Zlatka moved to Warsaw to study when she was 16. She studied Polish history at the Warsaw University. She already had Communist sympathies back then. She spent a year in prison for some political affairs. With a sentence like this she was unable to find a work as a teacher. She gave private lessons; she was a very good math tutor. She earned so well on tuition that she was even able to help Mom a little.
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Displaying 30151 - 30180 of 50826 results
Zuzanna Mensz
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Hilka and I were born already in Lublin. We lived in a house on 1 Cicha Street. Cicha was a small cross-street of Trzeciego Maja Street, right in the center of Lublin. There were many Jews living in Lublin, in some quarters more than in the others. On Lubartowska Street, in the Old Town, beyond the Grodzka Gate around the synagogue lived almost exclusively Jews I think. But there were no formal restrictions. Neither we nor Grandpa Rosset lived in the Jewish quarter.
We had a second floor apartment, with a balcony, three rooms, and a kitchen, no bathroom. Zlatka had her own tiny room while she still lived with us in Lublin. It was a narrow room with a bed and a bookshelf. The dining room and parents’ bedroom were big. We had nice, solid furniture in the ‘gdanski’ style [huge, dark, ornate, middle-class], Mom got them as a gift before she got married. The rooms formed a suite, the kitchen was spacious, a hall, balcony. It was very cozy in there. It was nothing luxurious; our friends said the apartment was dark. Mom sold it all when Father died and she wanted to move away.
Was my family wealthy? Middle-class, I’d say. We had that apartment, which cost much, the food was cheap, Father was paying for my sister’s studies. Mom always used to argue with Father - that he wasn’t bringing enough money, that he was helping his family; she wanted us to have bicycles for example and he couldn’t afford that. But generally we had everything we needed.
Throughout my childhood, until my Father’s death, we always had a maid. Mom would usually bring some girls from the country, from Skryhiczyn. One of them was Olga Mickiewicz, who was Christian-Orthodox. There was this story about her that she got appendicitis while she lived with us and she was treated in the Holy Ghost Hospital, managed by the Sisters of Charity [Catholic nuns, whose mission is looking after the sick]. We went to see her every day, and when she got well and came back home it turned out she had vowed to one of the sisters that she will convert to Catholicism. The sisters started to pay us visits, because they wanted her to keep her promise. The girl had to quit [her job as Rossets’ maid] and go back home, because she was not willing to change her confession after all. The last of our housekeepers was called Jadzia, a very nice, gentle girl. She had a fiancé, who later left her and my sister Zlata took care of her and soon enough turned her into a leftist activist and had her come to Warsaw. Having a maid wasn’t all that expensive back then. Mom used to sew for us by herself, she did the shopping, but we always had a housekeeper.
We had a second floor apartment, with a balcony, three rooms, and a kitchen, no bathroom. Zlatka had her own tiny room while she still lived with us in Lublin. It was a narrow room with a bed and a bookshelf. The dining room and parents’ bedroom were big. We had nice, solid furniture in the ‘gdanski’ style [huge, dark, ornate, middle-class], Mom got them as a gift before she got married. The rooms formed a suite, the kitchen was spacious, a hall, balcony. It was very cozy in there. It was nothing luxurious; our friends said the apartment was dark. Mom sold it all when Father died and she wanted to move away.
Was my family wealthy? Middle-class, I’d say. We had that apartment, which cost much, the food was cheap, Father was paying for my sister’s studies. Mom always used to argue with Father - that he wasn’t bringing enough money, that he was helping his family; she wanted us to have bicycles for example and he couldn’t afford that. But generally we had everything we needed.
Throughout my childhood, until my Father’s death, we always had a maid. Mom would usually bring some girls from the country, from Skryhiczyn. One of them was Olga Mickiewicz, who was Christian-Orthodox. There was this story about her that she got appendicitis while she lived with us and she was treated in the Holy Ghost Hospital, managed by the Sisters of Charity [Catholic nuns, whose mission is looking after the sick]. We went to see her every day, and when she got well and came back home it turned out she had vowed to one of the sisters that she will convert to Catholicism. The sisters started to pay us visits, because they wanted her to keep her promise. The girl had to quit [her job as Rossets’ maid] and go back home, because she was not willing to change her confession after all. The last of our housekeepers was called Jadzia, a very nice, gentle girl. She had a fiancé, who later left her and my sister Zlata took care of her and soon enough turned her into a leftist activist and had her come to Warsaw. Having a maid wasn’t all that expensive back then. Mom used to sew for us by herself, she did the shopping, but we always had a housekeeper.
We spoke Polish at home. Mom spoke Yiddish, Polish, and Hebrew, because some families in Skryhiczyn spoke Hebrew [Knowledge of Hebrew in the Rottenberg family resulted from the religiousness of the elder generation on one hand and the popularity of Zionism among the young on the other]. Grandpa and Grandma Rosset spoke Yiddish. I don’t know why, but it so happened that our parents spoke to us in Polish and used Yiddish when talking to each other. I was accustomed to Yiddish, I understood everything, I could read, I remember there were only Yiddish papers in the house. Father tried to introduce us to Jewishness, he told us about the holidays, taught us Hebrew. I’ve forgotten everything since.
We celebrated all the holidays, Father always made sure we did. I remember Easter [Pesach] the best, because then we’d have the seder, a festive family supper, and my sister would come from Warsaw. The house had to be cleaned, scrubbed before the Holidays, including all the drawers. I remember I once found, to my horror, a slice of dried bread in my table drawer. I didn’t tell my Father and threw it out as soon as possible. We had a separate set of dishes, used exclusively on Easter. If a particular dish wasn’t double [without a Pesach counterpart], it had to be put into boiling water. The cupboard was full of matzot, we were not allowed to eat a single slice of bread for the whole eight days, and indeed we didn’t. We only ate matzot, which Mom would use to prepare many different dishes, for example a cake from matzah flour that you bake similarly to a sponge-cake, or an omelette, the so-called matzebray. You make it like this: first you soak the matzot in water or milk, then add some eggs, two eggs for two matzot, whip the whites, add some salt to taste. You then form a sort of pancake out the mass and fry it on a pan. I still prepare it sometimes.
The seder looked like this: Father sat on a coach in the dining room, the table was pushed closer to the coach, Mom would place pillows on it, because the tradition demanded that the head of the family was comfortable. We all sat at the table, the candles were lit. Father had some matzot of special importance. There was that custom that children could steal the matzot from their father and hide them, he would look for them and if he couldn’t find them, the children could say wishes and he had to fulfill them. [Editor’s note: The most popular form of the custom was different. The last piece of matzah was hidden from the children and they were given small gifts when they found it.] Naturally, Father had never found any matzot and we could say a wish. Mom prompted us to ask for bikes, but either we had different dreams or we had mercy on him, and our wishes were much more modest… I remember asking him for a drawing pad, oh, Mom was so angry with me! Father would naturally promise to buy the things we wanted, we’d show him where the matzot were and the seder would start. There is this custom that during the seder a child asks its father four questions about the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. I was always the one to ask, although it was supposed to be the youngest child. My sister Hilka was very moody and she wouldn’t always do what she was asked to. So it was me who asked the questions in Hebrew and Father answered, reading them aloud. That [Exodus] Haggadah is very long but I think he only read excerpts of it because I don’t remember being bored at the table, just some joking, laughing, and finally a normal supper, consisting usually of dishes like broth and chicken. In the meantime Father would drink six, I think, glasses of wine. We weren’t given the wine, maybe a sip. Father would always joke a bit when drinking the wine. There was also a glass left for the prophet, but he never showed up.
The seder looked like this: Father sat on a coach in the dining room, the table was pushed closer to the coach, Mom would place pillows on it, because the tradition demanded that the head of the family was comfortable. We all sat at the table, the candles were lit. Father had some matzot of special importance. There was that custom that children could steal the matzot from their father and hide them, he would look for them and if he couldn’t find them, the children could say wishes and he had to fulfill them. [Editor’s note: The most popular form of the custom was different. The last piece of matzah was hidden from the children and they were given small gifts when they found it.] Naturally, Father had never found any matzot and we could say a wish. Mom prompted us to ask for bikes, but either we had different dreams or we had mercy on him, and our wishes were much more modest… I remember asking him for a drawing pad, oh, Mom was so angry with me! Father would naturally promise to buy the things we wanted, we’d show him where the matzot were and the seder would start. There is this custom that during the seder a child asks its father four questions about the Jewish Exodus from Egypt. I was always the one to ask, although it was supposed to be the youngest child. My sister Hilka was very moody and she wouldn’t always do what she was asked to. So it was me who asked the questions in Hebrew and Father answered, reading them aloud. That [Exodus] Haggadah is very long but I think he only read excerpts of it because I don’t remember being bored at the table, just some joking, laughing, and finally a normal supper, consisting usually of dishes like broth and chicken. In the meantime Father would drink six, I think, glasses of wine. We weren’t given the wine, maybe a sip. Father would always joke a bit when drinking the wine. There was also a glass left for the prophet, but he never showed up.
And there were also Kuczki [Sukkot] in the Fall. A shack would be made in Grandpa Rosset’s backyard and the meals would be eaten in it. There was also Purim, Mom baked special poppy seed cookies for the occasion, they were called hamantashen; it had something to do with a story of some sorts [the story of the evil Haman]. Purim wasn’t celebrated the way it is done nowadays in Israel, no one wore costumes. We had the Rosh Hashanah holiday, when Father used to say people should enjoy themselves and gave us apples spread with honey. Then Yom Kippur would come, the fast, you weren’t allowed to eat from one evening till the next. My Mother, the kind person she was, always used to bake lots of cakes for that holiday and leave them in an open cupboard so that the children wouldn’t starve to death. And so I just decided to fast once, when I was older; I tried not to eat anything and somehow I made it. Mom, however, always fasted and went to the synagogue with my Father. That was the only occasion she would pray. I guess that’s the most important holiday of all, Yom Kippur.
Many of the younger members of our Skryhiczyn family left for Israel [Editor’s note: Palestine] before the war.
Mom convinced Father to send us to a public school, where you had to attend on Saturdays, instead of a private, expensive Jewish gymnasium. Father wouldn’t allow it at first but we had no money. A public gymnasium was much cheaper – the monthly tuition fee was 20 zlotys, while the private ones cost 60 zlotys [a craftsman earned on average approx. 60 zlotys per month]. The problem was, they allowed only ten percent of the students to be Jewish 9; out of 30 students [in the class] there was the three of us Jewish girls. There was an entry exam. I passed it and was admitted. The school was called the Union of Lublin Public [Girls’] Gymnasium.
I sure had school friends, we went to see each other. I remember Zosia Grudzinska, I met her in Lublin after the war. Many of them were killed. I had a friend in a higher grade, she was called Halinka Zandberg. We met in Lwow during the war, she already had a child, her husband was in the army. I know she was killed in the Lublin ghetto.
I had two major influences around me: my sister agitated for Communism and my cousin Sara Leja from Skryhiczyn for Zionism. And I was unfortunately very easily influenced… I remember Sara always took walks with me one summer and agitated. I guess it would be probably better for me if I opted for Zionism. Eventually, however, I followed my sister’s steps. There was this youth organization in Lublin, active in many schools which were under Communist influence. When I was in fifth or sixth grade my sister asked a friend to coach me, and I started to attend a self-study club. We read pamphlets by Radek [Karol Radek, real name Sobelson (1885-1939) – born in Poland, Communist activist in the Soviet Union, he took part in the October Revolution, sentenced for 10 years in 1937, he died in prison], we learned from them.
Volodymir was a cheap place; you could find an apartment easily. I completed gymnasium there, I went to the public Copernicus Gymnasium.
After my exams I went to Warsaw, to my sister Zlatka. Mom stayed in Volodymir with Hilka. We lived in a rented room on Ogrodowa Street. My sister made her living with private tutoring, I also got a few people to coach and that’s how I earned some money. But Zlatka wanted me badly to have a profession. I said I wanted to become a nurse and she found me a nursing school.
During my first year in Warsaw I stayed with my sister. Later she moved to Vienna to the man she loved, Srul Bursztyn, who worked there. I think it was in 1937 or 1938. It was an affection dating back to their school years. And anyway, we were friends with his whole family; they lived in Lublin, used to come to Skryhiczyn for the summer. He was a Communist, just like her. Right after she’d arrived there was the Anschluss 11 and Hitler took over Vienna. At that time many communists, with the help from various people, were somehow being transported to England. They were given money for the flight which they returned once they’d reached England. Anyhow, she went to England and someone helped her find a job as a maid. Some time later came her fiancé, who already held an engineering degree, and got a job at a factory. They got married just before the war, in 1939. I remember Mother getting the letter with the news of their wedding. She was happy her daughter got married.
I used to go to the movies a lot before the war. First with Mom, in Lublin, to children’s movies, later with my school and on my own. I still remember seeing Ben Hur in Lublin. In Warsaw I used to go to the Uciecha Movie Theater, on Leszno Street or maybe Wolska Street. It would usually be Polish comedies, starring Dymsza, Bodo [Adolf Dymsza, Eugeniusz Bodo – Polish film actors, entertainers, and pre-war movie stars]. I also saw Soviet movies, which made a huge impression on me, for example Counterplan [aka Turbine Number 50.000, with score by the famous composer Dmitriy Shostakovich], about the making of Socialism, The Road To Life, Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin [Sergey Eisenstein (1898-1948) – innovative Soviet film director and theorist, author of propagandist historical film epics]. Sometimes the nursing school took us to the movies; I remember seeing The Lady Of The Camellias. I didn’t go to the theater that much. I sometimes used to get free tickets to the satirical theater Qui Pro Quo a relative of mine worked at. Krukowski was among the performers [Kazimierz Krukowski (1902-1984) – an actor and entertainer].
When the war broke out I was in Warsaw, at the Czyste hospital. Most of the personnel moved eastwards after the order from the government 12. Maybe five students stayed, the rest went back to their homes. The school was closed. Only the housekeeper stayed and she cooked us meals. We worked at the hospital. The patients able to go home left. When the battles outside the city started the hospital quickly filled up with the wounded, they simply lay all over the floor. Since there were no personnel and no supplies only few of the wards were open, surgery the longest.
During the siege of Warsaw my sister Hilka was in Falenica with Mother. They heard about the bombing and were sure I’d been killed. Hilka came to look for me. We went to Falenica together on foot. Various friends began to show up in Falenica, staying at my Mom’s on their way east [to the Soviet-occupied, eastern parts of Poland]. My sister and I decided to go east as well. Unfortunately, we left Mother in Falenica. We thought we’d have her come as soon as we settled. We had a weak imagination. It later turned out the janitor living with us was German. When the Germans marched in she told my mother to get out because from then on the whole house belonged to her. We didn’t know about it all. Mom went to Skryhiczyn and stayed there. I later found out she went to Lublin on her way from Warsaw and she spoke to a friend she had much respect for and he advised her against going to Russia. He knew it from his own experience: his son had gone to Lwow and later come back because otherwise he would be arrested. Later we tried to bring Mom to us. You could get a special permission from Stalin to cross the border. I got it for Mom and sent it to her in a letter to Falenica. It probably got there too late for her to receive it. And Mom did not come. We exchanged letters later on, I sent her parcels.
Hilka and I left Falenica and went to Skryhiczyn. The border had already been closed, but there were people in Skryhiczyn who could smuggle you by night across the Bug river in a boat [the river Bug defined the demarcation between the German and Soviet occupation zones]. When we got to Skryhiczyn we met my cousin Kalmus with some young people from Lodz and we crossed the Bug together and went to Volodymir-Volyns’kyy.
Hilka and I left Falenica and went to Skryhiczyn. The border had already been closed, but there were people in Skryhiczyn who could smuggle you by night across the Bug river in a boat [the river Bug defined the demarcation between the German and Soviet occupation zones]. When we got to Skryhiczyn we met my cousin Kalmus with some young people from Lodz and we crossed the Bug together and went to Volodymir-Volyns’kyy.
In Volodymir I started to work in an infectious diseases hospital [as a nurse]. It was my first real job and I was very glad to be working at last.
Hilka learned later you could enroll for studying in Lwow and so she went there with some friends. She started to study agriculture. We made a deal I would earn the money for the time being and she would study. She was a very good student, she was very happy. In 1940 I joined her in Lwow. I wanted to study medicine but I failed the entry exams. I started to work at the Na Gorce hospital, in the children’s ward.
And the war broke out again [German – Soviet war, in June 1941] 14, and the Germans bombed Lwow. I remember the day the air strikes began [23rd June] Hilka and our cousin Guta Rotenberg from Volodymir stayed over at my place, we slept on the floor.
A draft notice was waiting for me at home – I was to report to the Soviet army as a nurse. I didn’t even think about disobeying. We decided Hilka would come to me to the barracks everyday and when it was time for me to leave Lwow, she would leave with me. And come she did. There was a terrible air strike one day and they put all of us drafted to the Red Army in a double line and we marched out heading for Kiev. Our commander lead the column for some time and then told us to use whatever means of transport available, because there were lots of cars with people and their belongings and you could get a lift. He said our rallying point was the school in Zhytomir. And somehow I managed to get to that school. In Zhytomir they put us in a freight train to Kiev, and in Kiev we were told there were no uniforms for us, they gave us some pay and disbanded the unit.
Once I got to Kiev I started to visit the places the evacuees from Lwow stayed at looking for my sister but I didn’t find her. Eventually I met a large group of her fellow students and was told she hadn’t left Lwow. She said: ‘Whatever happens to all of us, I’ll stay, too.’ She managed to make it through to our Mother. She stayed with Mom in Skryhiczyn where they were both killed along with everyone else.
Those friends of hers also told me some military group is being formed, that they’d applied but hadn’t been accepted because they came from Poland. I went there and they enlisted me, but only me. Apparently they needed a nurse. Kiev was almost encircled already so we left the city on foot and headed to Poltava.
Uncle Aron wrote me once there was a Polish paper being published in the USSR. It was published by the ZPP, Union of Polish Patriots 15. I subscribed to it. And from the paper I learned a Polish army is being formed and people were invited to enlist. The air was such that I wanted badly to fight; it seemed to me I wasn’t doing enough. So I wrote a couple of letters to Berling 16, to the ZPP, and got a draft notice some time later.
I went to Sielce near Ryazan [a city ca. 180 km southeast of Moscow] where the camp of the Second Dabrowski Division was located 17. It was in August 1943. I was assigned straight to the medical battalion – the sanbat. I wanted to be on the frontline as soon as possible so I volunteered for the assault battalion.
I went to Sielce near Ryazan [a city ca. 180 km southeast of Moscow] where the camp of the Second Dabrowski Division was located 17. It was in August 1943. I was assigned straight to the medical battalion – the sanbat. I wanted to be on the frontline as soon as possible so I volunteered for the assault battalion.
I worked in Lublin as a nurse in the hospital of my military unit. It was a very small hospital. At first it was located in Majdanek 23 in one of the barracks and then we were given some different place. Generally we treated only sick soldiers, there were no wounded. My husband and I were quartered with some strangers. We were not exactly married yet, I didn’t care for all the weddings and formalities. You had to go the commander and announce you were a couple, and you’d be quartered together. We were later transferred to Katowice, to a unit stationed there.
My husband and I were quartered with some strangers. We were not exactly married yet, I didn’t care for all the weddings and formalities. You had to go the commander and announce you were a couple, and you’d be quartered together. We were later transferred to Katowice, to a unit stationed there. I was pregnant at the time and my husband said I ought to at least be able to get a benefit in case he was killed, and so we had a civil marriage.
There was one place in Skryhiczyn we visited regularly. It was the grave of our cousin Niuniek [Arie] Prywes. He was an engineer, he was drafted into the [Polish] army in 1939, his wife and child came to Skryhiczyn and he later joined them, but they didn’t manage to escape on time. He was a teacher there, he gave private lessons. In 1941, I think, a German was killed in the area, so they took three hostages, including Niuniek, and shot them just behind the manor.
My husband was an officer. After spending some time in Katowice, in 1948 I think, he was transferred to Warsaw and we had to leave. We moved into the military quarters on Pulawska Street. Our son fell gravely ill at that time. We were told he got tuberculosis when he was 6 months old. We had a very good pediatrician, his name was Bialecki, and he told us to leave the city with the child. So we rented an apartment in Jozefow [near Warsaw] and I lived there with our son for a year. We couldn’t afford renting an apartment and me being a housewife, even though my husband had his salary and also received some food rations. But my sister Zlatka, who lived in London, helped us then. Some time later, in 1951 I guess, we were given an apartment here [downtown Warsaw]. In 1949 I started to work in the War Veterans Union. I had a decent salary. I worked as a clerk in the social services department. I thought it quite suited my profession. We set up children’s homes, arranged care for the disabled.
My sister Zlatka stayed in England for a couple more years after the war. We wrote letters to each other. She even came to see us. Her husband, Srul Bursztyn, didn’t want to come back to Poland but she had him come. They returned for good in 1949 I think. They lived in Warsaw. They came with their son, Jerzyk, who was born in England. Later they had two more sons: Wlodek and Andrzej. Zlatka was an editor in a popular science publishing house. Her husband worked in the PKPG [Polish Committee on Economic Planning] as the head of the technology department.
he Veterans Union was closed down and I started to work in the radio, in the editorial staff of the Radio University. I took care of all the self-education clubs organized by the University. When my third son was born, I moved to Przyjaciolka [a weekly, still existing]. It was easier that way. I stayed home with my child and answered the readers’ letters. Later I worked normally again, in Przyjaciolka editorial office. The editor-in-chief was Hania Lanota at the time, the she left and I stayed. I used to work there until I retired, that is till I was 60.
The Kielce pogrom 25 was a painful experience; it made us realize there is anti-Semitism in Poland. You could sense it in post-war Poland, even though it was not supported [present] in the press, or the radio, or anywhere at all. Nevertheless, I had a job which involved trips in-country and meeting people, and many times I heard: ‘The Germans did one good thing, they cleansed Poland from Jews.’ I heard that a couple times, but I thought the government combated anti-Semitism and would eventually fight it off.
I was an enthusiast of the new order – I thought we were making a brave new Poland. I was in the party [PZPR] 26 until the Wujek coal mine shooting during the martial law 27. When I heard about it I gave back my membership card. But even before that I knew that’s not the way. My husband got disillusioned early on and turned to revisionism. He did not question the ideology as such but there were things he didn’t like and he would be vocal about it. He stayed in the army after the war. He completed extension degree in Polish history. He was a teacher in a military academy and he spoke or perhaps wrote about his doubts a bit too early. When Stalin died in 1953, critical voices rose in Russia about the cult of personality. My husband said something to that effect; a tad too early for Poland, it turned out. So they demobilized him in 1955 I think. He gave back his party membership card soon after the Khrushchev’s letter 28. He then worked in the Ksiazka i Wiedza publishing house as an editor. His health deteriorated early and he retired at the age of 55 – he was entitled to a military retirement plan. He died in 1991.