.
.Napisal i przyslal Wlodek Proskurowski
the whole family including ‘Auntie’ Helena (my nanny had gone home by then) gathered around me to ask a question. With whom would I rather go to be delivered to my parents: Auntie Helena or my nanny? It was clear, I wanted my nanny, but what six year-old could look Auntie Helena in the eyes and say he preferred the other? The conversation continued.
“Granny, why don’t you come with me, I would love it so much?”
”I can’t. Grandpa has a long nose they would recognize him immediately as a Jew.”
”Then leave him here and come with me. Please!”
With Auntie Helena we took a train to Warsaw. I was told to pretend I was deaf and mute, and not to speak to anybody under any circumstances, my accent would betray me. And so I spent two hours glued to the window. Auntie Helena, in her own peasant singsong that she retained forever was chatting for these two hours with all the female occupants in the carriage. We then changed to a narrow gauge suburban train to Wawer, then a small village where my parents took shelter.
This was in July, and afterward as a grown up I learned that two months later on September 22, 1942 the Częstochowa ghetto was liquidated. My four grandparents all were sent to the gas chambers in Treblinka independently of the length of their noses.
— Contributed by: Wlodek Proskurowski, USC faculty, Emeritus Professor of Mathematic / California, USA — born in 1936 in Warsaw, Poland
Kategorie: Uncategorized
Teresko,
Krotka odpowiedz na Twoje pytanie:
„My cousin, Edek was younger than I. In the ghetto, they all lived with the paternal grandparents including Ciocia (Auntie) Helena, a family maid who brought up Ciocia Marynia (Edek’s mother), then Edek, and later his children as well.”
Dluzsza odpowiedz:
To jest fragment obszerniejszych wspomnien po polsku i po angielsku, z ktorymi jeszcze nie wiem co zrobie.
Dwie tragedie, ktorych zazwyczaj sie nie przezywa okreslily moje zycie: Zaglada oraz choroba i smierc mojej zony, Marinette (o czym wspominalem na blogu Misia). Teraz probuje radowac sie tym co mi pozostalo w sloncu kalifornijskim: wycieczki po gorkach, plywanie w oceanie, itp. Wspomnienia sa na drugim planie.
It appeared in a Project „What is Home”:
http://sfi.usc.edu/whatishome/stories
Teresa ,
after dealing with our testimonies at your such delicate subjects,You do know that those memories do not leave-they are coming back at the least expected moments.
Best regards,
Ania Cheszes/Strzelczyk
Wlodek,
dzieki za Twe wspomnienie.
Wszystkiego najlepszego,
AniaCheszes/Strzelczyk
Thank you for puting this terrible memory into words and sharing it with us. I have to ask – did ciocia Helena return to Czestochowa or hopefully, did she stay with you and your parents in Wawer? Situations without hope. Obviously it never left you.