Maksymilian Fiszgrund with his second wife, Hermina

In this picture you can see my second husband, Maksymilian Fiszgrund, with his second wife, Hermina. The man on the right is Aron Geller, my husband's cousin. Second from right is Hermina Fiszgrund, and third from right is Fiszgrund himself. The photo was probably taken in 1949.

I am very reluctant to go back to those post-war days. Very, very reluctant. As soon as I could, I hired a nanny for the child and went to work. First I worked as a bookkeeper for Bank Narodowy on Basztowa Street. That was close to home, but they paid poorly. Then I worked for a winemaking enterprise. I quit soon because it was far from home.

I divorced my husband and was left alone with my child. I have the pre-war high school diploma, so I started studying, first pharmaceutics, then law, but I completed neither. I was very nervous, unable to concentrate. Besides, I had no money, was unable to reconcile work and study? I simply couldn't manage on my own.

During that time I met Maksymilian Fiszgrund. He had just lost his wife, and was alone, I guess, when I met him. It was his second wife, nee Keller, I think, and her first married name was Fedbelt. She had this strange first name? Hermina! It was a very short-lived marriage. In 1950 she developed a suppurative inflammation of the gall bladder, infection set in following surgery, and she died. There was a Jewish club on Slawkowska Street, and there I met Fiszgrund [Editor's note: Mrs. Fiszgrund calls her second husband by his surname]. This may have been 1950. In 1951, in the fall, I married him. In October.

I knew many Fiszgrunds. There was an Aron Geller in Cracow, he was my husband's cousin. His mother was nee Fiszgrund - that was the relation. He was very handsome. He was married to a Polish woman who? virtually adored him. I've never seen anything like that in my life. During the war she used to go to visit him in Plaszów. Then he was taken from Plaszów to Dora. That was central Germany, near Erfurt. There was a V-1 launching pad there. He slave-worked there.

After the war the Gellers had a store in Cracow. A tiny kind of store that nobody would give two pennies for, but still it was very prosperous. He was always very elegantly dressed and people thought he was some important figure. And he just lived off the measly store run by his wife. He was a narrow-minded man, but he was street-smart, and that sometimes means more than book knowledge.