Janina Koper

This photo was taken in the 1950. This is Janina Koper. She lived with us in Radomsko before the war, in my house. We didn't go to the market for shopping but had it brought to us by a woman from the countryside, from Kobiele, a village near Radomsko. She became friends with my mother, and one day she says, 'I'd like you to hire my daughter.' Jania was 16 when she came to us. To apprentice as a housekeeper, in the kitchen. She was a maid, a 'servant,' you called it those days. Janina Koper. She stayed with us until the war. She came from Kobiele Wielkie, the home town of the writer Reymont, and she was a very good student. She was our friend. I had already flown out of home and she stayed with my parents until the war. Janina was a spinster. She was a very beautiful woman, but she didn't want to marry anyone else but a squire. But the squire left the country during the wartime. Until the war was over we lost touch with Janina. After the war, when my sister gave birth to a child and didn't fell good, we wrote to Kobiele, if Janina was still there and if she could come and help my sister. She came and she helped my sister, she raised my sister's children. She stayed with them until they immigrated to Israel. And now my sister moved with her husband to Los Angeles, to their son. But, as they say, it is impossible to transplant old trees, this second emigration wasn't quite good for them. Chil has problems with his knee and he's sick with Parkinson's disease. And my sister doesn't feel well, too. So I called Janina, to Kobiele, again. Janina doesn't live anymore, but her niece, Halina, does. She said 'I will go to the States' - to help.

Photos from this interviewee