephone was a rarity. I remember a lawyer, a Jew from the neighborhood, who came to us to make calls. From a pre-war phone book I learned that the telephone had been registered in the name of my brother Boruch. It used to hang over a side table in the small room.

I had definitely been in some kind of synagogue before the war. But I think it was probably a small prayer house, not a big synagogue. That's all I remember, though. I recall Chanukkah: candle holders stood on the windowsill. I don't remember any gifts, [though] I know that today children get gifts. I remember Pesach, the moment that the door opened for Elijah to enter. I know that I knew the questions [the ma nishtanah] that had to be asked during the seder. At Pesach we used to eat macebrajka [pron. 'matzebrayka'] - crushed matzah crumbled into beaten egg, seasoned with a little salt and pepper and fried, a kind of matzah omelette. My mother used to fry it in goose fat; these days I fry macebrajka in margarine. I remember the Purim rattles that my father made for the younger children. And I remember the beautiful window decorations in the Jewish shops for Purim. Everybody would gather in our flat on Muranowska Street for the festivals. There were so many of us that we children had a table to ourselves.

I had a lot of toys made from wood by my father. I had beautiful toy furniture. And a kind of rag doll which my sister had sewed for me - you would buy a celluloid head, sew a small sack and fill it up with sawdust. And there was plenty of sawdust in the house. Then you would stitch to it little legs and arms, and you had a beautiful doll. I didn't have a bicycle, such things I didn't have at all. In the courtyard, boys would go about with a sort of little wheel guided by a poker. I remember one girlfriend - Roza from Muranowski Square. Her parents owned a button factory. I used to visit her and we played and I must have been jealous of her, she was just my girlfriend. Once her mom treated me to a fruit jelly - never before had I eaten jelly. Roza would come out to the courtyard and we played hopscotch, tag and skipped rope. My strongest memory of the courtyard is from 1940. Isolation [the isolation of Jews] 4 had already been brought in, and our parents forbade us to go out into the street, though the ghetto had not yet been created.

A tram passed under my window, but before the war I never rode on a tram, although I did drive in a hackney carriage. When I broke my leg, my father took me to hospital for an x-ray in a hackney carriage. Later I lay at home with my leg in traction. I also rode on a [horse-driven] cart to a summer vacation spot. That was somewhere on the Otwock line. Father rented two small rooms in a little wooden house with a veranda, and a small kitchen. My mother would take the younger children with her, and my father and my elder brothers came on Fridays. The cart was used for transporting the bedding and pots. The veranda was where we would relax and take our meals. That lasted until September. I remember a conversation between my parents. They were pondering whether there was enough money for the summer holiday. Mother put the matter squarely, 'All right then, I can spend the entire summer in Warsaw, but just count: for summer in Warsaw I need a hat, new stockings and a dress, otherwise how can I go out?! And once I rode on a train with my father, but I don't recall where to.

During the war

I can't say whether we shortened our vacation in 1939, I know that there was a [pre-]war atmosphere: stocking up on provisions, buying in supplies for the medicine chest, filling crates with sand, buying gas masks (make- believe masks, tampons to be soaked in something). From the first period [of the war] I remember that we would sit in the cellar when there was an air raid. We listened to the radio. The entire family would sit in that workshop of our father's. I remember refugees, Jews from Germany, arriving in Warsaw. I'm a very poor witness for all that because I never went out. Before the ghetto [the Warsaw Ghetto] 5, I was a little child, staying with my parents. In the ghetto I hardly ever got out, since at the beginning I was still a small child and then I was in hiding; neither did I see the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 6 with my own eyes, and when I was on the Aryan side I didn't go out on the street.

I remember a house search in our apartment. They cut open a small sack of flour with a bayonet. Under the small table in my parents' bedroom there was a trapdoor to the basement. The men were hiding because then they were only looking for men. And in the cellar there was another hiding place in a crate with sawdust. Before the ghetto, at the beginning, after the September bombings, Father still had a lot of work. Later it got worse. Rafal got married when we were already in the ghetto. He and Fela went to live one floor above us at Muranowski Square. Fela was killed during the Great Action 7. Icie also came back home when the ghetto was already in place. And he brought the book collection from his reading room to our cellar. In July 1942 we were already living on Mila Street. [The area of the ghetto was reduced in size a number of times. On June 26th 1942, Sierakowska Street was excluded from the ghetto.] The flat on Mila Street was empty, simply it was already empty. A room with a kitchen, on an upper floor. At that time we had already lost contact with Boruch and his family.

In 1942, during the Great Action, Boruch had said, 'Little children, where can I hide with such small children? A child will cry, we have nothing to eat.' So it was sort of his own decision, I don't mean that he went voluntarily, but... he didn't fight. It is likely that they were killed during the Great Action. Szaja and his wife were caught during the Great Action, too. They went to Treblinka. And Rafal and his wife were caught. Rafal escaped from the train while being transported to Treblinka, but his wife didn't manage.

We had a hiding place at Mila, too, it was located in the ventilation chimney. We survived several house searches inside that chimney. A type of disguised cabinet on rollers was used to cover the entry to the chimney. During the Great Action we hid there several times. Jewish policemen were given quotas, they had to catch a certain number of people and deliver them to the Umschlagplatz. [Editor's note: The place in the Warsaw Ghetto from which deportations left to extermination camps.] They yelled from the courtyard that they were waiting, that everyone had to come down with provisions for one day and clothes, and that they would be going on a trip. So, after such an announcement, there was a moment of silence, and later a house search would begin in the apartments. There was a padlock hanging outside our door, and it looked like the flat had been closed from the outside. But they would force the padlock open, enter and search. Well, somehow they were never able to find us. I remember the illness of my brother and the illness of my father, it must have been typhoid fever. And I remember that we were very short of food. My mother sold a ring and the Singer sewing machine, and for them she got two white buns for my father. I remember the terrible fear in that chimney, when your heart is pounding because you can hear loud steps and you know that at any moment they could catch and kill you. I remember feeling hungry later, in the bunker. [Editor's note: Krystyna was in hiding in a bunker built by her brothers from February to September 1943.] I remember how I imagined that I was eating, that I was chewing bread. But I remember my fear better than the hunger.

After the Great Action we remained in hiding, no-one from our family worked legally in the shop. [Only those who worked in the ghetto factories had the right to live there, others were so called 'dzicy', 'wild' inhabitants of the ghetto.] Rafal, Icie and Chaim, my brothers, were building a bunker. Rafal was the boss in this business. I don't know where they had found the people who gave the money for the construction of the bunker. I think that they began building it right after the Great Action. The bunker was on Zamenhofa Street. We moved into the bunker in January 1943, I think. We had stocks of provisions. I know that there was a physician among us. At the beginning, until the uprising, there were some 30, 35 to 40 people. From this bunker there was a passage into the sewers, and that was the crucial thing, that made it possible [for us] to cross over to the Aryan side. Between January and April, the boys, my brothers, would go into the sewer to explore the Aryan side.

I will now describe the bunker. The passage down from the basement was closed off by a trapdoor that weighed 70 kilo. The bunker was constructed in such a way that the whole was dug out below cellar level, and the soil that was taken out was used to strengthen the ceiling with the help of wood planks and logs. Inside there were two rooms: in one, provisions and other necessities of life were kept. From that pit a tunnel was built leading to the sewer. The tunnel might have been ten meters long or perhaps even more. That tunnel, which was hollowed out in such a way, was the second room, the bunks were there. That was the place where we lived. And when the ghetto started burning, then it was literally like in an oven there. [Editor's note: The Germans began to burn down houses in the ghetto a few days after the liquidation began on 19th April 1943. Street after street burned. By 15th May, when the final liquidation of the ghetto was announced, most of the buildings in it had been burned down.] We would escape to the sewer to cool off a bit. The bunker was designed to be very safe. Inside we had everything: light, water. We also had a radio in the bunker. The idea was that we would survive the war in it.

Every day Icie made notes on our life in the bunker; but all of that was destroyed there, nothing was saved. It was in the bunker, before the Uprising, that the marriage of Icie and Anka took place. My father led the ceremony. At that time he didn't wear a beard anymore because the Germans had cut his beard in 1939, as soon as they came in they cut off half of his beard. I was very sick once and was given one potato, which my mother mashed and then fed me. I probably had a high fever, I don't know what the matter with me was, but I got well later on. My parents were very weak, they were simply wasting away. We switched day for night. During the day we slept.

There were food rations allotted in a way to make it fair. There was this watery soup made of oats. In the bunker meals were cooked on an electric range. We relieved ourselves into a small pail and then dropped the contents into the sewer. We washed one after another in a bowl. Emissaries were sent outside. But I really remember very little. I think the most important thing was not to move around too much, and that was all. And I suppose I just learnt to live like that. I was very young and didn't want to cause trouble or bring danger on us, so I breathed quietly. I really don't recall very much at all. I never went out at all, not even at night. None of us went out. If there was any danger we would hide in the sewers. I remember going out onto the street only once, during the day, but that was before the Uprising. We went to another cellar, but I don't know why, and I remember that we returned to our bunker very shortly after that.

The people in the bunker - I don't know who they were or how they came to be there. I know that we had no money, so perhaps my brothers constructed the bunker and the other people supplied them with food and medicine. I remember a physician and his wife, a married couple with two daughters and a son, the latter left earlier and helped us after that. And there were many people, but they didn't get fixed in my memory as they were only there for a short time, and they left quickly. I don't know what happened to them. They all tried to pass onto the Polish side via the sewers. The Germans knew that people were escaping through these sewers and dropped gas and grenades into them. At one point, the cellar collapsed with all the stocks of provisions inside, and we were left with literally two sacks of oats. We were left without light, nothing, not even water. And the boys started to dig through this mass of earth in order to somehow get to the air. They bored these passages in wet rags, and finally they reached some adjacent cellar, for there was a whole chain of cellars. I didn't see any firearms on my brothers, perhaps they didn't have any in the bunker, but I know they were in the Uprising, at the beginning, maybe for several days. They said they had come back from the Uprising. And when everything was coming down, burning, they were with us.

When they tracked us down, it was already September 1943. Two girls from the bunker came into contact with the caretaker of a house somewhere on Okopowa Street; Wasilewski his name was. He later helped us. He cleaned around the manhole, and he would hand us slips of paper with information, and we would pass ours to him. One day a man came to us from the outside, carrying a backpack with food, I don't know who he was. He was a very nice young man. And he said, 'Don't worry, everything will be okay, we will take you away from here.' At that time there were thirteen of us: My mother, my father, four of my brothers - Icie, Chaim, Rafal and Jidl - I, Perla, Anka - Icie's wife - and two married couples. Then the disaster happened. My poor brother Rafal got sick - it was dysentery or perhaps typhoid. A message was sent out immediately through Wasilewski and they took him above the ground.

Chaim and Icie, along with the husband of one of the women, took responsibility now. They began to go out, up through the sewers, and once they chanced upon two Polish looters. They agreed to meet them the next day. They put us in a sewer and came out to meet the men in the hope that they would bring us perhaps bread or something. As we were sitting in the sewer, we only heard shots and incredible shouting. We just sat there on some planks and waited for hours. After several hours my sister and Anka went inside the bunker, where they found nobody, they didn't go outside. My little brother, Jidl, knew which way to go in the sewer, took a flash-light from the bunker, and led us to the manhole that served as a contact point. After several hours we gave a slip of paper to the caretaker, 'Save us, the bunker has been compromised, we are sitting in the sewer.' They [the Poles] replied that they could come the next night.

And they came. When they came, it turned out that the manhole had been soldered up and that they couldn't open it. And we had to go to another manhole. But that was hardly possible, for we simply didn't have any strength to go. It was quite a distance and ahead of us there was a sewer with a very strong current. So my mother stayed behind. She wasn't able to get up from the mud. My father didn't have the strength, either, nor did the other woman, as she had one leg in plaster. My sister Perla said that she wouldn't go, she wouldn't leave them, and she stayed with them. I also wanted to stay, but my mother said, 'No, you go, Rafal is there, so you will tell him about us and he will come to help us. Go!' And they remained there. Well, and then we nearly drowned. My little brother went first and he was carried away by a wave, his torch-light went out, and we stopped, we had no idea what to do... there was darkness, water, a terrible whirl. Then the torch-light lights up from a distance and he cries, 'Anka, I'm alive!' Jidl went up under the manhole while we stayed behind, and he told the rescuers that we were waiting there but wouldn't manage on our own.

They carried the three of us out probably at Okopowa Street, where there was a candle factory. I know that Polish policemen [the so-called 'policja granatowa'] were among those securing our rescue. They took us to that Wasilewski. Then they washed us somehow. I was almost unconscious. I remember that I saw Rafal, and he asked me where our parents were, and I said that they had stayed behind and were waiting for help. Rafal pleaded with the people and they promised to return there the next night. There was contact with my parents through the manhole; I know that Valeriana drops were passed to them. But later the contact came to an end. Later it became dangerous there, even though Mr. Wasilewski was a decent man. They packed us, Rafal, Anka, Jidl and me, into four sacks, the kind with a small opening. After so many years, I finally saw that there was a world out there.

We were all barely alive, didn't look like human beings. They drove us to 1, Mokotowska Street. The house had probably been destroyed in 1939, and only the cellars remained in very good condition. It was a corner house with windows on one side overlooking Polna Street. Only four of us stayed there, but that was only for a very short while, for Jidl fell sick after the journey through the sewers and died. A physician came to see us, probably a Jew, he set our diet. And there was a house caretaker who looked after us. His name was Grochowski. And unfortunately there was the caretaker's son, who later contributed to Rafal's death, he simply denounced him. We revived; put a bit of weight back on. After the death of my brother Jidl there were only three of us. Rafal buried him secretly, probably somewhere in the courtyard. It was October 1943. We began to receive assistance. A woman called Basia brought us various things and money. I think it could have been Basia Bermanowa [a liaison of the Jewish National Committee] 8.

Later came an order, I don't know from whom, that since my brother was skilled in building bunkers, the cellar should be used for that purpose. And then, I believe in December, a man called Antek came to us and brought my brother firearms. [The interviewee is probably referring to Antek Zuckerman, one of the leaders of ZOB] 9. The construction started. That tunnel was to lead to the closest sewer. First the descent into the tunnel was built, so we had a place to hide in an emergency. We were there when the trouble with Mr. Grochowski's son, his name was Kazik, started. He was a young man, rather unimpressive, used to drink a bit, maybe he wanted to blackmail us. He, or so we thought, brought the Germans. We then hid quickly in the shelter, and spent the entire night there. They put seals on the cellars from the outside and we couldn't get out at all. Fortunately, Rafal's colleague from the underground organization was there with us, he got out through some little window and later got us out as well. One night we walked from 1, Mokotowska Street to Podwale Street.

Ms. Stefania Socha lived at 15, or 17, Podwale Street, in a studio flat on the first floor, and she took us in. She was a kind of patriotic drunk who kissed every metal badge with the Polish eagle [the national emblem]. Naturally, she knew that we were Jewish, that couldn't be disguised - we looked ghastly. At her place, we slept on the floor. We only spent a few days there, maybe a week. We were visited by the same man who used to come to the ghetto, he was a liaison man. He always bragged that nothing could happen to him because he had cyanide. Finally, the boys decided that the Germans were no longer watching the house at 1, Mokotowska Street, and that we should go back there since it would be a pity to waste the effort they had put into the building of the tunnel. It was agreed that Rafal should go back alone, without Anka and myself. A 17-year-old boy, Zygmunt, was to go with Rafal to help him. Us they moved to Dolna Street to a woman called Ms. Zakrzewska or Zarzycka, I'm not sure, who was a midwife. It was January 1944. And they took Rafal to the place on Mokotowska Street. Ms. Zakrzewska was being given some money and she fed us. She lived with her husband and a small daughter. Whenever anyone came in, we hid behind a curtain.

January passed and we had no news about Rafal. In February no money came. The lady kept feeding us, but it was getting more and more difficult. We learned in the end that Rafal was dead. He got into a quarrel with Kazik, the caretaker's son, because Kazik was careless in his work, and Kazik brought in the Germans. The boy who had been assisting him, Zygmunt, was also killed. The money for our upkeep began to flow in again. It was brought by someone else, for Jozek, the liaison, had also been killed. I don't know exactly where the money came from but I guess it was from the Jewish National Committee. We lived there undisturbed through February, March and April [1944]. One day it turned out that the midwife had been doing illegal abortions and injured some Volksdeutsche 10 woman who ended up in hospital and the Germans began an investigation: where, what and how. We had to run. Anka and I were led out separately, but on Dolna Street some kids began to yell after me, 'Jewess'. I spent the entire night on coal in a cellar. I was not suitable to be shown to other people. I couldn't show my face in public because I looked very Semitic. [Jews identified as such by Poles were often blackmailed or handed over to the Germans.] The next day a female liaison came in the morning, put a bandage around my head and took me by tram to Dobra Street. And that's how I found myself at the Budnickis'. Anka was already there.

The Budnickis helped Jews; they were a middle-aged childless couple. I know that when the summer holidays started, Mrs. Budnicka went to a summer vacation spot with some Jewish children, somewhere in the Otwock area. When the Uprising broke out, she wasn't in Dobra Street. Anka cooked there. I recall that the Poles captured a heating plant somewhere nearby and there was great joy, euphoria. During the Uprising we would go down with everybody else to the cellar, the shelter. At that time I didn't hear a bad word directed at us. You could say that people felt a stronger solidarity with one another, all felt the same danger. We walked out of Warsaw on 6th September with the Budnickis. We crossed Warsaw, which was ablaze. I parted with Anka in Wola [a district of Warsaw]. First, there was a night stopover under the open sky, and in the morning selection for work duties.

Mr. Budnicki noticed some nuns, Grey Nuns from Warsaw, from Ordynacka Street. He went up to the Mother Superior and told her that he had an orphan, that he wasn't her father. She said, 'You will come to get her after the war?' 'Yes, yes, of course,' said Budnicki. When the nun saw me, she asked, 'My child, what's your name?' I said, 'Krysia Budnicka'. I went with the children from the orphanage to the Pruszkow transit camp 11. Later it turned out that out of eighteen children, six were Jewish. One girlfriend lives in Warsaw, she is well-educated but doesn't maintain any contact with children of the Holocaust; she doesn't want to. She doesn't even want to stay in touch with me, even though we used to like each other very much.

At Pruszkow we spent only one night. I remember I was given an empty food can, with which I went to get soup. From Pruszkow the whole children's home was moved to Bobrowce near Mszczonow. The trek took several days. We were billeted in a school. A few of the girls were Jewish, but of course I knew nothing of that. We were all very poor, we had left Warsaw after the Uprising with nothing. The nuns scoured the villages and brought us bits of food and old clothes. I got a moth-eaten coat, I remember that was a luxury; the other children envied me. My looks were a big problem and the nuns protected me. When the other children went into the village to dig potatoes, the nuns kept me back. They told the other children that I had a wounded finger. I don't think I was very popular. Nobody taunted me for being Jewish, but the other children used to call me a creep because I was very obliging - probably because after the hell I'd been through I wanted to show my gratitude for being taken care of. We were in Bobrowce when the liberation came [the Russians entered Warsaw on 17th January 1945], and in February we were moved to Osuchow, to the abandoned palace of the Plater family. There I started going to school. I was 13. In May 1945 we were taken to a village called Szczaki Zlotoklos, where we continued to go to school.

The nuns wanted to baptize me right away, in October 1944, but a priest said that he couldn't approve, that baptism could take place only in the event of a life-threatening emergency. 'We shall wait, the war will end soon, she is a big girl and she must decide for herself,' he said. I was baptized in Szczaki Zlotoklos. That was something I really wanted. I was very keen to fulfill all my religious duties conscientiously. Some men came to Szczaki Zlotoklos looking for Jewish children. The nuns brought them to me and I told them everything I remembered about my family. They said they would start looking, and that perhaps someone might have survived. I don't know what organization they can have been from. Six of us girls were Jewish. One was found by her father. I remember the tears. Another one was taken to Israel. She was very small, seven years old. First she was taken to the Jewish children's home, then to Cracow, and today she lives in Israel. They tried to persuade me to go as well, but I didn't want to, and I was old enough that they could hardly have forced me. The same people came to the children's home several times, and they carried on coming when we were back in Warsaw, too. [Editor's note: The children's home returned to Warsaw in 1946, and was located on Czerniakowska Street.] Once a man came to visit me claiming to be my cousin and telling me he was going to take me to Palestine. But I knew he was no relative of mine. I was very hurt that he tried to deceive me.

Post-war

I stayed with the Grey Nuns for a very long time, up to my grammar school graduation, that is, until 1952. I finished elementary school in 1948 and had to choose a secondary school. I very much wanted to go to the grammar school run by the Nazarene Sisters, but the nuns said that I shouldn't, because I would be ruining my chances of a career. It was at the height of the Stalinist period and a church education was frowned upon. But I insisted. And the nuns were right - later on I had trouble getting a job. At school I was different, and didn't fit in. Not because I was Jewish, but because I was an orphan. The girls who went to that school were from well- off families. They brought white bread rolls with ham, while I had black bread and jam or dripping. I really never felt different because of my Jewishness. That was never an issue, it was something we never talked about - not because I concealed the fact, but because it just wasn't a topic that we discussed. In those days we didn't talk about the war at all. I know from conversations with Jewish friends of my age [today] that it was the same for them - nobody talked about the war. Nobody talked about themselves. If ever anyone asked me about my family I said that they had all died during the war. Perhaps not revealing anything afforded us some security?

In 1952 I went to Lublin Catholic University to study pedagogy. That was the very worst part of the Stalinist period, but the atmosphere there was fantastic. Many of us were escaping from communism and found our haven there. And not only that - it was the only time in my life that I felt on a par with my peers. I was just the same as they were - like them I was not with my family, like them I had no money, like them I lived for my studies, we were all young and in a similar situation. And I used to go back to the orphanage during vacations; I treated it like my only home. The nuns would mend the holes in my shoes and give me food to take back to Lublin with me. I was 20 years old, and I remember that there, at university, I was truly happy for the first time in my life. Everyone knew that I was Jewish, but it wasn't an issue. I think I was probably the only Jew at the whole university. I remember that once my friends came and told me that the young Father Daniel [Daniel Rufeisen] 12, a convert who was going to be a monk in Israel, had come to Lublin and was going to give a sermon. I didn't go; somehow it wasn't something I was interested in. I graduated after four years.

I've always remembered what home I came from, but I didn't want to be a Jew because I considered that it was something bad, for when one is a Jew, one suffers, loses one's family - that's how I thought as a small girl and as a teenager. After the war my uncle Ber Kuczer came to see me and he wanted to take me away, but somehow he didn't insist too much. He was on his way from Russia to Paris. I didn't want to go. I couldn't make up my mind in a few seconds. I felt secure at the orphanage. I think I was afraid of more danger, more upheaval.

Later, I graduated from the Institute for Special Education in Warsaw. I wanted to get a job somewhere where I would be given lodgings. I applied to work in the militia-run emergency children's care unit but was turned down. I was also rejected by the Korczak Memorial Children's Home. Eventually I found a job in a children's sanatorium in Otwock, and I found a place to live in an attic an hour and a half's journey away - I was a squatter. I didn't get a flat of my own until 1967. There were a few people from Jewish families at the school in Otwock. The personnel officer was a Jew. Perhaps that's why I got the job. We got on well, but we didn't talk about the past. I became friendly with one of the teachers, and through her I met a family who I did talk to. That teacher and her family emigrated to Israel later. The fact that for many years I never talked about it, didn't want to think about it or remember, doesn't mean I stopped being a Jew. I was simply escaping from painful memories. And other people were doing the same. But we did keep in touch. I kept in touch with the girls from the orphanage all the time, but we didn't talk about the past.

In 1968 I got another job, but not because anyone forced me out - I simply found a better job, and one that was in Warsaw, so I didn't have to travel. And that year, in 1968, I made many trips to Gdanski Station [in Warsaw], which was where people left for Israel. I said goodbye to many people then, and cried. But I didn't have the feeling that it was anti-Semitism among the Poles that was driving them away. I blamed the communist system; after all, it was because of the authorities that these people were losing their jobs, it was communist agitators who were screaming at rallies for Jews to go to Zion. That system persecuted us in various ways, and anti-Semitism was just one of its methods.

Anti-Semitism in Poland. That's a very big, very complicated subject. In 1956 I personally didn't experience anything or see anti-Semitism directed towards others. I had just graduated. In the attic where I was squatting I had neither a radio nor a television. I wasn't living in a Jewish environment. And anyway, that wave of anti-Semitism wasn't as noticeable as the one in 1968. 1956 was mainly about purges among military personnel and people in power. And those were on the whole rather closed circles.

Anti-Semitism is either an illness or stupidity. The circles in which I move in Poland - doctors, teachers, the middle-class intelligentsia - have nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Either way, I don't believe that anti- Semitism in Poland is anything out of the ordinary. I don't imagine that anti-Semitism in France or America is any less painful. I think there has been a great improvement here in the last few years. Once the system changed, everything became more above-board and hence more normal.

And anti-Semitism within the Church? That saddens me greatly. But I believe that the Pope's teachings are being increasingly taken to heart. After all, after 2,000 years of anti-Semitism within the Church, it's not easy to change the Church in a very short time. But I believe it will change. I have a dilemma too, not a problem, because I don't find it a problem, but a dilemma, when people ask me to define who I am. Because I am a Jew - that is my nationality, my background, and a Christian - that is my religion - and a Pole - that is my culture. I can live with the problem of my identity, it doesn't worry me. And other people needn't concern themselves with it.

I've never hidden the fact that I'm a Jew at all. Everyone knows who I am. I went to Israel for the first time in 1961. Everyone at work was astonished when I came back a few weeks later. I think they were sure I would stay there. But I didn't want to stay there. I've been to Israel twice, in 1961 and 1989. I love it very much, but I would never take the decision to move there because my roots are here. Israel is a very special place for me because it's a Jewish country, the cradle of both Judaism and Christianity. My country. Mine is the grave of Rachel and mine the grave of Christ. I'm no missionary, so for me Judaism and Christianity form a kind of whole. I'm very happy when I'm in Israel and I always want to return there. But my home is here, and it's here that I feel relatively secure. I'm alone here, because I have no family, but I'm not lonely. I don't think I would be happier anywhere else. Perhaps in Israel? If I had emigrated years ago.

I have been strongly involved with the Jewish community in Poland since 1990. I was the vice-chairperson of the Children of the Holocaust Organization for a few years. I'm very attached to the people there. And it makes me very happy to see young people in Poland rediscovering their Jewishness and returning to their long-lost roots. No, I don't feel any inner discord or conflict. And people here, my friends and acquaintances, understand me, I think. On Yom Kippur, a Sunday, I went to mass in the morning, and in the evening I lit a candle in the synagogue for my loved ones. I'm sure my mother understands me. From her perspective such earthly matters are simpler.

I've been a Catholic for a long time. A Catholic Jew. I am consistent in my choice. I come from a very religious family and religious faith is in my genes. Father Daniel Rufeisen very much wanted me to stay in Israel, in his Hebrew church.

Glossary