The Piwko Saga, Vital Records Version

10 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Archives, Brześć Kujawski, Family, Names, Piwko, Pre-World War II, Skierniewice, Sobota, Włocławek, Żychlin

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Abram Janas Piwko, Efraim/Philip Piwko, Halina Bereda/Haja Piwko, Hil Majer Piwko, Hinda Walfisz Piwko, Jakub Piwko, Liba Piwko Winawer, Maria Weglinska/Hana Piwko, Małka/Maria Piwko, Pinkus Kolski, Rachel Piwko Kolski, Ryfka Piwko Kolski, Sarah Piwko Winawer

I’ve found records connecting my great grandparents’ lives to five different towns in central Poland.

Hiel Mayer Piwko’s birth certificate, 1854

A birth certificate in the Łódź archive states that Josek Piwko, a thirty-year-old tanner appeared with two witnesses to report that his wife Cywia nee Raych, age 26, gave birth to a son Hil Majer on October 26/ November 7, 1854[1] at eight in the evening in the city of Skierniewice.

Żychlin book of residents, Walfisz family first half. Hinda, third from the top, was crossed out when she married and moved to Skierniewice.

In the Kutno archive, the book of Żychlin residents includes Hinda Walfisz, born August 14, 1854 (making her two months older than her future husband). Others in the household include her parents and two younger sisters. Her father Nusen was born June 14, 1817 in Wyszogród. His profession is listed as belfer, (According to JewishGen this means an assistant melamed in cheder [religious teacher]). His parents were Jamoch and Hinda nee Pigel. Her mother Pesa was born February 5, 1831 in Żychlin to Dawid Losman and Tema nee Majerek. The two other girls were Tema, born March 28, 1858 and Łaja, born May 2, 1861.

Żychlin Book of Residents, Walfisz family second half.

Hinda’s name is crossed out and a note is added on June 22, 1873 that she moved to Skierniwice to live with her husband Hil Majer Piwko. Hinda’s sister Tema eventually married Hil Majer’s younger brother Jankel Wolf, from whom the Zurich Piwkos descended.

The next document, found in the Łowicz archive, is the marriage certificate of Hil and Hinda’s oldest daughter, Liba Cywja, and Jankel Winawer in 1891. She was 18 and he was 20. His family was from Warsaw, while her family was living in Sobota, a village outside of Łowicz and not far from Żychlin. So at some point, Hil and Hinda moved from Skierniewice to Sobota. I wonder why? I’m told it was common to move from smaller to larger settlements, so why move from a town to a village?

Liba Piwko and Jankel Winawer’s marriage record, 1891

By 1901, when a son, Abram Janas (born in 1877) married Blima Kolska, the Piwko family was listed as living in Brześć Kujawski. Abram and Blima were married in Blima’s hometown of Kłodawa. I found this marriage certificate online; the Poznań archive has digitized these records.

Abram Piwko and Blima Kolska married in Kłodawa in 1901

In the Włocławek archive, I found the Piwkos in the book of residents of Brześć Kujawski. This is my Holy Grail—the thing I’ve been looking for—a document that includes my grandmother. My guide for the day, Tomasz Kawski, a historian who has written about Jews of the area, said, “It’s a miracle [cuda]” I found it. I agree.

Piwkos in the Brześć Kujawski Book of Residents

The document lists Hil Majer, son of Icek and Cywja nee Rajch, born October 26/ November 7, 1854 in Skierniewice, married, townsman, Jewish faith, trader (handlarz), and Hinda Piwko nee Wolfisz, daughter of Nusen and Pesa nee Losman, born August 2/14, 1854 in Żychlin, married, townswoman, Jewish faith, [supported] by her husband. In addition, five daughters are listed: Liba Cywja (b. January 27/February 2, 1874), Ryfka (b. December 20, 1884/ January1, 1885), Hana (b. October 11/23, 1886), Małka (b. December 10, 1895), and Haja (b. January 21/ February 2, 1894). Haja is Halina, my babcia. So I finally know her Jewish name.

The document confirms several details that have been passed down in the family; it also raises new questions:

All the sisters are listed as having been born in Żychlin. Perhaps Hinda returned to her native home to give birth? Or maybe it was just customary to list girls as being born in their mother’s hometown?
There is a note from July 16, 1906 that Ryfka (called Regina on Pat and Pini’s family trees) married Pinkus Kolski and moved to Piątek. The dates don’t correspond exactly to information from other sources which say Pinkus and Ryfka had a son Natan already in 1905. It might just be that the note was added a while after the wedding. Still, why then wasn’t it also noted that Ryfka died giving birth?
According to another note on the page, Małka died in Włocławek on June 7/20, 1912. This fits the story Mom told me about Babcia’s younger sister who committed suicide at age 17. No one knew why, but they suspected it was related to unhappiness in love. My mom was fascinated with her story. Maybe it is because she was named after her (the Christianized family tree lists Małka as Maria Renata). Maybe it is because of my mom’s interest in psychology. She wondered what would have compelled Małka to take her own life. Was her love unrequited? Did her father forbid it? Mom told me that Małka was beautiful, with dark hair and a dark complexion unlike the other girls in the family who were fair. In 2011, when I found Babcia’s family photos in the envelope labeled “Do Not Open,” and showed them to Mama, one of the few ones she recognized was Małka’s (though of course mom called her Maria).
Hana is my auntie Nunia. The document confirms her birth name and birth year, but the birthdate is different—her US records list her birthday as July 21. Similarly, my grandmother’s birthday is different on her US records—July 16. They also changed her birth years, claiming to be four years younger than they actually were, but this was a known secret in the family.

It is not clear from this document when the family moved to Brześć Kujawski. A note by the first three names states they were registered as residents of Skierniewice; it’s dated April 3, 1903. So where were they living at the end of the 19^th and beginning of the 20^th centuries? In Skierniewice, Sobota, or Brześć Kujawski? Or could they have been in Włocławek already? Hil Majer is on the Włocławek voters list in 1907, and his obituary says he died there in 1929. Aunt Pat lists Hinda’s place of death as Włocławek in 1933. All these places are within one hundred miles of each other, more or less in a line headed northwest from Warsaw.

And why aren’t some of the other siblings listed? Jakób, the oldest boy may well have been living on his own already. But what about Sarah who supposedly married Saul Winawer in Brześć Kujawski in 1899? Or Efraim (who changed his name to Philip in the US) who was two years younger than Sarah? Why is there no mention of Rachel? She was born around 1890, between Hana and Haja who are listed. Rachel married Pinchas Kolski after the death of her sister Ryfka, so she should still have been living at home when this record was made. Conversely, why is Liba listed as single and living with her parents? Wasn’t she with her husband, Jankel (Jakub) Winawer, whom she married in 1891 in Sobota?

Of course, I wonder about the records I can’t find. The vital records for Jews of Żychlin and Brześć Kujawski no longer exist. My new Holy Grail would be to find Babcia’s marriage certificates and the birth certificates of my mom and her brothers. Vital records are made public only after 100 years, so some of these might be available through the Civil Registration Office (Urząd Stanu Cywilnego). But do they even exist? Were they destroyed by war, or somehow expunged when Babcia broke ties with her old (Jewish) life and took on her new Christian identity?

[1] According to JewishGen, when two dates appear on vital records, the first refers to the Julian calendar used by the Russians while the second refers to the Gregorian calendar, used in most of Europe.

Survival through luck and pluck

12 Thursday Feb 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Polish-Jewish Heritage, Survival, World War II

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Embodiment, Eugene Bergman, False Papers, Memoir, Robert Melson, Survival Artist

Survivial Artist by Eugene Bergman

Today, I played mental hooky and finished Survival Artist: A Memoir of the Holocaust, written by Eugene Bergman (2009, McFarland). A Jew born in Poznan, he was nine years old when the war started in 1939. About surviving three ghettos—Łódź, Warsaw, and Częstochowa—and two years on the “Aryan side” he says, “I am not such a hotshot survival artist. If I have survived those sinister wartime years it was owing more to luck than to pluck” (p. 183). Still, to have survived at all, even after a German officer beat him with the butt of his rifle causing him to go deaf, required pluck as well as luck.

Every memoir helps reveal more facets of Jewish life (and death) in Poland. What stands out to me about this one is the way it shows the diversity of prewar Jewish culture, and the continued effects of those differences during the war. Poznan Jews generally had resources that helped them survive, particularly the fact that they were more integrated into Polish society; they were more secular, wore contemporary clothes and hairstyles, and spoke good Polish (or German). Bergman emphasizes his father’s business acumen, as well—a prewar fabric store owner, he supported the family by buying and selling whatever he could throughout the war. Further, he describes the family’s ability to “pass” through less tangible attitudes and behaviors. Instead of displaying fear in front of Germans (or Poles) they were bold, looking them in the eyes or ignoring them as the situation demanded.

This is interesting to me as a cultural anthropologist because they were able to embody the unmarked characteristics that tended to set non-Jews apart from Jews, and to shed the characteristics that made Jews targets. In many cases, these subtle cues were the only things that distinguished Jews and Catholic Poles. Bergman’s ability to embody that other identity is where I see his pluck. It reminds me of another fascinating memoir, Robert Melson’s False Papers: Deception and Survival in the Holocaust (2005, University of Illinois Press), also written by a child survivor on the Aryan side. Melson’s parents demonstrated “chutzpah and bravado” not only by taking on Catholic Polish identities, but also by claiming to belong to the noble Zamoyski family.

I was fortunate enough to meet Bob Melson when I was first embarking on this journey to uncover my own Jewish heritage. As a person, he stuck me as instantly familiar, as if he could have been my uncle. I think I was reading in him some of those same embodied ways of being I associate with my mom’s family–intellectual, refined, and Polish. But a particular kind of Polish. My family masked their Jewishness in a way that Melson hasn’t since the war ended, but I think what I recognized was a shared heritage, a particular version comprising both Jewish and Polish accents.

Family traces in the Business Directory, 1926 and 1930

03 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Archives, Bereda, Family, Kolski, Piwko, Rotblit, Warsaw, Winawer, Włocławek

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Hanna Cytryn, Jakub Rotblit, Lourse, Pinkus Kolski, Stanisław Cytryn

The Business Directory of Poland and Gdańsk (Danzig) from the years 1926 and 1930 are available online. My Mac can’t read the djvu format the documents are in, but fortunately I was able to view them at the university library.

I found some interesting listings—tiny fragments that support bits of information from other sources.

I found a store in Warsaw selling “składy apteczny i perfum,” pharmacy ingredients and perfume. The business is listed under “S. Cytryn,” which was my grandmother’s sister Nunia’s husband’s name. Further, this fits with my mom’s description of Nunia as “something like a pharmacist.” The business was listed again in the 1930 issue. If this is Nunia’s husband Stanisław Cytryn’s business, it supports the family story that she maintained the business on her own after her husband died in 1927. The address listed is Leszno 113.

And here I move deeper into the realm of speculation: According to Google Maps, several apartments blocks sit where this address used to be. This is at the intersection of ul. Młynarska, after which the street takes on a different name, both on historical and contemporary maps. In what is likely a coincidence, a pharmacy, Cefarm, is right across the street at Leszno 38. Could the address numbering have changed? Google Maps doesn’t seem to list street address numbers beyond the 50s. In a map I found at http://warszawa.fotopolska.eu, showing prewar photos, I don’t see any listing for 113, either—in fact, the highest I saw was for #54. Still, a photo taken outside Leszno 43 was inside the Jewish Ghetto, while Google Maps pinpoints #113 about three blocks outside of the ghetto. The photo seems to show a child curled up on the sidewalk (sleeping? Ill? Dead?) being ignored by pedestrians who walk by or grin into the camera; one woman is glancing over her shoulder, but she too might be looking at the photographer and not at the prone child.

Outside Leszno 43, May 1941 in the Warsaw Ghetto (photo from fotopolska.eu)

Other Warsaw listings include the Lourse “fabr. czekolady i cukiernie” (chocolate factory and pastry shops). In 1926 the addresses are Krakowski Przedmieście 13 and Senatorska 23, Teatr Wielki. The comment (dawne Semadeni; formerly Semadeni’s) is in parentheses after the second address. Here are more clues that fit with family stories. As my mom described, one Lourse Café was located in the Europejski Hotel at the corner of Krakowski Przedmieście nearest the Old Town while the other was in the Teatr Wielki. She also described how Papa (her stepfather) was first in business with the “great Semadeni family,” known for their sweet confections since the beginning of the 19^th century. Later, he bought them out. In the 1930 business listing, a third address is added, Leszno 64, the same street as Nunia’s pharmacy.

I also looked for listings for other family surnames—Winawer, Kolski, Piwko, Rotblit—and other towns—Brześć Kujawski, Gdańsk, Skierniewice, Włocławek, Żychlin. I found three entries worth exploring:

In Warsaw H. Winawer is listed in 1930 as “fabr. knotów do lamp,” factory of lamp wicks at ul. Chłodna 43 in Warsaw. Cousin Joan, whose maiden name was Winawer, sent me the following account in November: “My father told me that his parents had a millinery factory. His father “studied” and his mother ran the factory. He had a governess and went to gymnasium. One of his brothers worked in the factory. He never spoke of grandparents. He had very pleasant memories of his childhood. From all the conversations I always got the feeling that there was a great deal of money. If my father’s story was true (not just memories that got changed) there might even be a record of the factory.” This week, she added, “My father would say that he was from Warsaw, but cousin Herbert (Melodie’s father) said that they were really from Lodz. He might have been correct.” While I would like to think the owner of the lamp wick factory is a relative, by 1930 most of the Winawers in the family were in the US. Two of my grandmother’s sisters married Winawers. Liba married Jacob; their sons were Natan (Nusen), Sol (Saloman), Max, and Morris. Sarah married Saul; their sons were Nathan, Milton (Mordko), and Stanley (Samuel). No one had a name starting with “H.” It can’t be Max’s son Herbert because Herbert was born in New York in 1929. So I still need to search for “our” Winawers’ factory; it probably wasn’t this one.

In Włocławek in 1930, Natan Kolski is listed as a seller of “farby,” paint, at ul. 3 Maja 28. Pinkus Kolski is listed as a seller of “farby, szczotki, tapety, i chemiczne prod.,” paint, brushes, wallpaper, and chemical products at ul. Tumska 3. Pinkus is also listed in 1926, though Natan is not. Could this be the husband and son of another of Babcia’s sisters? Regina married Pinkus Kolski, but died giving birth to Natan in 1905. Another sister, Rachel, married Pinkus, adopted Natan, and had four more children including Naftali (Maniek). This branch of the family lived in Włocławek, but moved to Israel. I am visiting Maniek’s son Pini later this month. Pini has written to me that his grandparents lived on ul. Tumska. Pini just got back to me about this:

Yes that is my grandfather; they had a store in Tumska 3 (I was there) but the store was handled by Rachel Piwko Kolski-she was the manager. He was a big business man who imported from Brazil and other places from all over.
Natan Kolski left Poland in 192?? to Israel with his wife and 2 daughters (Sara & Judith ) to run Pinkus Kolski business and lands that he bought in Israel (1912-1938). He was the first son that came to Israel, then Abrash and my father came in 1932.
The house in Tumska 3 in Worzlavek is still there (next to the big Church and the Vistula River).
In the 1930, but not the 1926 Gdańsk listings, under samochody, automobiles, is an ad for Jacob Rotblit’s Ford dealership in Zoppot—the Baltic Coast resort town of Sopot. Sopot is between Gdańsk, which was the free city of Danzig between the world wars, and Gdynia, the industrial city that grew up across the Polish border. I’ve also found ads for this dealership in Gazeta Gdańska from 1935. My mom remembers visiting Rotblit, her biological father, at the Baltic Coast when she was about 13 (so around 1935). Aunt Pat has in her notes that Rotblit sold jewelry, and then automobiles. The business directory listing could well be another sign of my elusive grandfather—the one my mother and her brothers tried to forget.
Rotblit Ford Ad, Gazeta Gdańska 1935

Business Directory of Poland and Danzig 1930: Jacob Rotblit’s Ford Dealership in Sopot

Archives and Ancestors

31 Saturday Jan 2015

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Hiel Majer Piwko, Łódź

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 19^th 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.

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 19^th 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 Marysia Galbraith in Family, Piwko

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Hiel Majer Piwko

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 26^th of October/ 7^th of November.

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 Marysia Galbraith in Family, Names, Piwko

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Hanna Cytryn, Hanna Piwko, Maria Weglinska

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 3^rd. 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

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. 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 Marysia Galbraith in Jewish Culture, Memory, Pre-World War II, Research Methodology

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Glenn Kurtz, Three Minutes in Poland, working with fragments

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 Marysia Galbraith in Bereda, Family, Post-World War II

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Zygmunt Bereda

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

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.

Memory and forgetting in Poznan, part 2

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Memory, Polish-Jewish relations, Poznan, Synagogues

≈ Leave a comment

Monument to the victims of the Poznan labor camp

Despite the cold, Anka, Małgosia and I visited a few other sites associated with Jewish culture and history. The monument to the victims of the Poznan labor camp is on Królowa Jadwiga Street even though the actual detainment site was a block away in the old football stadium. The socialist-era monument is a tall concrete pillar with what looks like a menorah at the top. Anka pointed out the dedication on back of the monument stating it was erected on the 40^th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising; even sites commemorating local events reproduce the idea that the Holocaust happened elsewhere—in cities such as Warsaw and Krakow.

The actual stadium was abandoned in the 1990s when a new one was built for the Warta football team. Warta is Poznan’s smaller club, rival to Lech, who got a big new stadium for the European football championship Euro 2012. Małgosia conducted ethnographic research in which Warta fans turned out to be the only ones who know the function the stadium served during the war. Essentially, it was a work camp where Jews were briefly held before being shipped off to the death camps. Many detainees were shot right there on the spot. We walked through the broken down gateway, up a set of stairs to an earthen berm surrounding what used to be the playing field. Today, the site is covered with trash, and trees grow everywhere including where the bench seating used to be. Only the concrete supports of the benches are left. Goal posts stand on the field, left over from 2012 when local teams competed in a kind of lighthearted protest against the massive outlay of funds for Euro 2012.

Looking out from the old football stadium toward the outdoor market and new high-rises.

For the most part, this is forgotten space, despite its proximity to the center of the city. It is separated from Królowa Jadwiga Street by a dilapidated outdoor market. On this frigid day, there were no customers, just very cold sellers who urged us to their buy their wares. I was told the outdoor market used to be bigger. When they were in high school, it was the place to get real Adidas and blue jeans. With all the competition from new shopping centers, the market has shrunk. There is an ongoing debate about what to do with the old stadium—what primary purpose should the space fill? Should it be a place for sports activities? A nature preserve? A place of commemoration for those who suffered and died there? Or should it become another housing development or mall?

What is the origin and meaning of this sculpture? Why is it in the newly named Square of the Righteous among Nations of the World?

Heading back toward the center of the old city to thaw out at a café, we chanced upon an unmarked, decaying stone sculpture. I think it was Małgosia who said it suggests some sort of Holocaust memorial. Then we noticed the sign designating the area as “Square of the Righteous Among Nations of the World.” I’ve since learned that this is a new name, approved by the city just this year.

We made two more brief stops on our tour. We peaked into the Church of the Most Holy Blood of Christ (Najświętszej Krwi Pana Jezusa) on Żydowska (Jewish) Street, where I showed Anka and Małgosia the ceiling frescos depicting Jews profaning the host.

Frescos over the alter depicting the profaning of the host

In Sinners on Trial, Magda Teter outlines the historical context in which this story was told:

On Fridays, as late as 1926, and perhaps even up to the eve of World War II, in a small Catholic church on what has been known as “the Jewish street,” a few meters off the main market square in the city of Poznań, the faithful did not sing the prayer Kyrie Eleison, “God Have Mercy, Christ Have Mercy.” Instead, the church followed a liturgy that diverged markedly from the approved official liturgy of the Catholic Mass. The song’s text that replaced the words of the Kyrie Eleison told of Jewish desecration of the host in Poznan:

O, Jesus, unsurpassed in your goodness,

Stabbed by Jews and soaked in blood again

Through your new wounds

And spilled springs of blood

Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy!

The hearts of stone from the Jewish street

In the house once known as the Świdwińskis’

Sank their knives in You

In the Three Hosts, the Eternal God

Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy on Us, Have Mercy!

The song recounted the story of three hosts stolen by a Christian woman from a Dominican church in Poznań in 1399. According to the story, she delivered the three hosts to Jews who desecrated them, “stabbing” them with knives. Unable to dispose of them, the Jews took them outside the city and buried them in swamps. The hosts miraculously emerged to reveal themselves to a shepherd boy. The Christian woman and the Jews were punished by the magistrate, and the Church of Corpus Christi was constructed on the site after the miracle (2011: 89-90).

Teter goes on to suggest that this story might have been used as a rationale for building a new church on Żydowska Street. Pani Alicja, the head of the Poznan Jewish Community, told me that she has been waging another battle to have an informational plaque installed in the entranceway of the church explaining that the story of the profaning of the host is a legend, not historical fact. To date, church representatives have only agreed to post an explanation in the basement where most people will never see it.

The exterior of the former "new" synagogue in Poznan. The words "Pływalnia Miejska" (City Pool) can be made out above the long windows. The pool was closed just three years ago in 2011.

The exterior of the former “new” synagogue in Poznan. The words “Pływalnia Miejska” (City Pool) can be made out above the long central windows. The pool was closed just three years ago in 2011.

Our final stop was the former synagogue near the end of Żydowska Street. When built in 1907, it was considered the “new” synagogue. It could hold 1200 worshipers, and was richly ornamented with a copper dome. During the war, the Nazis stripped off the dome and transformed the synagogue into a swimming pool. It continued to function as a pool even after the Jewish Community regained possession of the building in 2002. Małgosia has seen the interior. She described how the bottom of the sanctuary was tiled with the pool at the center, but the upper part remained just like a synagogue. She also said she has been in the attic above the wooden beams of the sanctuary which is still filled with old papers and books. The building is in bad shape and in need of major renovation. Efforts have so far failed to turn it into a Center for Dialog and Tolerance (see this essay by Janusz Marciniak, which includes photos of the exterior in 1907 and today. An essay by Teddy Weinberger describes his visit to the synagogue when it was still a pool; he includes photos of the interior as a place of worship and as a swimming pool).

Memory and forgetting in Poznan

29 Monday Dec 2014

Posted by Marysia Galbraith in Cemeteries, Heritage work, Jewish Culture, Polish-Jewish relations, Poznan

≈ 1 Comment

Małgosia and Anka at the Jewish cemetery. The building in the background holds trash bins for surrounding apartments. The resident we spoke with felt uncomfortable about keeping the trash in a cemetery.

In early December, I visited the Poznan Jewish Cemetery for a second time with Anna Weronika Brzezińska, a professor at the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology at Adam Mickiewicz University, and Małgosia Wosińska, a doctoral student at the same institute. We chose the coldest day of the season for our tour of sites associated with Jewish culture. Still, it was great to get the perspective of other ethnographers on some of the places where Jewish heritage is marked and unmarked in Poznan.

The gate into the courtyard was locked as usual, so Anka pushed the buttons on the intercom until a resident answered and buzzed us in. Anka shared her knowledge of the history of the cemetery (see some of this in my previous post). On a copy of a map from 1900, she pointed out how large the Jewish cemetery was, and how it abutted two large Catholic cemeteries. All were established in what at the time was the outskirts of the city to make room for development of the city center.

Commemorative graves and old tombstones recovered around the city. The apartments overlooking the site were built just outside the cemetery walls in the early 20th century.

Poznan continued to expand so that by the early 20^th century, there was another initiative to reclaim these cemeteries for other purposes. First, buildings were built along the roads, including the apartments on Śniadecki Street (visible on the other side of the wall behind the tombstones) and the Poznan Trade Center (Targi Poznańskie) on Głogowska and Grunwaldzka Streets. During World War II, the Jewish tombstones were removed and repurposed for roadways, sidewalks, and other building projects. The Catholic cemeteries (which already seem to have been at least partially missing in the 1927 photo) were also damaged, though they were not the object of systematic wartime destruction as was the Jewish cemetery. After World War II, in the 1950s, the socialist government liquidated what remained of all of the cemeteries in this area. This served a dual purpose for the secular socialist regime—so the land could be developed, but also because the cemeteries were affiliated with religions.

It changes things to realize it was not just the Jewish cemetery that was redeveloped, but also Catholic ones. Later, when we passed a park across from the train station, Anka said it used to be yet another Catholic cemetery. Taken together, they indicate a general attitude about the past—a willingness to forget, especially when specific ties to specific people are broken. State socialism also had its effects—the challenges of normal everyday life that made Poles reluctant to look to the past or the future, and the authoritarianism with which urban development was realized. This isn’t to say that Jewish memory wasn’t deliberately erased from the city landscape, but rather to put those practices into a broader context of erasure and rebuilding.

The commemoration project was controversial. Months earlier, Pani Alicja at the Gmina Żydowska explained to me that they can’t reclaim land that has been built on. This would have ruled out most of the former cemetery land because it is under the Poznan Trade Center. The only alternative was in the courtyard, but some residents protested against putting it there. I asked Anka if residents had known beforehand that their homes overlook a cemetery. She said maybe, but they would have had other things on their minds. Also, many families moved into the area after the war ended so they would not have ever seen the cemetery.

As we headed to a back gate to look at the other side of the cemetery wall, an elderly man approached on his way out from his apartment. He gladly unlocked the gate for us and paused to chat. He said he has only lived there since the 1970s, but his wife remembers playing in the empty field behind her apartment when she was a child (in what used to be the cemetery). She sometimes came across human bones sticking out of the sand.

He said some residents didn’t like the idea of the memorial, but he had no objection. On the contrary, it was a neglected space before, with broken-down garages and lots of trash. He tries to tell people about the history of the place when they visit. However, there aren’t many visitors. The few who come are usually from abroad. He hasn’t witnessed any ceremonies occurring in the courtyard. This seems odd to me. Surely some heard the prayers and chants during the Kaddish in September, but I didn’t see a single person look out their window. When asked Anka and Małgosia about this later, Anka defended the residents, saying only bathrooms and kitchens face the courtyard. Most people have no reason to look out those windows.

The resident also told us about a large wooden cabinet adorned with three carved roses that his wife’s family found in their apartment when they reclaimed it (during the war, all Polish residents were forced out and Nazi officers lived there). Once, they had a visitor who asked if they had Jews in the family, explaining that the cabinet probably came from a prosperous Jewish family around Lviv. Perhaps a German officer liked it, claimed it, and brought it back to Poznan. The number of roses (one, three, or five) represents increasing status within the Jewish community.

As we prepared to leave, Małgosia remarked that Jewish culture remains hidden in plain sight, even in places like this where the effort has been made to preserve it. Because of the locked gates, most people can’t come in.

Uncovering Jewish Heritage

Author Archives: Marysia Galbraith

The Piwko Saga, Vital Records Version

Survival through luck and pluck

Family traces in the Business Directory, 1926 and 1930

Archives and Ancestors

Hiel Majer Piwko’s birth certificate

Nunia/Hanna/Anna/Maria

Three Minutes in Poland

Zygmunt Bereda’s death notice

Memory and forgetting in Poznan, part 2

Memory and forgetting in Poznan