04 Monday May 2020
Posted in Bereda, Family, Genealogy, Identity, Israel, Kolski, Photographs, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Pre-World War II, Warsaw, World War II, Włocławek
Now, the English-language MyHeritage blog has a story about us: Hidden Photo Reveals a Secret Past and Reunites a Family, written by Talya Ladell.
The article also contains cool colorized photos. You can compare the black and white originals with the color copies by dragging the cursor over the image.
Babcia Halina in Florida during the 1950s. Colorized photo
23 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Bereda, Family, Genealogy, Israel, Kolski, Photographs, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Pre-World War II, Survival, Trauma, Warsaw, World War II, Włocławek
I met my cousin Pini Doron in 2013 when I found his family tree online and wrote to ask if we might be related. He asked for proof, so I sent him the photo in the header of this blog, which he recognized from his own copy. He wrote back “welcome to the family” and ever since I have felt embraced by my extended family in Israel, with Pini at the heart of it. The photo, which includes both of our grandmothers, confirmed that we are cousins.
Last week, we were contacted by Nitay Elboym, who writes for the MyHeritage Hebrew-language blog. He decided to write about our family in commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s a story of connections and separations that span a century.
You can find it in Hebrew at the Internet news service YNet:
and in the MyHeritage blog:
Colorized photo of the family from about 1916. Marysia’s grandmother is sitting on the left and Pini’s grandmother is standing on the right
Thanks to a photo and a family tree: a Holocaust survivor son has found family members who disappeared
By Nitay Elboym
April 21, 2020
74-year-old Pini Doron of Hod Hasharon is a longtime MyHeritage user who built a family tree for many years dating back to 1800. Pini thought he had already finished his search, when he received a message with an old family picture. This time, he realized immediately, it was an extraordinary discovery.
“I get a lot of inquiries from people who think they’re related to me,” Pini says. “I am usually skeptical of my relation to them, so I politely ask everyone to explain how we are connected. In this case too, when I received the message, I responded that I would love to know what our family relationship is,” he recalls.
“Actually, at that time, I was pretty much at the beginning of my family history research,” recalls Marysia Galbraith, a professor of anthropology at the University of Alabama, USA. “I was looking for bits of information wherever possible. But when I saw Pini’s family tree on MyHeritage, I knew it was about me, I just didn’t know how. In short, I had no idea how to prove to him how I was related to his family tree, so I just sent the only picture I had. Besides my grandmother, I didn’t know who the people were. Then he answered me ‘Welcome to family.’ His reply almost made me cry. ”
The Piwko family lived in the town of Wloclawek, Poland. At the outbreak of World War II, Pini’s grandparents – Pinchas Kolski and his wife Rachel (nee Piwko) – and their two children, Mirka and Samek, were left there while Pini’s father was saved because he and his two brothers were sent to Israel before the war to work the family lands in Kfar Ata. “Because their city of residence was close to Warsaw, they were transferred to the Warsaw ghetto right at the beginning of the war, around 1940,” Pini says. “In the ghetto, Samek was murdered, and my grandfather died of illness. So my grandmother and her daughter Mirka were left alone, looking for a way to survive.”
Mirka and Rachel Kolski at Pinchas Kolski’s grave in the Warsaw Ghetto
Meanwhile, Rachel’s sister, Halina, lived in relative safety outside the Warsaw ghetto, because after divorcing her first Jewish husband, she remarried a Christian man named Zygmunt Bereda. “Rachel and Halina’s father were not ready to hear about this relationship. So, when she married a Christian, he sat shiva on her,” said Pini. “Her sisters tried from time to time to keep in touch, but because of their father, the connection got weaker.” Halina and Rachel’s father, who passed away around 1930, could not have imagined that it was precisely the person who, because of his religious identity, he rejected, would save not only his daughters, but also his other descendants.
When Halina told Zygmunt that her sister was in the ghetto alone with her daughter, he decided to come to their aid despite the risk involved. “Zygmunt was a very successful businessman with a lot of property. In addition, he probably had many connections, which opened doors to him that were closed to others,” explains Marysia. “He used these connections to forge documents for Rachel and her sister, which allowed them to escape the ghetto.”
Halina Bereda, Marysia’s grandmother. She and her Christian husband saved the family
Zygmunt Bereda. A Polish Christian who saved the family of his Jewish wife
But the matter did not end here. Zygmunt and Halina protected the two after they left the ghetto and hid them in buildings they owned throughout the war. At the same time, they were able to forge additional documents that allowed them to leave Poland to Switzerland, and from there, in 1949, the two immigrated to Israel.
“Years of disconnection ended thanks to a surviving photo and family tree on the MyHeritage website. Ever since we started chatting, I have found that Marysia isn’t only a wonderful person, she is also a thoughtful researcher,” says Pini. “She has set up a blog where she writes personally and collects her interesting findings. Everything she does is well organized, backed up by documents, and she knows how to find almost everything. She even studied Polish, which probably helps her a lot in genealogical research.”
At the end of the war, Warsaw was devastated by the bombings. The many businesses and houses that Zygmunt owned were also destroyed. He and Halina lost their property and had no place to live. The rescuers now needed help, and the one who came to their aid was the former wife of Samek, Rachel’s son who died in the Holocaust. After the war Halina and her daughter Maria, Marysia’s mother, immigrated to the United States and settled there.
“The truth was kept from us,” says Marysia, who has grown up as a Christian all her life. “For years, family members have been whispering about being Jewish, but never really getting into it. I have spent a long time trying to figure out why my mother and grandmother hid their Jewish heritage and why they were not in contact with Rachel. I think the trauma of the Holocaust left a deep scar on my grandmother. She thought, “If they don’t know, then it won’t hurt them.” That’s probably why they didn’t keep in touch with Rachel and her descendants in Israel.”
Since the family tree has linked Pini to Marysia the two speak regularly, and they have also met in Israel and in Poland with other family members. “When we went to the graves of our families, the sight was unusual. On one side of the cemetery wall are Jews with a rabbi, and on the other side are Christians with a priest,” Pini recalls. “But what is important? In the end, we are human beings and destiny connected us together.”
During the roots journey to Poland. Pini stands to the left and beside him Marysia
Pini’s Tree showing the family connection between Pini and Marysia
The image that led to the discovery – now in color
To revive the old image that made the exciting discovery, the company’s investigators used the MyHeritage In Color ™ auto-coloring tool and sent the result to Pini and Marysia. “It’s wonderful,” says Marysia. “I’m going to share the colorized picture with my family, including my 90-year-old aunt who will be especially happy.”
Colorized photo of the family from about 1916
31 Thursday Dec 2015
Posted in Brześć Kujawski, Buk, Cemeteries, Family, Heritage work, Israel, Jewish Culture, Lutowiska, Memory, Poland, Polish Culture, Polish-Jewish Heritage, Polish-Jewish relations, Post-World War II, Poznan, Pre-World War II, Research Methodology, Skierniewice, Synagogues, World War II, Wronki, Włocławek
The lecture I gave at UA September 3, 2015 about my research during my Fulbright Fellowship is now available on vimeo. I’ve never seen myself lecture before. It’s a little unsettling. Still, here it is, flaws and all (for instance I know that Poland entered the European Union in 2004, even though I misspoke here).
I talk a little about the Fulbright Program–the kinds of grants available and some tips for applying.
It’s also a good introduction to my ideas about reassembling Jewish life: the strands that I’m following, what has been lost, what can be recovered, and how memory projects at sites throughout Poland intertwine with my own search for my family history. I hear echoes of some of the scholars I’ve read–Iwona Irwin Zarecka and Marianne Hirsch, as well as my sometime collaborator Malgosia Wosińska. There is no way to bring back what has been lost, but fragments of the past can be reassembled to form a new kind of life that allows for connection with what used to be and what yet might be.
03 Thursday Sep 2015
Posted in Identity, Israel, Jewish Culture, Memory, Warsaw
One of the things I like about the blog format is that it is episodic. A flash of vision or memory appears from nowhere, and then stays around for a while. I can examine it for a while, tossing it around in my mind until its outlines grow more clear. Rarely does it unfold chronologically. So here it is September in Alabama, six months and half a world away from my trip to Israel, and yet Israel is what I have on my mind.
A big part of it is that I just finished Jackie Feldman’s book about Israeli youth voyages to Poland. Each year, thousands of Israeli youth participate in organized trips to Poland to visit the death camps and to connect more strongly with their Israeli national identity. Feldman shows how the voyages (because that’s what the trips are called) reinforce a particular narrative dividing Jewish history into three epochs: Antiquity, Exile, and Zionist settlement of the Land of Israel (p. 12). Antiquity refers to the period of sovereignty of the Isrealite kingdom. A narrative of the other two epochs plays out on the voyages—from suffering and persecution in Europe during the long period of Exile culminating in the Holocaust, to revival of Jewish national life in the contemporary state of Israel. As such, Poland represents oppression and death in Exile, while Israel represents freedom and life in the homeland.
Feldman argues that these trips, most of which are subsidized by the Israeli government, are akin to pilgrimages—a journey to a sacred place involving a break from everyday social lives and hierarchies into a liminal space filled with intense physical and emotional experiences as well as transmission of cultural, symbolic knowledge. Pilgrims return transformed, ready to reintegrate into society, but in a new social status (in this case, they transform from youths to adults and ambassadors of the lessons learned about their Jewish heritage and Israeli citizenship). I like Feldman’s book because he effectively shows how this transformation is fueled primarily by emotion and sensation—through the body—more than through cognition and learning. This is consistent with my own observations on a Polish pilgrimage to Częstochowa many years ago.
Muranów, Warsaw
The book also brings home to me another thing I have observed: that the symbolic significance of Poland is quite different for me than it is for most Jews I have met. So are the emotional associations. Many Jews view Poland both symbolically and materially as a vast killing ground and graveyard. I have felt this myself, especially in places like Muranów in Warsaw, the prewar Jewish quarter that was at the heart of the Jewish ghetto during World War II. When the district was rebuilt in the postwar period, the rubble heaps (doubtless containing the bodies of victims) were left in place and new buildings were built right on top of them. This has created a district that is jarringly pleasant. The raised terraces break up the mostly flat city terrain creating intimate interior courtyards and slopes for lush gardens. But knowing the district’s history, it is hard to not feel uneasy about walking on the victims of the Holocaust.
Muranów, Warsaw
Still, for me, Poland is the lost homeland of my mother—a place she mythologized and longed for. These associations were also tragic, because she knew return was not possible. But no doubt that also contributed to the magic. As an imagined place, Poland did not need to accommodate the harsh realities of postwar devastation or state socialism–or the Holocaust. And also, I’ve built my own memories of Poland over the past 25 years. I’ve witnessed the country’s “colorization” as it evolved from state socialist greyness into consumer-fueled color. My time there has always been marked as “special,” separate from the humdrum of everyday life. It’s become a second home to me. Marked as it is by my use of a second language, I also visit another version of myself in Poland, the Polish-speaking one, the foreigner, but also the native daughter returning to the homeland. In short, unlike the Israeli voyagers (for whom Poland represents death and Israel life), I return to life in Poland. Life in the face of displacement and death, perhaps even in defiance of that difficult history.
I thought I was going to write a description of my visit to Israel, but this has turned into a more reflective piece about place and identity. I’ll have to get to my memories of Israel next time.
16 Sunday Aug 2015
Tags
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 Danek, 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.
Following up on yesterday’s post, cousin Nelly Kolski Kampf who is the granddaughter and namesake of Nelly Kolska Mochorowska and daughter of the standing boy in the photo, wrote:
The child in the picture named Bogdan is my father. He was born as Danek Kolski and during the war his name was changed to Bogdan to help him to hide and when he came to Israel he changed his name again to Daniel (Danek) Kolski.
He was with my grandfather Samek my grandmother Nelly, Babcha Rachel and Mirka together in the Ghetto.
The name Bereda was mentioned by my father (who was a child during the war) that help them to escape from the Ghetto.
So Bogdan was Daniel; he was also Danek. Some cousins call him Dani.
Daniel/Bogdan/Danek/Dani Kolski c. 1949
Back of Danek’s photo. The first word was corrected, but probably was intended to be “Najkochańszej” which means “most beloved.” The printer stamp shows the photo was from Poland.
This is a photo of young Danek. Written in Polish on the back in a child’s hand is: “To my most beloved grandmother, Bogdan.” I can’t make out the word on the front though it clearly begins with a “D” and is in an adult’s hand. He was born in 1937, so he would have been around 7 when the war ended. Danek looks here like he is about the age of my almost-twelve-year-old son, so this was after the war–around 1949?
I asked Nelly (Kampf) if they used the term “Babcia” at home. She said yes; her parents spoke Polish to each other, so Danek’s grandmother Rachel was called “Babcia.”
Samek and Nelly (Służewska) Kolski’s wedding photo.
I met Nelly (the granddaughter of Samek and Nelly), her husband, and two younger children at Pini (another grandchild of Rachel’s) and Pnina’s house in Israel. I felt an immediate strong connection with her. She brought her father’s family album, as well as pages from a book about the Jewish history of Włocławek. I’ve been going through old photos and notes, but creating a narrative out of everything is taking too much time. Better to post this update now and get to the rest of the story in a later post.
Nelly and her husband Nir, February 2015
Cousins–my son Ian on the left and Nelly’s son Asaf on the right. I see a resemblance between Asaf and his grandfather Danek.
