This is an informal family snapshot, taken in Teodory in the 1920s. I do not know who took this picture.
In the center there is my oldest sister, Sala, and her husband Pinkus Wyszegrod. They are sitting. I am in the bottom row, second from right.
My sister, Renata is sitting in the second row from the bottom, second from left. I do not know the other people’s names.
It survived the war due to a fortunate incident: before the war, my mother had mailed it to her sister, Ruth, who lived in the USA.
I was born on 30th October 1925. I have a biological sister - Renata. She is two years older than me. Before the war we both went to the same elementary school.
She completed this school and went on to a Polish public vocational school on Narutowicza Street. She was studying book-binding. In 1939 she finished this three-year vocational school.
My mother was my father’s second wife. The first wife had died. I don’t know anything about her.
My father had three children from that first marriage: Sala, Fela and Hersz. These children were all placed in an orphanage in Lodz – apparently, my father just couldn’t manage on his own with three children.
It wasn’t until after my parents got married that these kids returned home. And I was raised together with them. All three completed elementary school.
These were schools for Jewish children, and the only difference from Polish schools was that Saturdays were free, and that Judaism was the religion taught at school.
My older stepsister was named Sala, and the younger one was Fela, and the step-brother’s name was Hersz. We were step-siblings, but this did not make any difference, we didn’t feel it that way. They addressed my mother as ‘auntie.’
