Tag Archives: Halina Piwko Bereda

George Bereday and His Vision of Education

09 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by in Bereda, Family, Photographs, Pre-World War II

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , ,

I was happy to receive a package from Poland yesterday–a surprise post-holiday gift? In fact, it was a book by Justyna Wojniak titled Szkoła – Polityka – Prawo: George Zygmunt Fijałkowsky-Bereday i Jego Wizja Edukacji (School, Politics, Law: George Z. F. Bereday and His Vision of Education).

img_20200108_160148_01

School, Politics, Law: George Z. F. Bereday and His Vision of Education by Justyna Wojniak

The author contacted me a year ago to talk about my mother and her brother for her doctoral dissertation about my uncle George Bereday, who was instrumental in establishing the discipline of Comparative Education. Most of the book focuses on Bereday’s scholarly work on the idea of equal education for all, methods for comparing educational systems in different countries, as well as his concerns about equal rights and social justice generally. I will read the whole book eventually, but the first chapter is most relevant to my search for family heritage. Wojniak cites this blog in the chapter about my uncle’s childhood and early life in Poland, and even discusses my mom’s service in the Polish Underground Army during World War II. It’s great to see my work being put to use, and translated into Polish for Polish speakers to read.

I was also amazed to find a photo on page 28 of my babcia with a young George/Jurek on one side and a young Maria/my Mama on the other. They are all smiling, and Babcia holds both children by the hand. It’s winter–they are wrapped up in warm coats, hats, gloves, and boots, walking along a gravel road with barren trees in the background. I would guess my mom is about six years old and Uncle George about eight, which would make it around 1928 or 1929. Based on the time and rural setting, my guess is it was taken at Dębinki, the estate outside of Warsaw where they lived from about 1928-1934. Mama always said those were the happiest years of her life.

img_20200109_150120152

George/Jerzy, Halina/my Babcia, and Maria/my Mama Bereda in Poland around 1928 or 1929.

I have never seen this photo before. In fact, I don’t recall ever seeing a photo of my mother as a child. And even more surprisingly, the source of the photo is my own cousin Krysia! We’ve been in touch, and I’m counting on her to send me a better copy than this one.

Super Kosher Cookies and Sliced Ham

07 Thursday Jan 2016

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

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)
Anna, Miriam, and Susi (descendants of Abram, son of Jankel and Tema).
Arline, Joan (descendant of Liba Piwko and Jacob Winawer), Krysia (descendant of Halina Piwko Bereday), and Jodi (Joan’s daughter)
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)
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 Jacoby) 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.

Mothers and Daughters

24 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in Family

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

My friend Justyna, a regular reader of the blog, remarked recently, “I don’t hear/see that much about men in your mom’s family.” And she’s right. Most of the relatives I knew growing up were female—Mama, Babcia, Auntie Nunia, Aunt Teresa. Most of the family stories featured them and a few other female relatives—Auntie Lusia, Mama’s cousins big Pauline and little Pauline. A simple explanation might be longevity; the men died young and the women lived much longer. Babcia lived to 99, Auntie Nunia to 97. But there’s more to it than that. I come from a long line of strong women. Each one made an impression on those around her, though each did so in her own way.

I get the sense that another thing that was passed down was close, but contentious relationships between mothers and daughters. Perhaps it’s inevitable when strong personalities collide.

I don’t know a lot about my grandmother’s relationship with her mother. All my mom has told me about her grandmother is that she was physically small but she took charge in her large family. She had a dozen children over 24 years, starting with a daughter when she was just 19 and ending with twins at age 43. After the twins (one of whom died as an infant, the other as a teenager), my grandmother was the youngest. Looking at them together in the photo that launched my search for my Jewish heritage, I imagine they probably loved each other but drove each other crazy. More likely than not, my great grandmother was a very religious Jew. My grandmother was fun loving and bold, and eventually rejected her religion and her family for a life in Warsaw society.

My grandmother and great grandmother around 1919

My grandmother and great grandmother around 1919

I dissect the specific features captured in the photo, scouring them for hints about the people photographed. Babcia’s dress is silken, with what looks like a fabric train in back, a light colored inset at the bodice, and a rose-like adornment at her waistline. Even more striking is the dress’s length, reaching only to mid-calf and revealing a stockinged leg and high heels. Her mother, by contrast, wears a long dark dress made of matte fabric except for a silky dark addition at the wrists and shoulders. My grandmother looks coquettishly into the camera; though she does not smile, you can almost see her dimples. Her mother’s expression is serous. The thing that hints most directly at their relationship is the way my grandmother grips her mother’s hand. But what does this gesture say? Is it a sign of affection? Might it be an indication of special intimacy? Or perhaps is my grandmother expressing her possessiveness? Or her power over her mother? My great grandmother rests her hands on her knees straight in front her. My grandmother’s knees are turned toward her mother, her body at an angle to the camera.

I talked about this photo at a conference recently, and remarked how my grandmother is more brightly lit than anyone else in the photo. She’s positioned in the foreground as if she is preparing to leap out of the frame. When I described the way my grandmother clasps her mother’s wrist, and asked what it might communicate about their relationship, someone suggested it might not be a gesture of affection or power so much as reassurance. As if my grandmother knew she would leave her mother soon, and wanted to reassure her everything would be alright.

My Mama and Babcia were in many ways opposites, also. Mama was shy to the point of fearful of social situations; Babcia thrived as the center of attention. And yet, both could command any room they entered. Partly, this is a product of upbringing. They knew how to dress elegantly and carried themselves with an air of refinement that stood out in casual American settings. While Babcia entertained and commanded, Mama was more likely to draw people out and empathize with them.

Their relationship was complicated. On one hand, they depended on each other throughout their lives. Babcia helped Mama when she was injured and had to find a way out of Poland. Mama helped Babcia when she grew older, managing her finances and taking the train into the city from Long Island to visit every week. On the other hand, I get the impression Mama resented being “abandoned” by her mother at two critical junctures in her life. The first time was when she was left with an aunt as a very young child when Babcia ran away from her first husband and remarried. The second time was when Mama became a mother (eventually of four children) but Babcia decided to move to Puerto Rico. Further, Mama was deeply hurt and resentful when toward the end of her life, Babcia treated her poorly and failed to appreciate everything Mama did for her. Intellectually, she knew Babcia’s ill temper was a product of age and illness, but that didn’t ease the sting of feeling her efforts unrecognized. I think my mother was inordinately sensitive to her mother’s criticism, and perhaps annoyed with herself that it mattered so much. But maybe (probably) I’m projecting because that’s how I feel about my relationship with my mother.

The Galbraiths with Babcia outside Babcia's apartment on Riverside Drive sometime in the early 1980s, Mama in her beret.

The Galbraiths with Babcia outside Babcia’s apartment on Riverside Drive sometime in the early 1980s.

There are very few pictures of my mother together with my grandmother. Mama was reluctant to have her photo taken any time with anyone. This one, taken outside of Babcia’s apartment sometime around the early 1980s, is interesting for two reasons. First, it shows the distinctive style of both women. Second, there’s a hand on Babcia’s shoulder, probably my brother Chris’s [oops. Krysia’s right. It’s Wiley’s hand 10-29-15]. This gesture appears in many family photographs.

It’s hard for me to say if I am very similar to my mother or very different. It’s probably both, though neither made it easy for us to get along. I have no doubt that I became a professor, in part, to realize her dream for me—a dream she gave up for herself in order to have a “normal life” as a wife and mother. Perhaps it’s typical of my generation that I was raised believing I can have it all (and I more or less do, but there’s a price to pay for that, too). It’s hard to find the words to describe our relationship. What comes out is either a string of platitudes or far too much detail. Suffice it to say we were very close. So close, I was angry with her most of the time between the ages of 13 and 33, probably as a way of separating and asserting my autonomy. Mama was simultaneously weak and strong, shy and bold, afraid of meeting people and quick to establish intimacy with them. It drove me crazy that all my friends loved her and confided in her when I felt like I couldn’t talk to her myself. I’m just grateful that I finally stopped being mad. And now that I can’t talk with her anymore, I miss her. She was the person I was most likely to turn to in a crisis, like the time I was in labor, Ian was breech, and I and couldn’t think clearly enough to decide whether to continue with a natural childbirth or have a Cesarean section. She knew what to say to reassure me, to help me make the right decision.

Mama's 90th birthday, celebrated in white.

Mama’s 90th birthday, celebrated in white.

This photo is from Mama’s 90th birthday party in June 2012. Mama had often talked about wanting to have a white party in her garden. So my brothers and I made it happen. Dozens of relatives, friends, and even former neighbors came to celebrate, and everyone really did dress in white. In this photo, I notice again our hands. My brothers and I form a protective ring around Mama, our hands on her arm or shoulder, and Chris with his other hand on Wiley’s shoulder. We do so casually, an unorchestrated mark of intimacy and affection. And an appropriate complement to the photo of my grandmother with her hand placed upon her mother’s wrist.

Hair

13 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by in Family, Identity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

1st generation I have photos of: my great-granmother Hinda (Walfisz) Piwko with an impressive mass of hair.

1st generation I have photos of: my great-granmother Hinda (Walfisz) Piwko with an impressive mass of hair.

The women in my family have thick, wavy hair. My great-grandmother Hinda and her daughters all had it (see the photo at the head of this blog). In fact, in Aunt Pat’s notes (probably dictated from a conversation with Auntie Nunia), Sarah was identified by her “beautiful hair,” and Rachel by her “thick, thick hair.” When I was a child, Babcia and Auntie Nunia wore their long silver locks in buns piled high on their heads; I now know from photos that their sisters Liba, Sarah, and Rachel did the same.

I remember watching as Babcia let down her hair at night, and brushed it until it formed an undulating frame around her that extended past her waist. Then she plaited it into two braids. During the day, she wound the braids around her head and held them in place with pins and a hair net.

2nd generation: Babcia wound two braids high on her head and held them in place with pins and a hair net.

2nd generation: Babcia wound two braids high on her head and held them in place with pins and a hair net.

I can’t remember exactly when this was. Could it have been in Puerto Rico when I was five? That seems too early, but I think I was still a child. She kept her hair long until it got too difficult for her to lift her arms and pin it back. Cut short, her hair made a curly silver halo around her face.

My mama inherited this wavy hair, only she wore it differently. She favored a blunt cut to the shoulders, with long straight bangs across her forehead. The bangs were styled to cover the the uneven discolored surface that grew back after the skin of her forehead was removed to use in the reconstruction of her nose. While she couldn’t hide the imperfect nose left by numerous failed surgeries, she could use her hair to hide the scars on her forehead. But it was a struggle. Left to itself, her hair curled in different directions. What she longed for was an even, thick curtain that would lie flat across the terrain she sought to conceal.

3rd generation: Mama with her unruly bangs around 1965 feeding my brother Chris

3rd generation: Mama with her unruly bangs around 1965 feeding my brother Chris

Over the years, she developed a technique where she would tie a scarf around her wet head so the bangs would dry in place. She joked it made her look like an Indian. The struggle didn’t end there. To protect against the wind exposing her scars, she held her bangs in place with hats—when I was younger she favored berets, an exotic but elegant choice that stood out in suburban Long Island.

Even as she battled her wayward locks, I admired Mama’s soft waves. I liked to stroke her head, and wished my light stringy hair were more like hers. Luckily, when I grew older, my hair became darker, and along with it, thicker and more curly. On a good day, I might have waves like Veronica Lake, or even sometimes ringlets.

4th generation: my curls

4th generation: my curls

I’ve almost always worn my own hair long. Only once, right after my brother Ron died, I cut it short. So short I looked like a boy. Perhaps it was an act of mourning. Definitely, I was motivated by the desire for a radical change. I was just a few months away from beginning my dissertation fieldwork in Poland. Short hair was liberating. It dried almost instantly, and didn’t even need combing. When it grew just a bit longer, it curled around my face much as my grandmother’s had. But still, I didn’t like it and have never cut it short again.

When I first started looking into my Jewish heritage, I told a good friend about what I was learning. Before then, he hadn’t known; it wasn’t something I had talked about with anyone, really. At some point in the conversation, he remarked that I have Jewish hair. Surprised, I asked what he means. He described my hair as wavy (though he might even have said frizzy) and coarse. This unsettled me. I have often returned to this moment, and tried to understand why. Perhaps it’s as simple as hearing something I love about myself described negatively (who wants to have coarse hair?) But it’s more than that. I like my freckles, too, and when people have encouraged me to try to hide them I’ve only been amused. So maybe my uneasiness has something to do with being stereotyped, or maybe even with stereotypes in general.

Nevertheless, this idea of Jewish hair has continued to bother me. I spent a lot of time on the trams in Poland inspecting everyone’s hair. Sure enough, it seems that most Poles have straight, thin hair. So could there be something to this idea that my curls mark me as Jewish? I hate this kind of categorical thinking, though. This is probably the key thing; it may well be that most Poles have straight hair, but many have curly hair, too. Furthermore, maybe my waves come from my Dad’s side of the family. Scots can have wavy hair, as well. In fact, lots of people from many different backgrounds have hair like mine. Genetic inheritance is not as simple as “Jewish hair” suggests.

I hesitate to even write about this because it has the potential to just perpetuate the kind of categorical thinking I want to argue against. I mentioned my hair in a talk I gave at a conference in Poland, and I feel it backfired. Afterwards a couple of people talked to me about “Jewish hair,” trying it out as a new physical trait to assign to a category of people. It left me feeling uneasy.

I’m still trying to sort this all out. I love my hair, and I love that I share it with a long line of women, from my mother to her mother to her mother. I feel richer knowing that I have Jewish roots. But I have a problem with stereotypes, and the lazy way designations like “Jewish hair” can be used to make traits that may well be common in a population into essentialized markers.

So standing in solidarity with all the straight-haired Jews, curly-haired Poles, and everyone else who does and doesn’t fit ethnic stereotypes, I wish you a Happy New Year. May the coming year bring health, happiness, and better understanding regardless of our similarities and differences.

Babcia and her sister Rachel

16 Sunday Aug 2015

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

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

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.