Monthly Archives: January 2015

Archives and Ancestors

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Archives, Family, Names, Piwko, Skierniewice

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I went to Łódź in search of my great grandfather’s birth certificate. It was my first time there. I had heard Łódź is an ugly, dying industrial center, but I was pleasantly surprised to see it is full of attractive 19th century brownstones. Many are in disrepair, some are in ruins, but others have been renovated and recall the former prosperity of the city. I need to reread Reymont’s Ziemia Obiecana, a novel involving relations among Polish, German, and Jewish cloth manufacturers; as I recall, it provided a snapshot of the business relationships as well as the prejudices among them.

Plac Wolnośći, archive on the right.

Plac Wolnośći, archive on the right.

The archive is in an old building in Plac Wolności, a circular intersection which, depending where you look, evokes either socialist monumentalism or the bourgeois elegance of the century before. Archives are odd places, and archivists generally seem more comfortable around paper and books than around people. In Łódź the documents I wanted are on microfilm. In other places, I have been fortunate enough to leaf through the original record books. They are large ledgers with thick yellowish paper. Some of the hardbound covers are riddled with insect holes. The handwritten entries can be hard to read—some scribes were neater than others; some added their own unique flourishes.

Still, I hit the jackpot—records from Skierniewice dating from the 1840s-60s. I found Hiel Piwko’s birth certificate and traced his line back two or three more generations. I found out that his father and mother came from smaller towns near Skierniewice, Rawa Mazowiecka and Bolimów. These older records are in Polish, though the handwriting can still be hard to decipher. I learned that my great-great grandfather Josek was a tanner (garbarz). This is consistent with what Aunt Pat has in her notes, but Hiel’s mother is listed with a different name—instead of Lucyna King, she’s Cywia Rajch. I traced back further after getting home, and found reference on JRI (Jewish Records Indexing) to her birth certificate, which lists her as Lieba Cywia Raich. Pat also lists Babcia’s sister Libe Piwko as Lucyna, so that likely explains the first name. Lucyna, Libe, Lieba can easily be versions of the same name. Could King and Rajch be related, too?

The birth records follow a standard pattern. They identify the father, the date he came to the record office, his age, town, and sometimes profession. Next, two witnesses’ names, ages, towns, and sometimes professions are listed. Then comes the name of the mother, her age and town, and finally the sex, birthdate, and name of the child. The witnesses and father sign, along with the clerk. I’ve been paying particular attention to signatures, which are occasionally in Hebrew, but are mostly in Polish.

The language used in these record books mark the political transformations of the 19th century. After the Uprising in the early 1860s, records in the Russian partition switched to Russian instead of Polish. In Lęczyca (where I went the next day to trace the ancestry of Pinkus Kolski, who married Babcia’s sister), although the records were in Russian, peoples’ names were listed in both Russian and Polish.

I also was able to trace other historical facts about the Piwko line. Great-great grandmother Cywia, Josek Piwko’s first wife, died in 1862 at age 32, just a month after giving birth to a son Dawid. According to Aunt Pat’s records, Cywia (Lucyna) died of cholera (but at age 27). Hiel would have been just 7 years old in 1862. Three years later, Dawid died. Within a year, Josek had another son, Nusen Dawid with a new wife, Sura Burgierman. She was 24 and he was 42.

According to Aunt Pat’s notes, Josek had four wives. I am still looking for mention of the other two. Maybe I’ll find something when I get the Russian language records I collected in Grodzisk Mazowiecki translated.

Hiel Majer Piwko’s birth certificate

28 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Family, Piwko

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In mid-December, I drove across the flat plain from Poznań to the city of Łódź, where I found the birth certificate of my great grandfather, my babcia Halina’s father. So here is one more fragment that connects me to Poland, and to my Jewish heritage. From it, I learn that in Skierniewice on the third/fifteenth of November, 1854, Josek Piwko, tanner, age thirty appeared with two witnesses (I can’t read the first’s name, but he’s listed as a laborer, age forty-five; the second is David Lęczner, szkolnik [teacher?], age fifty-one) to report that he and his wife Cywia (maiden name Raych), age twenty-six, had a son Hiel Majer on the 26th of October/ 7th of November.

Hiel Majer Piwko's birth certificate, 1854

Hiel Majer Piwko’s birth certificate, 1854

Someone, maybe my great great grandfather? Signed the document in what looks like Hebrew letters. The image quality is poor because I had to photograph the image on a microfilm reader. In other archives I have gotten to page through the actual record books.

Nunia/Hanna/Anna/Maria

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Family, Names, Piwko

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Hanna Piwko

Hanna Piwko

I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking about Auntie Nunia today. She was my babcia’s older sister, the only one of her siblings I knew growing up. Nunia was an extraordinary woman, though in a different way than my grandmother. Whereas my grandmother was beautiful, charming, and (to borrow a word from my mom) vivacious, Nunia was a powerhouse of energy, straightforward, and yet at the same time nurturing. From the age of ten or twelve, she was my role model for how I wanted to live my life. It seemed she could do anything, and she was never idle. She knitted our bathmats. My mom would bring her our clothes in need of repair and she would fix them all. She even darned our socks. For years, I wore a robe she made out of a patchwork of hideous fabrics. It had an orangy-yellow lining and trim, and I can’t remember now if the rest was made of scraps of loud upholstery designs or maybe just flower-power prints. I wore that robe for years, and had a hard time giving it up even after I realized I was allergic to it. Instead, I tolerated the runny nose and sneezes.

Auntie Nunia gave my younger brother Chris and me new blankets when I was about five. I think it was to replace the baby blanket that I was having a hard time letting go. Or maybe I just associate it with my blankie’s disappearance because I got it at about the same time. I still have this “big girl” blanket even though the blue calico has split and frayed. Maybe in homage to Nunia’s patchwork robe, I have been patching the blanket with scraps of old fabric and clothing for years. I don’t think I’ll ever catch up with all the new holes that keep forming. I guess sentiment about people and the stuff I associate with them has mattered to me for a long time.

I don’t know much about Nunia’s (or anyone’s) life in Poland. She was several years older than my grandmother, born in 1886 according to Aunt Pat’s records, or in 1889 according to her US naturalization and social security records. I remember Mama mentioning that Nunia and Babcia took a few years off their ages when they emigrated. Nunia’s exact name is also complicated. In the US, her legal name was Maria Weglinska, but her birth name was probably Hanna. I’ve also heard her called Anna, and more recently by our Israeli cousins Hanale. I onced asked my mama what her real name is—even though we called her Nunia (or maybe Niunia), I knew her legal name was Maria and I had also heard her called Anna. I remember being told that she was actually Anna Maria. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, I was probably told something to the effect that she was both Anna and Maria, and I turned it into Anna Maria in my own mind. The origin of Nunia (Niunia) is easier to explain. It is a nickname and expression of affection, sort of like calling someone “sweetie.” Niunia can also be a diminutive of Anna.

So names are not fixed elements attached to people. Nunia’s last name is only slightly less ambiguous. Her maiden name was Piwko, like my grandmother. Her married name was Cytryn after her husband Stanisław Cytryn. At least that would have been the Polish spelling. “Cytryn” means “lemon.” Last year, from looking at the registration cards of Jews who survived World War II at ŻIH (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, Jewish Historical Institute) in Warsaw, I learned that Nunia was already using the name Maria Weglińska in Poland. It’s listed there, with a note that her means of surviving the war was “Aryan papers.”

Another ambiguity involves the nature of Nunia and her husband’s profession. I have been told she was “something like a pharmacist,” and they had a shop in Warsaw. Somewhere, I’ve seen it listed in Polish as “drogeria” which can be a drugstore, though today it is more commonly a store that sells shampoos, lotions, and cosmetics. A pharmacy is more commonly called “apteka.” Nunia’s husband died in 1927, so from then she ran the business herself.

When Babcia ran away from home, she went to live with Nunia in Warsaw. Maybe that is when their close bond solidified, despite the eight-year difference in their age. By some accounts Babcia left because she wanted to avoid marrying anyone her father chose for her. By others, she wanted to go to university. I imagine, too, that she wanted to be in the capitol city where more was happening. I also suspect it was around the time the youngest sister (and the person my mother was named after) Maria Renata committed suicide at age 17, so around 1913.

I don’t know what they did during World War I, but during World War II Nunia was in the Underground Army. She ran a printing press in the basement of her store. Mom also told a story about being forced to leave Warsaw after the Warsaw Uprising. She walked south with many other civilians and insurgents who were being led to a camp. When I asked how she escaped, she said she and Auntie Nunia just walked away. As she described it, there were so many people and lax security so they were able to just separate themselves and hide in a village. Why was she with her aunt? Where were my grandmother and grandfather? I don’t remember these details. Maybe I didn’t think to ask these questions.

I’ve found a couple of interesting documents for Maria Weglinska on Ancestry.com. The first shows her on the passenger list of the ship “Ile de France” that left LeHavre, France on April 27, 1951 and arrived in New York City on May 3rd. Under “nationality,” “Polish” is crossed out and she is listed as “stateless.” The other is a US naturalization record dated July 17, 1956 and listing an address in Roslyn Harbor, the same town my grandmother and mother would have been living in at the time. I don’t know what she did between the end of the war and the time she came to the US.

Auntie Nunia/Maria Weglinska

Auntie Nunia/Maria Weglinska

By the time I knew Nunia/Hanna/Anna/Maria, she was living in Norwalk, Connecticut on the second floor of an old house. We visited often, all six of us piling into the car for the 1½ hour trip. We parked on the street. The house was above street level, and a retaining wall of round stones separated the raised lawn from the sidewalk. Inside, a narrow, dark wood staircase led up to Nunia’s place. She always kept hard candies in a covered crystal candy bowl. There and at her daughter Teresa’s were the only places I ever ate Polish food. My mom never cooked it; she said she didn’t like it. Nunia, however, was an amazing cook. I remember the mushroom barley soup and gołąbki (stuffed cabbage) particularly. She also made the most incredible apple strudel with a lattice top. My brothers and cousins all talk about it. It seems we all remember that apple strudel. The memory has faded, but I think the apples were chopped and maybe precooked a bit, like they are in Polish szarlotka. I also picture large granules of sugar sprinkled on top, but I’m not sure about that anymore. Even though we ate ourselves silly while at her apartment, Nunia always packed sandwiches and fruit in paper bags for us to eat on the 1½ hour drive home. Somehow, I always ended up eating something right around the halfway mark on the Throgs Neck Bridge. Often, I fell asleep leaning against my oldest brother Ron’s shoulder.

Once, when I was very young, may be just five or six, I went to stay a few days with Auntie Nunia. I got homesick and started crying so my dad had to drive back and pick me up earlier than planned. And once, when I was maybe eight, Nunia came to our house to take care of us while my mom went to the hospital for an operation. We loved having her there, but she was much stricter than mom. One day, she told me to sweep the living room. I refused, saying Mom never makes me do things like that. So she sent me to my room, saying I should stay there until I decide to sweep. It didn’t take me long to come out and sweep. She didn’t say anything more to me about it.

Both my parents loved Auntie Nunia. My mom said that Nunia was there for her when her own mother abandoned her. This happened at least twice in her life. The first time she was only two or maybe four, and she and her brother George were left with Nunia when Babcia went off with Zygmunt Bereda. Mama remembers being frightened by a swing in the hallway of the apartment. The second time was when Mama was a mother of four young children, and Babcia moved to Puerto Rico. Auntie Nunia stepped in and acted like a mother/grandmother to us. Babcia and my dad didn’t much like each other, but he loved Auntie Nunia. He said she reminded him of his late grandmother, to whom he was very attached.

Nunia showing off her figure at her great-granddaughter Ricky's wedding. From the left, Teresa (Nunia's daughter), Babcia, Nunia, and my cousin Alexandra.

Nunia showing off her figure at her great-granddaughter Ricky’s wedding. From the left, Teresa (Nunia’s daughter), Babcia, Nunia, and my cousin Alexandra. July 1979, when Nunia was about 93.

Nunia lived alone in that apartment in Norwalk until her early 90s. She would walk every day. She remained slim, explaining that she always leaves something on her plate. Around the time I started high school, Teresa persuaded her to move with her to Florida, but she never liked it there. She died in 1984 shortly before her 98th birthday.

Three Minutes in Poland

17 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by in Jewish Culture, Memory, Pre-World War II, Research Methodology

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Glenn Kurtz’s book Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (2014) recounts a project similar to my own, of piecing together fragments. Kurtz’s journey began with a film recorded during his grandparent’s visit to his grandfather’s native town in Poland. Seeing the places and faces on film inspired him to learn all he could about the town and its prewar inhabitants—what life was like in Nasielsk, how it was disrupted by World War II, the fate of those who perished, and what became of those who survived. It’s a fascinating story of discovery, tacking between information revealed in archival records and the stories recounted by survivors and their families. He makes use of the same archival resources I’ve been using—JewishGen, Ancestry.com, Yad Vashem, Warsaw Database, ship manifests of passengers, archival photographs. And extraordinarily, out of these fragments, he was able to find some of the people in the three-minute film, or find people who remembered them and could tell some of their story.

These stories bring the fragments, and the town, back alive. Still partial, still shadowy, but alive. I see this particularly in the words of Morry Chandler (Moszek Tuchendler), whom Kurtz found in Florida with his wife, children, and grandchildren. He appears momentarily in Kurtz’s grandfather’s film jumping out and smiling in front of the camera. For Morry, looking at himself and his town on film, and recalling the people he lived with in Nasielsk reminded him he ever had a childhood, and that he was happy:

It’s looking back and saying, Yes, there was a world. Other than what we have lived all these years, knowing what happened. It was a real world there. I mean people were going about their business. Kids were running, and doing all the things that kids do. And here I look at myself, and I see it was a happy face.

The book models two guidelines for my fieldwork: first, how to weave together fragments into a coherent story, integrating as well the gaps and inconsistencies that remain. Information is labeled along a scale of likelihood; the probable, the possible, and the still unknown outnumber what can be unambiguously confirmed. The book also provides a model for working with personal accounts. It corroborates Greenspan’s argument for ongoing contact with survivors, which provides the space for new stories to be recounted, for the revision or elaboration of past accounts, and for interviewers to ask questions that lead to new explanations and deeper insight into survivors’ experiences. (See Henry Greenspan’s “The Unsaid, the Incommunicable, the Unbearable, and the Irretrievable,” Oral History Review 2014, Vol 41, No. 2, pp. 229–243).

Kurtz writes, “Memories, like artifacts, are tightly wound bundles of information. Pull one thread, try to identify one figure, and the whole bundle unfurls.”

Zygmunt Bereda’s death notice

12 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Post-World War II

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Though not specifically related to Jewish heritage (since he was Catholic), here is the death notice of Zygmunt Bereda, my grandmother’s second husband and the stepfather with whom my mother grew up. I found a reference to it online, and then tracked down the issue of the newspaper at the library of Adam Mickiewicz University.

Zygmunt Bereda death notice, Życie Warszawy 14 October, 1945

Zygmunt Bereda death notice, Życie Warszawy 14 October, 1945

The text reads:

Zygmunt Bereda

Son of Szymon and Maria (maiden name Fijałkowska)

Industrialist, citizen of the capitol city of Warsaw, member of the main board of the Yacht Club of Poland, president of the Polish Association of Confectioners, president of the board of the firm L. Lourse

After brief suffering died on 10 October 1945 at the age of 58 years.

His wife, daughter, and two absent sons inform family and friends that the funeral service will be at the Powązki chapel on Monday the 15th at 11 in the morning, after which the body will be put to rest in the family grave.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to survive the war only to die months later like that. According to his death certificate, he died of a heart attack.

My grandmother would have been 51.  Their home and businesses were destroyed, and shortly thereafter, the postwar government nationalized what little of value remained.

I’ve been told that even then my mom did not want to leave Poland. She was emotionally fragile after all that had happened in the war, and also she did not want to desert her fatherland. As it became obvious that Poland would not be free, and that prewar elite and Home Army soldiers would be persecuted in the communist system, she finally relented. She and my grandmother joined my uncles in England at the end of 1946.