Category Archives: Bereda

AK Verification, Part III

02 Saturday Sep 2017

Posted by in Archives, Bereda, Family, Memory, Polish Culture, Polish Underground Army, Warsaw, World War II

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NOTE: This overview of my recent discoveries at the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, Studium Polskiej Podziemniej (SPP) got so long I am publishing it in three separate posts. Here is part III. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II, the Polish Underground Army worked in secret to resist, sabotage, and fight against the Nazis. Another name for the Polish forces is “AK,” short for “Armia Krajowa,” or “Home Army.” I talk about the soldiers as “the partisans;” in Polish sources they are also called “konspiracja,” “the conspiracy.”

Sorry it’s taken a while for me to get to part III. The semester has begun which means I’ve been very busy.

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Pencil sketch of Maria Bereday from the 1950s, signed Ditri. Friends tell me she looks like a spy.

All of the questions the archivist Krystyna asked me about the names Mama went by paid off because she found another file; the envelope was mislabeled “Maria Fijułkowska.” Inside was a six-page report, relacja, Mama had written titled, “Outline of Courier Work.”

Initially, neither Krystyna nor I found this file because not only was “Bereda” missing, but Fijałkowska was also misspelled. Krystyna wrote “Fijałkowska” on a new envelope; I don’t know why she didn’t also add the Bereda, even after I pointed out that Mama’s full name was hand-written in large letters along the left margin of the document’s first page. Around World War II, the family usually used the name Bereda-Fijałkowska. Mama told me they added the Fijałkowski/a, which was grandpa Bereda’s mother’s maiden name and a name associated with the Polish gentry, because of Babcia’s social aspirations.

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Mama’s name (Bereda-Fijałkowska) and pseudonym “Renata” in the margins of her typewritten report.

Mama’s report matches up with some of the stories she told me, and confirms some of what she did during the occupation. It also gives more details about the way her courier unit “Zadra,” was organized, and how couriers carried out their duties. The report is dry and factual. It contains no specifics about her emotional engagement or personal thoughts. A historian might find it interesting for what it reveals about the operations of the Underground conspiracy. I keep trying to look beyond the words to find the person behind them.

She writes, that “Zadra” started out very small, and because the work wasn’t systematized, the couriers were on call at all times. “By the end of 1942,” she writes, “the number of couriers stabilized at 15, and that group became close and experienced, and worked together for a long time without changing members.” This all changed in the fall of 1943 when the occupier, okupant, limited train travel to Germans only. Overnight, the courier corps dropped from 60 to just six who spoke German well and had German papers. “The work for these couriers during this time was nonstop,” she continues, “The number of trips for each courier came to 10-12 per month, depending on the route.” My mother doesn’t state it in the report, but she must have been one of the couriers who carried out missions during this time. Some of her most vivid stories were about traveling in the train cars with an assumed identity as a “volksdeutch,” a half-German whose father was fighting for the Reich on the Eastern front.

After about two months, the courier corps were reorganized and expanded, with more reserve couriers brought into regular service. In the half year before the Warsaw Uprising, the number of couriers in her unit approached 40, and overall reached 100.

The duties of the couriers included delivering coded and uncoded orders hidden in ordinary objects such as candles or paint, special messages that had to be handed to specific commanders, and large sums of money (1/4-12 million zloties in 500 zloty bills). Some missions involved carrying the messages brought by paratroopers they called “ptaszki,” “little birds.” This is the code name for the cichociemni, the officers who parachuted in from the West carrying money and messages from the Polish Government in Exile.

The report includes an example of a special mission Mama undertook at the end of 1943. Instead of being briefed by her usual commander “Wanda”, “Beata,” the head of communication with the west, did it. “Wanda” gave her a special coded message she had to hand directly to the chief of staff or the commander of the Radom District. This was to occur in private with no witnesses. Mama also had to memorize and deliver the oral message, “The commanders of the divisions and subdivisions of “Burza” require complete secrecy in the event of the invasion of the Russians.” Burza, Tempest, was the code name for the Warsaw Uprising.

Because the chief of staff wasn’t available on the day Mama arrived, she had to spend the night at a safe house. The next day, she delivered the messages to Chief of Staff “Rawicz” [his real name was Jan Stencel or Stenzel], but had to spend another two days before “Rawicz” returned from the forest, where the partisans were hiding out, with the required response for the Central Command in Warsaw.

Reading this sparked another memory for me. I think it was a big deal for Mama to stay away from home for so long, especially because her father didn’t know she was in the Underground. Her mother did know, though, and they hatched an alibi about a visit to Mama’s fiance’s family. Or maybe this is the story she told the authorities on the train to explain why she was returning several days late. Hopefully, my brothers remember this story, too, and can confirm one of these versions.

The documents from the Studium Polski Podziemnej in London have been a lynch pin that holds together information from a variety of sources. While I was there, I also found a citation for Communication, Sabotage, and Diversion: Women in the Home Army, Łączność, Sabotaż, Dywersja: Kobiety w Armii Krajowej, published in 1985. The book was written in Polish but published in London. I found a copy of it at an online used bookstore whose brick and mortar shop is in Warsaw. I called, and sure enough they had it in the shop, so I picked it up while I was in Warsaw. It contains the recollections of the head of the Women’s division of Central Command (VK) Janina Karasiówna, the oficer who confirmed Mama’s verification file. Another chapter contains the report of Natalia Żukowska who was the assistant commander of Mama’s courier unit; Mama identifies her by her pseudonym “Klara.” From Żukowska’s report, I learned that “Zadra” was the name used by the couriers who had been working with the unit for the longest, but in 1943 the name was changed to “Dworzec Zachodni.” Reviewing Mama’s documents, I see now that she identified her unit as Zadra-Dworzec Zachodni in one place. She underlined it, too. Until I read this book, I had thought Dworzec Zachodni, which means Western Station, referred to Zadra’s location, not an alternative cryptonym. And then there’s this: the names of the 15 couriers, including “Renata.” That’s Mama’s pseudonym; her last name is misidentified as “Brodzka” instead of “Bereda,” but Natalia writes, “Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to decrypt all of the last names” (p. 118).

Mama was proud of her service for her country, but she was also painfully aware of the cost of war. She called herself a pacifist and the war solidified her abhorrence of armed conflict. I remember her asking, “Are there times when fighting is necessary?” I could tell from her voice that she wanted to believe all conflicts can be resolved peaceably. But her experience had taught her otherwise.

AK Verification: Part II

13 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Archives, Bereda, Family, Poland, Polish Culture, Polish Underground Army, Warsaw, World War II

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NOTE: This overview of my recent discoveries at the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, Studium Polskiej Podziemniej (SPP) got so long I am publishing it in three separate posts. Here is part II. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II, the Polish Underground Army worked in secret to resist, sabotage, and fight against the Nazis. Another name for the Polish forces is “AK,” short for “Armia Krajowa,” or “Home Army.” I talk about the soldiers as “the partisans;” in Polish sources they are also called “konspiracja,” “the conspiracy.”

 

The file at the archive of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, Studium Polski Podziemnej (SPP), contained the same verification questionnaire I had from my mother’s papers and so much more. On the envelope itself is the following identifying information:

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Information on the envelope containing Mama’s papers at the SPP

I ‘ve learned how to decipher all of this. Here’s what it means:

Cadet Bereda-Fijałkowska Maria

2.785/46 [record #]     “Renata” [her pseudonym]

   26. VI 1922 Wilno [birth date and place of birth]

 

            Central Command division V/Women “Zadra” courier

Uprising: after the fall of the Wola district of Warsaw

                                    “Koło” Group-liaison officer [the names of her units]

The documents inside the envelope confirm Mama’s service and rank in the AK [Home Army], as well as her receipt of the Cross of Bravery. She submitted her questionnaire on March 9, 1946, her commanding officer confirmed her claims on April 15th of the same year, and the official report was completed the next day on April 16. The final report says the head of the Polish Army himself, General Bór-Komorowski, confirmed her receipt of the Cross of Bravery. Here is what looks like his signature on the document:

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General Bór Komorowski’s signature verifying Mama’s service in the Polish Home Army. It looks like he wrote “Stwierdzam (I confirm)  16/IV 46” above his signature. Note the “gn” for “generał.”

Mama started military training in middle school, gimnasium, at the Klementyna Hoffman School in the mid-1930s. She continued training in high school, liceum, and entered the Underground in June 1941, right after finishing high school. She took courses on how to be a courier, the organization of the Underground and of the German military, as well as marksmanship, topography, and first aid. She was in “Zadra” Group, part of the women’s courier corps in the 5th Division of the Central Command. She delivered encoded communications, money, and oral messages on the routes between Warsaw and Krakow, Radom and Skarżysko-Kamienna. In these latter two places, she acted as a go-between for the partisans in the surrounding forests and Central Command in Warsaw. From 1942-4, she also worked as an instructor training other women to serve in the Underground.

When the Warsaw Uprising began on August 1, 1944, she was with her unit “Zadra” in Wola, a district to the northwest of downtown. A handwritten note on her typed questionnaire says “wounded on route from Wola to the Old City.” The handwriting is different from Mama’s distinctive, almost calligraphic style, so somebody else must have added it after Mama submitted her answers.

The archivist Krystyna Zatylna said that the heaviest fighting in the first days of the Uprising was in Wola. Mama was lucky to have survived. By August 8, 40,000 civilians died in Wola.

The Home Army regrouped in the Old City. Mama got separated from her unit and joined “Koło” group. She is referred to here as a “liaison,” “lączniczka,” rather than “courier,” “kurierka.” Both terms refer to people entrusted with delivering critical information. Initially, however, she worked as a medic on Długa Street. When the Germans pushed the partisans out of the Old City, they escaped to the City Center, Śródmieście, via the sewers.

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Document dated September 9, 1944 that allowed “Renata” to travel through the City Center during the Warsaw Uprising.

The file contains two papers dated from the Uprising. No doubt Mama brought them with her to London to help corroborate her report. These tattered notes—physical proof of her service—must have been very precious to her. The first, on a third of a piece of paper that has deep creases from having been folded many times, is dated September 9, 1944. It states:

I assert that cadet Renata is a liaison of “Koło” Group. The conditions of her service require movement within the region between Savior Square and Napoleon Square.

The note is signed by the Chief of Staff of “Koło” Group, Major Krynicki. The document contains a round stamp with a crowned eagle in the middle surrounded by the words “Motorized Transport Brigade, “Brygada Dyspozycyjna Zmotoryzowana.” Mama must have shown this note at barricades on the streets so the AK soldiers would let her pass. Savior Square and Napoleon Square are in the City Center, which means she retreated through the sewers before September 9. I can, however, imagine her dodging Nazi bullets as she ran across the barricaded Jerusalem Street carrying messages from Napoleon Square to Savior Square. These names would sound good in a poem. Too bad I’m not a poet.

The second paper dates from October 3, 1944, the last day of the Uprising. Signed by Colonel Bolesław Kołodziejski, the commander of “Koło” Group, it is titled, “Provisional certificate (to be exchanged after the war for official recognition).” The text reads:

I confirm that “Renata Lewandowska” was decorated for her activity during the Uprising from August 1 to October 3 1944 with the Cross of Bravery for the first time.

Based on: the personal confirmation of the head of the Warsaw Corps of the A.K. Brigadier General Montera and his assistant Colonel Wachowski, as told to the commander of “Koło” Group during the last days of the Uprising.

“Montera” was the code name for General Antoni Chruściel, who led the Home Army (AK) in Warsaw during the Uprising. Kołodziejski was also a code name. Elsewhere in the documents, Mama writes that his real name was Zygmunt Trzaska-Reliszko.

Mama writes that she was promoted twice; in September 1944 she became a cadet, plutonowy podchorązy and in October she was promoted again to ensign, podporucznik. It looks as though the Verification Commission could only confirm the first promotion. A handwritten note on Mama’s questionnaire says they weren’t able to contact her commanding officer from “Koło” Group to verify the second promotion.

Also in the file are two statements written by the commander of the women’s branch of the 5th division of Central Command (V.K. KG) Major Janina Karaś, dated April 15, 1946. In them Karaś, also known as Karasiówna, confirmed that Mama earned the rank of cadet in “Koło” Group, and was also granted the Cross of Bravery for her service. Clearly, the Verification Commission contacted Karaś to corroborate Mama’s claims on her questionnaire. One of Karaś’s statements reads:

As the chief of the V.K. [5th Women’s] Central Command I certify that in the course of her service as a courier, “Renata” Maria Bereda Fijałkowska distinguished herself on the route Warsaw-Krakow and Warsaw-Skarzysko-Radom with bravery and decision to take risks. Traveling with German false papers she carried money, mail, and oral orders /for example related to the order for [Operation] Tempest. She earned the Cross of Bravery for her service.

Operation Tempest, “Burza,” was the code name for the beginning of the Warsaw Uprising. In other words, some of the messages Mama carried between Central Command and the partisans in the forest involved critical details about the Polish Underground’s battle to free the capital city from German occupation. I’m reminded of something the archivist at the Warsaw Uprising Museum kept repeating when I showed him Mama’s verification questionnaire two years ago: “She must have been very high in the conspiracy.” He couldn’t find the exact connection, but I believe I have it right here.

Krystyna Zatylna helped me put the pieces together. The forests around Radom are where the so-called “cichociemni,” “the quiet unseen” soldiers parachuted in from the West, bringing messages and money from the Polish Government in Exile for the leaders of the Underground in Poland. I believe Mama was given these items from the cichociemni and carried them back to Central Command in Warsaw. It fits with stories she sometimes told, and it fits with the seven-page report she filed with her verification papers. And that will be the subject of the third part of this blog post.

AK Verification, Part I

12 Saturday Aug 2017

Posted by in Archives, Bereda, Family, Polish Culture, Polish Underground Army, World War II

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NOTE: This overview of my recent discoveries at the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust, Studium Polskiej Podziemniej (SPP) got so long I will publish it in three separate posts over the next few days. Here is part I. During the German occupation of Poland during World War II, the Polish Underground Army worked in secret to resist, sabotage, and fight against the Nazis. Another name for the Polish forces is “AK,” short for “Armia Krajowa,” or “Home Army.” I talk about the soldiers as “the partisans;” in Polish sources they are also called “konspiracja,” “the conspiracy.”

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Mama in Poland

 

The extraordinary story of my mother’s service in the Polish Underground can be hard to reconcile with the person I knew. Mama would hide when strangers visited the house because she was afraid they would stare at her scars. How could she have carried secret messages to the partisans in the forest or talked calmly with Nazi officers on the German-only trains right under signs that read, “Danger! The Enemy is Listening!”? And yet, as her daughter I also knew her strength and persistence, especially when matters of principal were involved.

I couldn’t find much specific information about my mother at the Warsaw Uprising Museum or the Polish National Archive of New Records in Warsaw. Next, I turned to the Studium Polski Podziemnej (SSP), Polish Underground Movement Study Trust in London. But when the archivist responded they have no record of Maria Bereda in their indexes, a part of me wondered if Mama could have fabricated her whole story.

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Logo of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust (SPP)

But that made no sense. My mother didn’t lie. She struggled with guilt even when she tried to tell the smallest untruth. Instead, she would avoid certain subjects, and would keep silent when people came to their own incorrect conclusions about them. That’s why for instance I thought she was the same age as my dad when I was a child. My oldest brother inferred it from the sequence of their birthdays—Dad’s was on March 1 and Mom’s was a few months later on June 26—and Mama didn’t bother to correct us.

Mama didn’t like talking about her past, but the story about how she was verified after the war was one she was more willing to tell. She had to go to London to do it because wartime records were scattered and incomplete. During the war, the Underground Army didn’t have the infrastructure to maintain centralized records. Often, lists of personnel and promotions were memorized or scribbled on any available scrap of paper. Also, to prevent the Nazis from infiltrating the underground forces, details of separate units were kept from each other. Most partisans only knew about those serving directly above and below them, and even members of the same unit referred to each other by code name. All of these were strategies for insuring that if someone was caught or compromised, they would have minimal information to share and so could inflict a minimum of damage to the organization. Also, few records remained after Warsaw was bombed to the ground following the Warsaw Uprising. The Central Verification Commission was in London, where the Polish Government in Exile had been throughout the war.

Mama travelled from Poland to London in March 1946. She wanted to be sure that an official record would exist to mark her participation in the war, and she wanted to get the Cross of Bravery she had been granted but never received. At the Commission, she reported on her training, her unit, her superior officers, and her activities. When she told me this story many years later, she was very proud of her ability to recall all these details from memory, things that could only be known by someone who actually served in the Underground.  The commission checked everything for accuracy before the verification was confirmed.

I already had a copy of the “Special Questionnaire” Mama had filled out as part of this process; I had found it in her papers. At minimum, I should have been able to find the original at the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust (SPP), which houses the archive of the Verification Commission. Fortunately during a recent trip to London, some focused digging at the SPP turned up a treasure trove of documents. Already in our e-mail correspondence, the SPP archivist Krystyna Zatylna had seemed confident that something would turn up if we looked harder. She eventually found Mama’s records where they had been mislabeled and misfiled.

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Headquarters of the Polish Underground Movement Study Trust at 11 Leopold Road, Ealing, London. Photo from studium.org.uk website.

According to their website, “The Polish Underground Movement (1939-1945) Study Trust (PUMST), was founded in London in 1947. It is a research and academic institution, which contains historical material on the Polish Underground State (the Underground Administration and the Polish Home Army – Armia Krajowa) during the Second World War.” Included among their materials, the verification papers sit on high shelves right in the reading room in accordion folders shelved alphabetically. Personal files are arranged alphabetically inside the folders, each in a separate manila envelope.

The first folder Krystyna pulled out for me contained last names starting with “Br” instead of “Be.” My heart fell when I didn’t find Mama’s records. But then Krystyna climbed up a wooden ladder and found the folder with the “Be” names. There it was: an envelope labeled Maria Bereda-Fijałkowska. For a time, Mama used this hyphenated name, tacking on the maiden name of her grandmother.

Krystyna explained that much of the work at the archive has been done by volunteers so there are a lot of mistakes. She also asked me a lot of questions. Was Mama’s name always hyphenated? Did she use any other names? Did she ever go by Fijałkowska? Was she ever married? She also asked the names of my mother’s units. I rattled off what I knew: she belonged to “Zadra” in the Women’s 5th Division of the Central Command stationed in the Wola District of Warsaw; shortly after the Warsaw Uprising began, she joined “Koło” Group, and served in the Old City–Stare Miasto and City Center–Śródmieście Districts . I also gave her the names of Mama’s superior officers. It was as if I was being verified myself.

To be continued…

The Next Generation Visits Poland

07 Monday Aug 2017

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Identity

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I’m just back from a roots trip to Warsaw, Poland with twelve relatives including six children. Here are most of the kids on the steps at Kościelna Street. These are the ones their grandmother would take everyday when she walked to and from the Bereda home at the bottom of the hill.

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The next generation in Poland: grandchildren of Maria: Ian and Bessie (lower steps) and of George: Sammy, Ziggy, and Mo (upper steps). My brother Chris is on the left.

It’s extraordinary that we could agree upon a date and make the journey. I’ll write more about it soon.

Traveling with Babcia

31 Tuesday May 2016

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Memory

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Babcia died over twenty years ago, shortly before I returned from my doctoral fieldwork in Poland. The last time I saw her was a few months before she passed, when she was already on her way. She did not recognize me, or my brother Chris, and didn’t even acknowledge our presence. Except, she grabbed my hand—at first, I thought it was because she knew who I was, but in fact she just used my finger to scratch her ear. It was an intimate and disturbing final contact between us.

The last time we spoke was a year and a half earlier, right before I left for Poland. Babcia was already 97, in assisted living, but still sharp. She became agitated about my trip, cajoling me, “Don’t fall in love with a Polish man.” She warned me against life in Poland, she said a Polish man would not treat me well; she was afraid I would not return. She insisted there was nothing for me there, that she and the rest of the family decided to leave Poland to seek a better life in the US.

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Babcia in Florida, late 1950s.

Babcia was a mystic. She believed she could see the future, and even though I did not fall in love with a Polish man and I did come back, often it seemed like her premonitions were right. Mama also had an uncanny ability to sense things, but with her it was more psychological. Mama was deeply empathetic and could intuit the emotional states of others.

There was very little fanfare when Babcia died. I missed the funeral because I wasn’t told about it. Mama didn’t want me to cut my trip short to attend. Babcia was cremated, in accordance with her wishes. She also wanted to be buried in Poland with her husband Zygmunt who died nearly fifty years earlier in 1945, but no one seemed to have the will to make it happen. Instead, my cousin Alexandra brought the ashes home and placed them on an altar in her home, where they stayed for many years.

In 2015, when I returned from my year in Poland, we had a family reunion. I took it as an opportunity to offer to take Babcia back home to Poland. It’s something I have thought about doing for a long time, and I finally I got up the nerve to make it happen. I’m the one who can do it. I speak the language and know my way around.

At first, it seemed my cousin would be reluctant to give Babcia up. But when I visited her mother a short time after the family reunion, the ashes were there waiting for me in their metal box.

So I brought her to my home in Alabama, where she has rested in my pottery studio awaiting this trip to Poland.

I knew I would not be able to bring a metal box through airport security, but still was reluctant to remove Babcia from her resting place. I waited until the night before my departure. I apprehensively removed the screws from the lid, and found a metal tin like a paint can inside labeled with Babcia’s name and the date she died. I have been told that surprisingly little is left after cremation, but I still was taken aback that even the tin, quite a bit smaller and lighter than the box, was filled halfway with paper. A whole body reduced to little more than a quart of ashes. I transferred them to the plastic bag nestled in the bottom of the box (no doubt for this purpose), and put that into a zippered bag I got at the Black Sea in Israel. She will be buried in a ceramic urn I made.

I had read that it’s not a problem bringing cremated remains on airplanes, so I set them in the bottom of my carry-on luggage. It was detected in the x-ray screening at the Birmingham Airport. I apprehensively explained what it was as the bag was being searched. The screener was very kind. She did some sort of test for explosives but let me through without otherwise disturbing the ashes.

So Babcia is on her way back to Poland. We’ll see what happens at the cemetery. When I called several months ago to inquire about the procedure, the person I spoke with was initially very confused. However, once he understood that Babcia was cremated, she died over twenty years ago, and there is already a family plot, he told me to just call once I get to Poland and we’ll make arrangements then. I hope it’s really that easy.

Super Kosher Cookies and Sliced Ham

07 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Jewish Culture, Jewish immigrants, Kolski, Names, Piwko, Winawer

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My brother Chris and I hosted a cousin reunion on Long Island in mid-December. I extended invitations to my old family—those I grew up with—and my new family—the cousins I have only recently found out about. My (new) cousin Eldad made sure to encourage the cousins on his mother’s side to attend. He also said he would bring “super kosher cookies” for the guests who are very religious and who might not eat otherwise.

I wanted to provide kosher food also, so Chris suggested we get everything at the Bagel Boss, a nearby kosher deli. But still, I don’t know how to serve a kosher meal in a non-kosher kitchen. So I did what most people do when they want to learn something. I got on the Internet and did a search for “how to feed kosher guests.” Several sites confirmed some things we had already thought about, like using paper plates and plastic ware. But I also learned some new things. There are many different degrees of kosher, but it’s best to keep the kosher food separate from the non-kosher food, and in its original packaging so guests can read the labels and know what kind of kosher everything is.

Trying to make my guests comfortable was important to me. Religious differences were at the heart of what divided our family, and the whole point of the reunion was to forge new links where old ones were severed.

Chris and I had fun selecting the bagels, cream cheese, fish, and salads at the deli. We talked with the owners, who assured us everything they have is kosher. They didn’t have a brochure we could take, so we photographed their kosher certification just in case. Even though we weren’t raised Jewish, we grew up on this kind of food. When I was eight years old, a bagel bakery moved in next to the local King Kullen supermarket. Mom loved bagels—we all did—and would pick some up every time she went grocery shopping. They’re one of the main things I look forward to when I visit Long Island—there are no good bagels in Tuscaloosa.

In addition to lox we got sable, which needs to be hand sliced to order. This takes special skill and only one particular clerk knows how to do it. I think we made his day. He rhapsodized about how supple and symmetrical the sable was, and held it up for us to admire. He gave us a slice to sample.

At the party store, we found a plastic knife sturdy enough to slice bagels, plastic serving spoons for the salads, and matching blue plates, cups, napkins, and tablecloth. Chris decided a large plastic bowl molded to look like cabbage leaves would be perfect for holding the bagels, and the ideal kitschy accessory to add to his serving ware. We set everything up on the side counter, separate from the non-kosher food in ceramic bowls on the kitchen table.

And then the pace of everything accelerated. We got a call from Aunt Pat that her son Marc was sick and they wouldn’t be able to come after all. The baby was fussy. Chris and others drove off on last minute errands. My first cousin Krysia and my husband Jeremy helped with final preparations. Before I knew it, guests were arriving. I never even had a chance to change into my party dress.

Jeremy and Bob (descendant of Abraham/John Piwko and Bertha/Blima Kolska)
Steve (Krysia’s husband) and Eldad (descendant of Pouli Piwko and Abrash Kolski)
Sal (descendant of Abram Piwko) and wife Mira, Daniella, (Eldad’s daughter and descendant of Pouli Piwko and Abrash Kolski)
Arline, Joan (descendant of Liba Piwko and Jacob Winawer), Krysia (descendant of Halina Piwko Bereday), and Jodi (Joan’s daughter)
Anna, Miriam, and Susi (descendants of Abram, son of Jankel and Tema).
Elizabeth, who I grew up calling aunt, and Marsha (Eldad’s wife)

I have only two regrets. First, that Aunt Pat couldn’t be there. She is the one who set me on the path that led to my first connections with lost relatives. Pat is a professional genealogist who collected information about the family in the 1970s. At the time she knew or contacted many cousins. Her charts, records, and memories have been tremendous resources. My second regret is that I didn’t have the opportunity to talk as much as I wanted with everyone who did come.

The first to arrive were the Bellaks. Even though we are not related by blood, these are the people I grew up with. Elizabeth and Mama knew each other in Poland and found each other by chance years later while registering for classes at Teacher’s College in Manhattan. Elizabeth and George, with their children Andrew and Alexandra would visit more often than our biological kin. Elizabeth loves good food, and always comes with a bag full of goodies. This time, she whispered something to me about a ham. I didn’t think anything of it.

Krysia, who has been with me on this journey from the beginning, guided most of the guests downstairs to see the family tree I had printed and posted to the wall. We’re related (by descent or marriage) to two brothers—Jechiel/Hiel (1854-1929) and Jankel (d. 1887) Piwko—who married two sisters—Hinda (1854-1933) and Tema (1858-1925) Walfisz.

The Piwkos lived in Skierniewice. According to Aunt Pat’s notes, Jozef Piwko (1824-1912) was a successful businessman who ran a tannery that had been in the family for generations. And he had four wives. I’ve only been able to find vital records for two of them. Cywia Rajch (1828-1862) was the mother of Jechiel, Jankel, and Dawid (1862-1865). She died within months of giving birth to Dawid. Jozef then married Sura Burgerman (b. 1842) and they had a son Nusen Dawid in 1866 and a daughter Chawa in 1871. Sura was already deceased when Chawa married in 1891.

Nusen Walfisz (b. 1817), originally from Wyszogród, lived in Żychlin with his wife Pesa Losman (b. 1831) and daughters Hinda, Tema, and Łaya (b. 1864). Nusen was a belfer, a religious education teacher.

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

Most of the cousins who came to the reunion descend from Jankel and Tema through their son Abram who moved to Zurich before World War II. Eldad (who came with his wife and daughter) is related to them through his mother Pouli. He’s also related to Jechiel and Hinda, my great grandparents, through his father, another Abram (though he’s often called Abrash). In other words, Eldad’s parents were second cousins.

Avraham Piwko & Family in Switzerland

Abram Piwko and family in Switzerland 1947

There is a lot of intertwining like this in the family tree—among the Piwkos, Winawers, and Kolskis especially. Two of my grandmother’s sisters married Winawers (Jacob and Liba’s granddaughter Joan came to the reunion with her daughter Jodi); another sister, Sarah married Sol (their granddaughters were supposed to come but had to cancel at the last minute), and her brother Abraham Jan/John married a Kolska (their great grandson Bob came to the reunion). Two other sisters married the Pinkus/Pinchas Kolski (after Regina died in childbirth, Rachel married him and had four more children). I’m still trying to trace how all the various Piwkos, Kolskis, and Winawers are related.

Morris Winawer and Hannah Gelman’s wedding 1935 in New York. Also pictured: brothers Sol and Max and mother Liba Winawer, nee Piwko.
Rachel (nee Piwko) and Pinkus Kolski in Poland with their children

Some of the guests at the reunion are very religious. Susie (a great granddaughter of Jankel and Tema) called the day before to ask if there is an orthodox synagogue nearby. I didn’t understand at first, but she explained she needed to go before sunset. I gave her the phone number of a Chabad house that referred her to a synagogue just two miles away. She stayed in regular contact with them throughout the afternoon, and recruited several men from the party to make sure there would be a minyan for sunset prayers. It turned out there were already 10 men there when they arrived. Standing in the living room, another cousin remarked this is the closest she’s ever been to a Christmas tree.

Several cousins are artists—Miriam (Susie’s sister) used to do ceramics but now she prefers enamels, her husband Shiah does woodwork and fused glass. Arline is a painter. We’re also a well-educated bunch. Daniella is a historian and professor; Bob is a musicologist, curator, and librarian; my brother Chris has a PhD in economics; Sal’s wife Mira is a professor of political theory.

Arline is a straight talking 91 year old. She remains spry—going up and down stairs without assistance—and mentally acute. We tried but failed to work out how we are related. She believes that her husband (Harry Jacobi) was related to Tema Walfisz, while she descends from another Walfisz sister (maybe Łaya?). I looked on Ancestry and found a reference to Leah Walfisz. Could that be the link? Arline’s grandfather came to the US but her grandmother refused because she didn’t think it would be kosher enough.

Arline remembers my mother’s brother Philip, who ran the bakery that most relatives worked in when they first came over from Europe. She met Mama and Babcia at Philip’s when they first arrived in the US. Mama was withdrawn, maybe even anti-Semitic. Arline remembers Mama comparing blacks in the US to Jews in Poland. Babcia babysat for Arline’s children, and also sold handkerchiefs to all the relatives. That’s how she earned money when she first got to the US.

DSC07428

Arline talks with Mama

I went with Arline when she visited Mama who was in bed in her room. At first Mama did not remember her, which is not surprising considering seventy years have passed, and Mama sometimes doesn’t recognize me anymore. Only later, after Arline talked for a while, Mama recognized Arline’s voice. Arline was explaining that her parents (or was it her husband’s parents?) were with Philip when he died. They had attended a wedding in Massachusetts together, and were on their way home when the car ran off the road.

I had hoped that this reunion would be an opportunity for my old family (the one I grew up knowing) to meet my new family (the relatives I have only recently learned about). The super kosher cookies and the sliced ham represent some of the challenges of making that a reality.

I never got around to eating so I didn’t see the ham on the table until after everyone had left. At first I was upset. I had worked so hard to make our kosher guests comfortable and I didn’t want to offend anyone. It struck me as so stereotypical and even mean spirited to serve the food that symbolizes the opposite of kosher. But it turns out no one deliberately meant the ham to represent anything. Elizabeth handed it to my husband, who found a plate and set it on the table without a thought about what it might mean to anybody. And in retrospect, it was probably just as well. Intent aside, maybe some of my old family felt more comfortable because the ham was there. Just as some needed the kosher cookies, maybe eating the ham was for others a normal part of not being Jewish, or of no longer being Jewish, or of not keeping kosher. I don’t know for sure, because I didn’t ask anyone, nor did I pay much attention to what people ate. And, as a friend remarked later, with ham on the table no one had to wonder what food wasn’t kosher.

Bridging the divides forged by my grandmother’s conversion will not always be easy. It’s complicated. But we’re family so we’ll figure it out.

Cousins in the Warsaw Ghetto

22 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in Bereda, Cemeteries, Jewish Culture, Jewish Ghetto, Kolski, Warsaw, World War II

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My cousin Pini (Pinchas) Doron, reminded me that his grandfather and namesake died in the Warsaw Ghetto. This is the story he sent me this morning:

“The Okopowe Cemetery is the old big cemetery in Warsaw that we visited with the whole family in 1995, including Pnina’s (his wife) parents.

“Her mother used to run from the Ghetto through the cemetery to the fields to bring potatoes to her family when she was 13 years old.

“Amazing stories.

“I have seen in your post the stone sign for the people who died in the Ghetto. As I told you, my grandfather Pinchas Kolski died in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940 and was buried in a temporary cemetery inside the ghetto. As we know, in 1940 they no longer allowed anyone to bury the dead  in the Okopowa Cemetery outside the Ghetto.

1941RachelMirkaKolskiAtPinchasGraveInGhetto

Mirka and Rachel Kolski at Pinchas Kolski’s grave in the Warsaw Ghetto. He died in 1940.

“We have this picture of Grandmother Rachel Kolski and her daughter Mirka (see the white sleeve with the [Star of David]-I think this was before they introduced the yellow star)?

“Mirka told me that after this visit to the grave, they managed to escape the Ghetto and to meet your step grandfather (that would have been Zygmunt Bereda) who hid them.”

Two Letters

29 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Bereda, Family

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I recently came across two letters Babcia wrote to Mama, one on August 31, 1945 and the other on February 4, 1958. The letters have some surprising parallels—Babcia’s instructions about proper modes of behavior and attire, and her lack of enthusiasm about my mother’s marriage plans. I’ve been trying to sort out what two letters indicate about the relationship between my mother and grandmother.

When the first letter was written, they were still living in Poland and Papa (Babcia’s second husband) was still alive. The letters are in Polish. Babcia expresses a great deal of affection for Mama; she addresses her “Ukochana Marychno”—Dearest Marysia (she uses a diminutive of Marysia, which is already a diminutive of Maria). She also calls her “coruś,” a diminutive form of “daughter,” and “słotkie dziecko”—“sweet child.”

I’m leaving out the details from the first part of the letter in which Babcia describes returning to Papa (probably after running away, as she was wont to do), Papa’s misbehavior and contrition, and Babcia’s joy at getting news from her sons who are living safely abroad. The second page is most relevant to this post. Babcia writes:

“Papa says that if you decided to marry, which wouldn’t necessarily thrill us, not because of Bimbus (a nickname I don’t recognize, but it probably refers to Mama’s first love Władek) who is a very decent fellow, and that means a lot, but because of your present state of health, so definitely let us know your plans and don’t worry that it will cost us. We want to pay for it. Besides, we never expected you to inform us, so we don’t want to be silly, but we think, without imposing on your views, that you are making too much trouble for each other, marrying, and that’s only worth doing when people love each other horribly. /you know, even then it’s often not worth it.

“I must be some kind of degenerate, because instead of encouraging my daughter to marry, I discourage her. Don’t be mad at me, my dear. I think that more than anything I’m your best friend.”

I can only wonder at the remarkable, long sentences. Though she says she doesn’t want to impose on Mama’s views, clearly she expresses her disapproval of Mama’s desire to marry. But why? Was it really concern for Mama’s health? Earlier in the letter, she refers to Mama’s operation. But even the issue of “health” is ambiguous—could it refer to a physical health issue or a mental health issue? Surgery to repair her war injuries or something else? Or might it rather be a reflection of Babcia’s own ambivalence about marriage generally, shaped by her own trials with Papa and perhaps also Mama’s choice of a partner?

I’m not sure how to read the tone of the letter, either. Is Babcia angry? I think maybe. She seems to be cloaking her efforts to exert an influence on Mama in expressions of affection.

In the letter, Babcia also instructs Mama about what kind of coat she should get. It should be straight and roomy in front and back. She even adds a lengthy handwritten note with further details about its style and price.

The second letter was written over twelve years later, when they lived in New York and Babcia was staying at The Breakers in Palm Beach, Forida. No doubt in response to the news that Mama eloped with my father, Babcia writes, “You leave me speechless, and you know well how agitated I am about your situation […] Please write me about your plans and where you intend to live. Will you live with Wiley or separately?”

Although Babcia addresses Mama as “ukochana Marychno” in this letter, as she did in the previous one, the tone seems harsher and more distant. And she definitely sounds angry. She insists Mama tell her immediately what she wants for a wedding present, and instructs Mama to send out wedding announcements right away (she provides a numbered list of people to contact). “Write to me right away what you plan to do next. Don’t you understand how much I want to be a part of this, at least post factum?” She asks if my Dad has forbidden Mama to communicate with her. “In that case I won’t be mad at you. God be with you.”

So much is left unsaid in this letter. It provides me with more context for understanding my grandmother and father’s dislike of each other, though it doesn’t clarify the root cause. Why does Babcia end the letter abruptly, “I have to run. Warm kisses?” Is this another expression of anger, or perhaps symptomatic of a distance that has grown between my mother and grandmother over a long period of time?

The letters also reflect Babcia’s concern with etiquette–the wedding announcements, the proper cut of a coat. She appreciates a bargain, but also values giving and receiving generous gifts. Paying for things for someone seems like a way of expressing affection.

These are more clues to my mother’s and grandmother’s lives. But they remain fragmentary. Only speculation holds them together.

Babcia and her sister Rachel

16 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Kolski, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Warsaw

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There was one silence that drowned out any mention of a relative very close to us– my grandmother’s sister Rachel.

I grew up knowing Babcia (the Polish term for grandmother) came from a large family, though on the rare occasions this was mentioned, it remained unclear how many siblings she had. The number of siblings was fluid, probably in part because even simple quantitative questions like this often have no absolute answer. It depends on temporal factors–who was living at a given time–and also on who was counted. As best I can tell, my great grandmother Hinda gave birth to twelve children; two died in infancy, leaving ten; one more committed suicide as a teenager and another died in her early twenties during childbirth, leaving eight; The older siblings died before I was born–one in the 1920s, two more in the 1940s, and another probably in the second half of the 1930s. This left four sisters, two who lived into the 1960s, one who died in the 1980s, and my grandmother who died in 1993. From oldest to youngest these four were Sarah, Hanna, Rachel, and my babcia Halina.

My mom told me about Sarah (though we called her Lusia), and I knew Hanna (whom we called Nunia) well, but I don’t recall any mention of Rachel. This is despite the fact that she was the sister closest in age to my grandmother. I’m sure that part of the reason for this silence was that it would have been difficult to talk about her without revealing she lived in Israel, and that would have further revealed she and the rest of Babcia’s family were Jewish. Another reason I never heard about her may well be because Rachel passed away when I was just five or six years old. Still, I was only a few months old when Sarah died and yet I did know about her.

I just don’t know; I can only guess why no one told me about Rachel.

When I first started to learn about Babcia’s family, I thought that maybe there wasn’t any contact between Halina and Rachel, but the more I find, the clearer it is that relations were not cut off between them. In fact, the secret of our Jewish heritage was hiding in plain sight. No one denied it. They just refrained from talking to my generation about it.

It’s likely Babcia never had much to do with her oldest siblings. Liba was 22 years older and married with two children of her own before Babcia was born; Jakob was 20 years older and Abraham/Jon was 17 years older. Abraham and Efraim/Philip (12 years her senior) moved to the United States when Babcia was just ten years old. Sarah, though two years older than Philip, stayed in Poland until the 1930s so Babcia probably knew her better. Still, Philip visited Poland regularly; he seems to have valued family and worked to maintain relationships. He sponsored a steady stream of relatives to the US, including eventually Babcia and my mother.

I have found some fragments—bits of information and partial vignettes—confirming Rachel and Halina were in regular contact, and even came to each other’s assistance during and after World War II. Some traces suggest, however, that these two sisters may not have always seen eye to eye.

I remember being told that “Papa” (what my mother and my grandmother called Zygmunt Bereda, my grandmother’s second husband) saved a number of Jews during the war. It seems possible Rachel was one of them. She spent some time in the Warsaw ghetto. After her husband Pinkas Kolski died in 1940, she escaped with her youngest child Mirka and spent the rest of the war on the Aryan side under false papers. Papa had both the connections and the money to arrange such things. Stanley, Sarah’s son, credits Bereda with saving Jews including family members. Aunt Pat (the wife of Bereda’s son and namesake) told me last month that when Mirka came to the US in the late 1960s, she went out of her way to find Uncle Sig to thank him because his father (namely Zygmunt Bereda) saved her and her mother. I wonder if anyone else in the family knows this story. Did Rachel and Mirka tell their descendants anything about this? That would have meant acknowledging they had Catholic relatives; was there a mirrored silence about that among my Jewish relatives?

Immediately after the war, fortunes reversed. Babcia and Papa’s properties were mostly destroyed and they lived for a time with Rachel and the Mochorowskis. The Mochorowskis’ connection to the family is interesting. Rachel’s son Samek was murdered by Nazis in 1942. His widow Kornelia (Nelly) remarried an engineer named Czesław Mochorowski. Babcia, Papa, and Maria (my mother) are listed as residing at two addresses in 1945 “u Mochorowskich” which means “at the Mochorowskis’ [home].” One was on Lwowska Street in the Mokotów district which was not bombed because it was where the occupying Germans had lived; the other was across the river in the Praga district that was not severely damaged, either.

What led me to discover that Babcia lived with Rachel after the war was the electronic database of Warsaw ghetto survivors. But why were the Beredas (Halina, Maria, and Zygmunt) in this database? As far as I know, they never lived in the ghetto, and Zygmunt was never a Jew. Further, I was under the impression that Babcia and Mama had hid their Jewish roots for years before the war, and especially vigilantly during the war. Why would they report themselves as Jews after the war ended?

It’s a good thing the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH) in Warsaw keeps the original records. Even though they don’t answer the basic question why my family was listed at all, the original documents contain additional information about them, information that was not recorded in the digitized database. The archivists at ŻIH also explained to me that immediately after the war ended, all surviving European Jews were asked to register, not just those who had been in the Warsaw ghetto. Over 58,000 names were collected in Poland.

Paper was hard to come by right after the war, so the registry cards from 1945 are written on the backs of old business records (accounting information and the like) cut into small rectangles. By 1946, printed “information cards” had spaces for specific data, including name, age, residence before and after the war, profession, and means of survival. I will say more about these cards in a future blog post. The key point here is that Halina, Maria, and Zygmunt Bereda were listed at the same addresses as Rachel Kolska and Nelly Kolska (later Mochorowska). In other words, although Babcia’s father declared her dead after she married a Catholic (Bereda), Babcia and her sister Rachel were on good enough terms in 1945 to share an apartment.

A photo from my grandmother's papers of Mirka (Rachel's daughter), Rachel (Babcia's sister), Czesław Mochorowski, and Nelly. The boy who is standing is Bogdan, Rachel's grandson, the son of Samek and Nelly. I don't know who the man on the right or the boy at the very bottom are.

A photo from my grandmother’s papers of Mirka (Rachel’s daughter), Rachel (Babcia’s sister), Czesław Mochorowski, and Nelly. The boy who is standing is Bogdan, Rachel’s grandson, the son of Samek and Nelly. I don’t know who the man on the right or the boy at the very bottom are. This was probably taken in Warsaw right after the war ended.

I recently came across another document linking Babcia and Czesław Mochorowski. In a letter to George (Halina’s son and my mother’s brother), my grandmother included Mochorowski in a list of people he should visit on his trip to Poland. I don’t know the year this was written but There is no mention of visiting Nelly, so it was probably after her death in 1957. I believe George visited Poland in the early 1960s. Significantly, in the letter Babcia explained who Mochorowski was: “Samek was my sister’s son, he was murdered by the Germans and his wife, Nelly, married Czesław Mochorowski…but during/after the war/ we lived in the same apartment and he called me auntie and Papa uncle [she uses the diminutive form of uncle, wujaszek].”

While I was visiting Israel in February, a few of Rachel’s descendants told me an anecdote that may well point to ongoing correspondence between Halina and Rachel even after Rachel moved to Israel, but also some tensions. As the story goes, a sister of Rachel’s fell out of touch for three years after Rachel sent her a letter in which she had written on both sides of the paper. This was somehow offensive to the sister. The cousins said they weren’t sure which sister this was, but it definitely sounds like something Babcia might have done. She was the one who took pride in her gentility. Nunia, as far as I recall, was far less concerned with formality, and Sarah has been described to me as very sweet. Neither sounds like they would have taken offense over a point of etiquette.

But who knows? I can only assemble these fragments, and occasionally draw tentative lines between them. If Rachel was anything like my grandmother (and her descendants have indicated to me she was), she was a formidable individual with definite ideas about the world. It’s not hard to imagine that she and her sister, my grandmother, would have locked horns sometimes.

Halina’s legacy

10 Monday Aug 2015

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The Bereday cousins met at Aunt Pat’s in late July. Nearly all Halina’s grandchildren were there.

Family reunion--Halina Bereday's grandchildren and great grandchildren

Family reunion–Halina Bereday’s grandchildren and great grandchildren

We are Halina’s legacy.

It has long been my desire to fulfill my Babcia’s wish to be buried in Poland. Our reunion seemed like a good time to take steps toward making that happen. Babcia was cremated over twenty years ago; I offered to bring her ashes to Warsaw, where she can be buried beside her husband Zygmunt Bereda. This is what she wanted. Fortunately, everyone agreed. I’m now in possession of Babcia’s remains and all that is left is to make the arrangements.