Genealogy /
LOOKING FOR "RIGHTEOUS CHRISTIANS" IN POLAND - BEDZIN, BRZOZOW / Cyganek, Gruszczynski, Chura [17]
Thanks to all of you who responded with suggestions for how I might be able to contact the "Righteous Christians" who hid my aunt and her son during World War II.
I will be coming to Bedzin July 24th (will actually be in Krakow from 24/7 until 29/7). Some of you suggested contacting a TV, radio or internet and having the story translated into Polish. If any of you can help with specifics, I would greatly appreciate it.
Briefly, this is my aunt's story:
My aunt, Esterka "Edzi" Blogier Wekselman was one of 5 children in an observant Jewish family in Bedzin. Her father, an upholsterer, died in his 50's of a heart attack. The family was poor and Esterka became a milliner's apprentice at a shop in Katowice. She became friends with one of the Polish Catholic girls who worked in the shop (I assume that was Halina "Ligia" Cyganek but am not certain).
Esterka married and had a son named Mark (he survived the war but tragically died of cancer at the age of 17 after they immigrated to the USA. I am named for him----it is a Jewish custom to name babies after someone who has died). Somehow (I do not know the details), Esterka made arrangements for her son Mark to hide with Ligia during the war. By this point Esterka was in the Bedzin Ghetto.
My aunt told me the story of being discovered hiding in a basement with others in the Ghetto by a Nazi and being led out by the Nazi. My aunt intentionally was at the end of the line and she decided that she had nothing to lose and ran away. She often wondered why the Nazi didn't shoot her. My aunt went to the house where her son was and this family took her in. She and Mark stayed together until the end of the war.
Esterka's husband and my father managed to stay together in Oświęcim Concentration Camp and were liberated from Dachau Concentration Camp (they were in other ones as well). My father traveled to Będzin and found my aunt and her son. All of their other siblings and their mother had perished. The smaller reunited family stayed in Munich, Germany, until they were able to immigrate to the USA in 1949.
I always remember my aunt sending packages to "her saviors" in Poland and receiving letters. Over the years, photos of weddings (Matgosia and Yarek Chmura ----I think this is Halina's daughter), pictures of babies and older children (David, Dariusz, Krzysztof), and of a funeral crossed the ocean. I was always extremely close to my aunt (after all I was a "replacement child" for her son which incidentally is a legacy that we adult children of Holocaust survivors deal with) and used to study these pictures and the letter despite not being able to read Polish.
Despite having been born and raised in the US, I have always felt that a part of me was missing and was somewhere in Poland (and Lithuania where my mother came from). That my aunt continued to keep her relationship alive with the people that saved her life only reinforced this feeling. While I don't know where my family lived in Będzin (both my father and aunt are dead), it will be meaningful to walk the streets of the town and see the castle (I did hear about this from my aunt). Being able to meet the descendants of my aunt's saviours and being able to thank them would be a dream come true.
Any assistance you can offer would be greatly appreciated.
