This is a photo of my younger sister Bala and my niece Giga, Roza’s daughter. It was taken in 1938 in Kielce.
Bala was maybe 18 at the time. I remember Bala well. I was very fond of her, a very lively, intelligent girl, active, very handsome, in my view. Nice eyes, and she had dimples on her face. Mania didn't, nor did Ziuka.
Mania was the last in the line, the 9th child. But by the time she was growing up I was in Warsaw, I hardly met them, except in the vacations, and then very rarely.
Whether Bala and Mania had their admirers, that I don't know. The girls worked in the photography studio; I think they spent some time learning retouching too, and then they worked in Orion. I don't think they had any schooling.
They could read and write, and were good with figures, of course, and spoke proper Polish, but what school they went to I don't know. There were schools with four grades or six grades.
Roza was officially called Eugenia - she was born in Switzerland. We used to call her Rozia, Rozka, she was older than me too. Maybe two, three years. She married Obarzanski and had two children.
It's only now, recently, that I found out from my brother-in-law, by telephone, from Israel, from Majtek, that Roza's husband, Obarzanski, died in Kielce in a terrible way.
Apparently he was tied to a car and dragged through Kielce. Roza was killed in the quarries near Wisniowka, a few kilometers outside Kielce.
She was killed with her children Bobek and Giga. I don't know the details.
