Tag #156242 - Interview #78541 (Emilia Ratz)

We considered the Kielce Pogrom 19 a ‘slip’. We thought it was ‘yesterday’s people’ who had done that. Cracow was a cultural center, a former capital of Poland. Many intellectuals lived there. In any case I wouldn’t say that there was a particular atmosphere for pogroms there. However, there was pressure from above, to assimilate, to adopt Polish surnames, but they only issued the documents in 1947 or 48. They summoned us to the militia and said we should change our name, Ratz, to something like Raczynski or Rakowski. Upon that my husband said, ‘The only thing left of my family is my name, and I won’t change it!’ Most Jews in Poland did change their Jewish surnames though.