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Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Monthly Archives: January 2017

Piwko-Winawer Reunion

22 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Family, Jewish immigrants, Memory, Names, Pifko-Winawer Circle, Piwko, Survival, Winawer

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Family Reunion, Pifko-Winawer Circle

In the mid-20th century, my grandmother’s relatives in New York established the Pifko-Winawer family circle. At the time, family circles were common among Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. They met on a regular basis (usually monthly) and provided emotional and financial support to members.

My grandmother’s maiden name was Piwko. The US relatives spelled their last name with an “f” instead of a “w,” perhaps to retain the proper pronunciation (in Polish, the “w” was pronounced “f”). Some relatives who settled in Switzerland spell the name “Piwko” while others use “Pifko.” One in Israel spells it “Pivko.” The name Winawer came from the husbands of two Piwko sisters—Liba married Jacob Winawar and Sarah married Saul Winawer. Aunt Pat says Jacob and Saul were cousins. I’m still looking for historical records that show exactly how they were related.

At the heart of this family circle was Philip Pifko, the youngest of my grandmother’s brothers. He had a bakery in Brooklyn where all the relatives (that is, the male ones) worked when they first came over from Poland. Philip started the bakery with another brother, Abram whom everyone called Jan in Poland and John in the US. They both came over between 1905 and 1907, but they kept in touch with the family in the home country, and Philip returned periodically for a visit. This is what I’ve been told by family members. I have also found ship manifests showing he arrived to the US in 1907 and he was a passenger to Europe in 1931. Philip stands on the right in the photo on the banner of this blog. Almost certainly, the photo was taken shortly after World War I, and it was definitely taken in Poland–evidence of another trip to Poland.

pifkowinawerdinner

Pifko-Winawer Dinner-on left: Murray and Hannah Winawer, ? and Sadie Shapiro, ?, ? , Pauline and Fred Rosen. On right: Nathan and Sally Winawer, Sol and Numture Winawer, ? Jacobs, Philip and Goldie Pifko, ?, Max Winawer. Cousin Joan showed me this photo and identified everyone.

My cousin Joan (granddaughter of Liba and Saul) was a child at the time, but she recalls two topics of conversation at family circle gatherings: First, issues related to the family burial plot in New Montefiore Cemetery; and second, conversations about how to get the family out of Poland (this would have been in the 1940s). She also remembers my grandmother, uncle George, and mother when they first arrived in the US. They went to the family circle meetings for a while, but then they stopped.

Philip died tragically in a car accident in 1947. He was returning with his wife and some other relatives from a wedding in Massachusetts. The roads were icy and the car slid off the road, killing Philip. The other passengers survived. Without Philip to hold everyone together, the family circle weakened. Meetings became less frequent. Disputes arose over the division of Philip’s inheritance. He had done well during his lifetime but never had any children of his own.

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Article about Philip Pifko’s death.

The split in the family was already clear here. Only Philip’s sister Sarah is mentioned in the obituary, not my grandmother Halina or the other living sisters Rachel (who lived in Israel) and Hanna (whom we called Nunia, and who went by the name Maria).

On Sunday, January 8, of this year the Pifko-Winawer circle reconvened at Melodie’s house in Brooklyn. Melodie is the great granddaughter of Liba and Jacob Winawer. Here we are, descendants of five of the Piwko siblings:

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Pifko-Winawer Reunion 2017

Descendants of Liba: Melodie (daughter of Herbert and granddaughter of Max), her wife Susanna, and children Chiara and Leo

Descendants of Abram/John: Bob (son of Abby, grandson of Ewa)

Descendants of Sarah: Hinda (daughter of Nathan) and her son Erik

Descendants of Rachel: Eldad (son of Abrash), his wife Marsha, their children Daniella, Yoni, and Shelly, and Yoni’s wife Charity

Descendants of Halina: Krysia (daughter of George) and her husband Steve; Chris (son of Maria), his husband Shih Han and children Bessie and Charlie; and me (Marysia)

Also: Miriam and her husband Shiah. Miriam’s great grandparents were the brother and sister of my great grandparents.

Because I wasn’t host, I had more time to talk with my cousins than I did at the last reunion. But so many came, I still couldn’t talk with everyone.

Hinda is named after our great grandmother. She remembers my mother and grandmother. She called Babcia a beautiful woman, and described Mama as elegant. She also remembered Mama’s scars. Hinda visited Babcia on a trip to Puerto Rico in the late 1960s. Babcia was in the hospital with a broken hip. Hinda expected her to be feeble, but found her as vibrant as ever.

Bob gave me tablecloths and napkins hand embroidered by his great grandmother Bertha (Abram/John’s wife). She made them for all her female descendants in the early 1960s. Bob found them when he cleaned out his mother’s apartment and wanted them to stay in the family. So he gave them to me.

Eldad and Marsha just moved from a house on Long Island to an apartment in Brooklyn, and they love it. They have an incredible view from their 8th floor picture window, and they’re just a short walk from the Brooklyn Bridge and the Botanical Garden.

Daniella lives in Australia, but spends her summers (our winters) in New York. She and her husband are both professors. They have been living in a friend’s apartment in Manhattan. We barely got a chance to chat at the reunion, but fortunately Daniella and I had a great time together in San Diego last month. We were both there for the Jewish Studies Association Meeting.

Yoni told me about his education start-up that developed a computer program that helps to personalize instruction to students’ learning styles and challenges. The program has been introduced in a number of public school systems around the country. His wife Charity shared her incredible story. She is an opera singer, but pulmonary hypertension led to such a deterioration of her lungs she had to have replacement surgery—twice. She is doing well now, and even singing again. She has written about it in a memoir, The Encore, due to be published in October.

Melodie, who is a medical doctor and a professor, is also about to publish a book. Hers is a historical novel, The Scribe of Siena, due out in May.

Shiah and Miriam are artists. He used to do woodwork but now does fused glass. She has done pottery.

It’s reassuring to know that we are doing okay. Despite the trauma and disruption of the past that brought us from Poland to the US, we’ve found our way. We’re doctors and teachers, ministers and counselors, entrepreneurs and artists. Counting spouses, at least two of us are MDs and four of us have PhDs. At least four of us have written books. And this is just counting the relatives that were at the reunion.

Podgórze: Below the hill and through the ghetto

16 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in antisemitism, Commemoration, Jewish Ghetto, Krakow, Memory, Podgórze, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Reclaimed Property, World War II

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Ghetto Heroes Square, Plac Bohaterów Getta, Places of Holocaust Memory

When Krysia and I visited Poland a few years ago, we walked to her friend Wanda’s apartment in Podgórze, a district across the Vistula River from Krakow’s Old City. Historically, Podgórze was an industrial part of town, and also the site of the Jewish Ghetto during World War II. Until recently, this was not a particularly desirable place to live. I went there for the first time in 1986 when my Polish teacher invited me for dinner. She lived with her doctor husband and baby daughter on Limanowski Street in a ground floor apartment that was a converted storefront. The building was grey and crumbling, and the tram rumbled by loudly and frequently. They couldn’t wait to move somewhere better. In 1992, I met a high school student whose classmates joked he was “from the country” because he lived in Podgórze. Even though you could see Wawel Castle on the opposite shore of the river, Podgórze was considered a remote corner of the city.

I really discovered Podgórze in 2005 when I was back in Kraków for 5 months during my first sabbatical leave. I made a point of exploring all the city’s parks and playgrounds as a way of entertaining my two-year-old son; long afternoon walks were often the only way I could get him to nap. Podgórze charmed me. The buildings along the tramline on Limanowski Street were still grey and crumbling, but there was also a lovely triangular plaza and a beautiful church with a hillside rising up behind it. Maybe that’s the source of the name—Podgórze means “below the hill.” Climbing up the curving street from the plaza, large houses with fenced gardens replaced the apartment buildings, and then a massive park appeared on the right. And yet, despite these explorations, I still didn’t know that I had been moving in and out of the borders of the former ghetto, where the Nazis had forced Jews to live (and die).

Plaza and church in Podgórze
Plaza and church in Podgórze
Heading up the hill
Heading up the hill
One of the large houses on the way to the park
One of the large houses on the way to the park

Wanda, a long-time resident of Podgórze, pointed out traces of that difficult era as we walked to her apartment. It was the first time I actually connected the contemporary streets of Podgórze with the places associated with the Holocaust. Just over the bridge, we entered Ghetto Heroes Square (Plac Bohaterów Getta), the site where Jews were assembled before being transported to work, the ghetto, or the camps. It wasn’t until December 2005 that a monument commemorating these historical events was installed. The monument is comprised of 33 large chairs arranged in rows throughout the plaza and 37 smaller chairs scattered around the edges of the square and at the nearby tram stop. These serve as a symbol of the people whose material possessions were taken from them as they were selected for the ghetto and elsewhere. The idea was “to tell the story of the place through the configuration of the urban space itself, so that the memory of the absent ones would be manifested through the presence of everyday objects which compose the urban furniture” (Bordas 2006). The chairs make an impression, especially the big ones. They look like they should be functional but they’re not–another way they symbolize the way ordinary life became abnormal.

Chair monument in Ghetto Heroes Square

Ghetto Heroes Square

Wanda led us to a nearby street where a fragment of the ghetto wall still stands. Its characteristic scalloped top makes it resemble side-by-side tombstones. Flowers rested at the foot of a historical marker, an offering made during a commemorative event in March. Wanda also pointed out where a gate of the ghetto used to cross the street near her apartment. For 23 years, Wanda lived on that street. But then the prewar owners—Jews—regained ownership of the property and doubled the rent. Faced with the option of paying 2000 zloties per month or move, Wanda decided it would be better to invest that kind of money in a place she could own herself. That way, she doesn’t have to worry about being displaced again.

Like many Poles, Wanda feels personally affronted by former owners reasserting their claim over property. These feelings are complicated.

It seems only right that descendants of victims of the Holocaust be compensated. Regaining ownership of a building can only to the slightest degree address what those families lost.

And yet, losing their home to the prewar owner seems particularly unfair to the generation that endured years of communism, and never was able to accumulate much wealth in their own lives. Since the end of communism, prices have risen, unemployment has become common, and wages remain modest. Often it’s the poorest residents who live in former homes of Jews because the government took over their management and made them into low-cost housing for those in greatest need. This affordable housing was a small oasis of security in unsettled times. Many such residents today are elderly; others are unemployed; some have problems with their health or with substance abuse. They don’t have many options.

Wanda was one of the lucky ones with the wherewithal and the financial means to buy her own place. But still she carries the resentment with her that she sometimes translates into resentment of Jews more generally. Who was looking out for her rights when the apartment was returned to the prewar owners? What did some rich foreigner need with her building? Why should they get even wealthier at her expense?

In fact, prewar owners are reclaiming properties all over Poland, and even though they are not all Jewish, the greatest resentment is directed toward those who are.

Ghetto Memory Trail marker
Ghetto Memory Trail marker
Star of David crossed out--on a storefront in Podgórze
Star of David crossed out–on a storefront in Podgórze

In Podgórze, you can see both the effort to acknowledge sites of Jewish heritage, and also signs of continued antisemitism.

Wanda loves her neighborhood and doesn’t want to live anywhere else (even though she has to spend part of each year in the US to earn enough money to pay her mortgage). The apartment she lives in now is new construction on top of a historic townhouse; an additional floor was added to an existing building. As we climbed the three flights of stairs, she explained that when she bought the place, all that was there were the bare walls. This is standard practice in Poland. The buyer has to select, purchase, and install all the flooring, fixtures, wall coverings cabinets, and appliances. The apartment is long and narrow, with a wall of windows and a sleeping loft. Wanda said she bought it at the peak of the market; today she could find something for half that price. But that would mean moving again.

As we ate a generous spread of Polish dishes, including stuffed cabbage (gołąbki) and two kinds of pickles, Wanda said that Podgórze has become one of the most popular neighborhoods in Krakow. The new heritage sites and museums—including the Ghetto Heroes Square, the Schindler Factory Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art—have brought with them tourists and the amenities that tourists expect. People are moving out of the center of the city because it has become too crowded, cars are restricted on most streets, there are few stores with everyday necessities, and the prices are too high. Podgórze is desirable because it has good public transportation, is within walking distance of the city center, and because of the park, the trees, and the hill that I find so appealing.

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The new pedestrian bridge across the Vistula River to Podgórze.

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