Matylda Wysznska’s aunt Mia in her wedding dress

This is photo of my mother’s sister, Mia Ramer.

Aunt Mia was my dearest, I don't know what her real name was, perhaps Miriam. I attended her wedding under the chuppah. It was when my mother was still alive, before 1936. I know that my aunt married the owner of Leopolia, a Lwow-based paper and confectionery plant, she worked there in the office, the man fell in love with her (he was a Jew) and married her. There was this large room somewhere in town, I don't remember it to have been a synagogue, but there was a chuppah, and I remember how Aunt was dressed because I have her wedding photo to this day. Aunt Helen sent her a dress from Paris, so she had a beige-blue outfit - a dress and a hat - under that chuppah. That's all I remember. None of my father's or mother's sisters were religious.

Between 1939 and 1940 we were under the Soviets. When my father lost his job there was no money, I lived for some time with Aunt Mia, in a terribly cramped apartment, it was after the Soviets had taken their husband, it may have been 1940 or 1941. Aunt Mia's husband, was arrested. He was incarcerated in Lwow's harshest prison, the Brygidki, spent six months with his legs in water all the time. I don't know whether such were the conditions or it was a punishment. They were quite rich because they had a factory, and Aunt Mia had that beautiful black pearl, she sold it and ransomed my uncle from the NKVD. Uncle could no longer walk, his legs were very thick, and they lived in terrible conditions because she had sold everything to buy him out. Uncle lay on the bed all the time and he sewed some cyanide into his clothes because he thought the Soviets could come for him again. He was a bourgeois, after all. My Aunt took that cyanide away from him, and when the Germans came, he was taken to the Janowski camp and shot at the very first roll call because he couldn't stand. My Aunt went to the ghetto, lived in the same house as Samek with Romek and his wife, because they had come to Lwow when the Germans came. After her husband was murdered in the Janowski camp in Lwow, Mia went mad and was shot in the Lwow ghetto.