Narrative

Journey Of Life

by. Jeonglee Choi

Can one imagine not being able to know who their parents are, what their name is, even who they actually are? Jadwiga Gałązka was a survivor of the Holocaust that took place in World War II. She does not have direct memories about the war, however she was influenced by it significantly. The traumatic memories made a huge blank space in her life.

September 17, 1940, Jadwiga Gałązka was born in the small town of Pińczów. Her parents had moved from Gdańsk into an unfenced ghetto. However, her parents made a wise decision to smuggle her out of the ghetto and arrange for a man to take her to a safe place. Unfortunately, her biological parents couldn’t survive. Removal from the ghetto led to Jadwiga’s awful adoption by a Polish family in a village called Bogucice. Jadwiga’s foster parents were alcoholic, and other family members continuously used violence against her. She was like a bird in a cage; she was unable to leave and her freedom was limited, due to dangerous circumstances.  “My foster parents shouted at my face that I was a dirty and filthy Jew. That is how I found out I was Jewish,” Jadwiga muttered during the interview. At the age of 16, Jadwiga couldn’t bear the hatred from her foster family any longer, and decided to run away.

At the age of 55, Jadwiga unexpectedly found a relative; her cousin, who was living in Israel. Although it was hard to send messages and communicate with her because of poor, slow-paced transport systems, Jadwiga found her earliest home, located in a village called Pińczów. To discover her childhood memories, Jadwiga decided to go there with moral support from  her friends. After they had arrived, Jadwiga headed to a synagogue by the intuition. “Right after I arrived to the village, I headed straight to the synagogue that was placed in the middle of the village. I didn’t know why. I just thought I had to,” Jadwiga said, questioning the reason. Unfortunately, the synagogue was closed at the time, and the only thing that replied to her knock was  silence. Jadwiga didn’t give up on her research, though, and she went to house that was right next to the synagogue. Surprisingly, one of the family members was the son of the man who had arranged to save her. He welcomed her inside and gave her old pictures, documents, and letters from the Red Cross saying that they were searching for her. Using the documents he had handed her, Jadwiga found out her real name, Klara Gross.  Due to the fact that somebody was looking for her, Jadwiga didn’t lose her hope. However, the miracle of meeting him didn’t last quite a long time, as she later lost contact with him.

Although sending messages with her cousin in Israel was hard work, she shared most of the information about her parents with her, because she was the only relative Jadwiga could find. It turned out that her parents lived in Gdańsk before, and had to move to Pińczów to move into a ghetto. “My mother’s name was Regina Rosenburg and father’s was Siegburg Gross,”  She said, while mixed feelings filled her eyes, and it seems as though she was reliving the moment which she discovered her parents’ names.

As she researched more about her lost memory, she discovered a historian that was living in Gdańsk. From him, she received information about her father, telling her where her father had studied to become a lawyer. After exchanging letters with him, she finds her father’s document and his picture in the student document that her father had went to. In 2011, she finally received her father’s old library pass that had his photo on it.  

In the 2000s, Jadwiga managed to visit Israel to meet her only root, her cousin. Many journalist came to the airport because of Jadwiga’s touching story. One of the Journalists managed to interview Jadwiga, as a name of Klara Gross. After a while, Jadwiga got contacted by a journalist that had interviewed her, telling her there are two people who wanted to get contacted with her after seeing the Jewish newspaper where her interview was written. Surprisingly, one of them was the son of arranged guy that she lost contact with. Last year, April 2014, Jadwiga went back to Pińczów because there was a celebration for survived Jews. There, Jadwiga met a man who owned her mother’s painting. He gave the painting as a gift to Jadwiga since he thought she was the true owner.

Although the process finding the missing puzzle piece in her life was very hard, Jadwiga never gave up and lost her hope. Unfortunately, there still is a huge lost space in her life, she’s still in the process in gaining the information. Currently, she is not only searching for her lost life, but also traveling around the world to share her admirable story. Presently she has a daughter and son, and even multiple grandchildren, who warm her heart and give her the lacking happiness that Holocaust and World War II took away from her. 

Who Is She?

By. Igne Borisaite 

Here is a story. It is not a love story that will make anyone laugh or smile. No, it will dig deep into their brain and twist their insides. This story will make them realise how harrowing our world is. They will lose faith in everything they ever believed in.

Who are her parents? She doesn’t know. What is her real name? She doesn’t know. Birth date? She doesn’t know. Who took her to this village? She doesn’t know. How did she survive? She doesn’t know. Who is she? She doesn’t know.

Jadwiga Gałązka, born at the beginning of the war, started her life at a difficult point. Her parents were killed, so a man took her to Bogucice where she lived with a foster family. The parents were alcoholics that didn’t treat her well. She never felt safe in the house that she was supposed to call “home”.  Childhood is supposed to be everyones best years of their lives. Wrong.

How could she have tried to live a happy life when it was full of so much hate? People were dying at every corner and it could have been her turn next. Who brought so much negativity into her life? The killers? The secrets? The foster parents? It was hard for her to forget something that she never wanted to remember. No amount of time could heal something so horrid. Not even 70 years. It’s not Jadwiga’s fault. She didn’t want her parents to die. She didn’t want to have to live with her foster parents. She didn’t want to be a “filthy Jew” like her foster mother called her. She just wanted to be back in her real parents’ arms. Jadwiga just wanted to be the person she was with her biological family. All she wanted was to be Klara Gross, daughter of Regina and Siegbert Gross. But she didn’t actually know who that was.

Fast forward to 1995. She still doesn’t know. The only difference is that now, she needs answers.

There is a certain amount of time that one can live without knowing their past, their parents’ past. Especially when they are preoccupied with their future, their daughter’s future. At the age of 55, Jadwiga finally decided to take a trip to her childhood house in Bogucice with her friends. Her first instinct was to go to a church in the village, she thought that she would come out with information. Sadly, the church was locked, so she knocked on the next door house. “Do you know anything about the Urban family?” she asked the people who lived there. This was the family name of her foster parents. “Which Urban family? There was an Urban family who lived in the house across the road,” he answered. As soon as Jadwiga saw the house, she knew that was the right one. That was the house that made her feel everything she never wanted to feel again. She left that village, that house, with her foster mother right after the war ended in 1945. Who knew that a large pile of bricks could be the foundation of so many memories?

The man who currently lived in that house was actually the younger brother of the man who found Jadwiga after her birth. “You must be little Jadzia,” he said, surprised that she returned after so many years. There was somebody looking for her. Someone sent by a family in Israel. Somehow, they knew that Jadwiga had survived the war and wanted to find her. They started talking, throwing bits of information back and forth as if it was a ball. It turned out that a couple months before this, the man that found her had passed away. All of the possible information that she could have gotten disappeared into thin air.

Luckily, there were artefacts. Photos, papers, letters. A letter to the Red Cross Organisation that was trying to connect families after the war. She was being looked for. In the letter, she could read the names of her biological parents, and her own name. This is where she found out who she wanted to be. So who is Klara Gross? She still doesn’t know.

Those six simple words were the beginning of her search.

The process took years. She discovered her parent’s story, her grandparent’s story, but most importantly, she discovered her story.

Even though Jadwiga Gałązka does not really remember anything from the war, it has affected her life traumatically. It has affected her development as a person; as a WWII survivor.

Lost Identity

By. Derek Nutz

Jadwiga hasd no memory of World War Two, yet it changed her life drastically. It was a tragic event for a countless number of people. For some, the devastation was greater than for others. The genocide at the hands of Adolf Hitler caused unimaginable suffering for many, and Jadwiga was one of them. Having no memory of her parents, her religion, birthplace, or even name, she struggled with her sense of identity for most of her life. One day, she decided to do something about it.

Most parents would do almost anything to protect their child, but what if this child was born to hell on Earth, what would they do? Jadwiga’s parents had to answer that question. Soon after she was born, her parents knew that eventually they would need to get her out of the Ghetto, where they were forced to live. Knowing that they were putting their own lives at risk, Jadwiga’s parents smuggled their little girl, at just four years of age, out of that Ghetto. About a kilometer away,  there would be someone to meet the young girl and bring her to a family to be looked after. It was a man who showed up and took the child to a Polish family in Bogaczyk. What poor little Jadwiga did not know was that her new Polish parents were alcoholics.

People she knew as her godparents had Jadwiga baptised after her parents got her out of the Ghetto. Jadwiga did not know that she was born Jewish. Still, she could remember that when her Polish mother would get mad at her she would yell, “You filthy Jew” at her. The words stung like being slapped in the face. They left a bitter taste in her mouth. Confused, she would wonder how this could be if she was catholic. The sound of those hurtful words haunted her. Over time, she become so frustrated and angry with her foster family that she decided to leave. At the age of sixteen, Jadwiga ran away, still not knowing anything about her past. She knew nothing about her parents, she had no idea if she had brothers or sisters, she did not even know where she was born. If her Polish family knew anything, they did not tell her.

Jadwiga grew old not knowing her real identity, it always nagged at her.  It felt as if something was missing. She now had a family of her own, a husband and two children, but she still wanted to know about her birth family. At the age of fifty five, she began her search. She started digging into her roots to learn more about her family and hopefully herself.  She needed a starting point and decided to begin with the town where she had been taken in.  She started with the church, hoping they might have some information to help get started. The people at the church directed her to a house where she saw a man outside in the yard. She talked with him for awhile and realized that he was the son of the man who found young Jadwiga and taken her to the Polish family. Sadly, she was a few months too late. The man that had helped her had died. Luckily, the son had some helpful information, he knew the names of her parents. Jadwiga was the daughter of Siebert Gross and Reginald Rosenberg. She also discovered something else, her birth name, Klara Gross. She was overjoyed!

During their conversation she learned so much more. Learning about the history of herself was fantastic. She heard many things, but what really caught her attention was learning where she was born, Pińczów. After talking with the man, she was determined to continue her research and find out more. She learned that during the war Pińczów was a ghetto. For her first few years of life, she lived in a Ghetto. She was Jewish and could have been killed by the Nazi if she had stayed with her birth family. Luckily, she got out of the Ghetto somehow.

The search did not stop there, she was determined not to stop until she learned everything possible about the family left behind. It took years of research and gathering of  information. She learned many things about the past. Her father was born in Gdansk and her mother was from Pinczow, where Jadwiga was born. Everytime she learned something new she would feel joy inside of her.

Still wanting to learn more, the next step was to hire a historian to help. For years the historian did not find any new information. Then one day, just by luck, day he  found the signature of Siebert Gross on some court papers he was looking through. Jadwiga’s father was a lawyer, something new to feel happy about. From this new information, the historian was able to discover which university Siebert studied at. The university was the next place to visit. She hoped that there would be some identification or information still available. The university held the best surprise so far, a library card. On that library card was a picture of her father. For the first time in her life, she saw how her father looked. The sight of that library card thrilled her. Seeing her father’s face was something she had only dreamed of.

With a renewed passion, she pressed on with her search, hoping that some members of her birth family were still alive. Jadwiga was thrilled to eventually discover that she had living relatives in Israel. They must have run away from Poland and moved to Israel to escape the horrors of the Holocaust. A visit to Israel was soon planned. Jadwiga flew to meet her cousin, Sonya, who picked her up at the airport. They both cried when they met, finding a lost relative made Jadwiga very emotional. Communicating was very difficult.  Sonya did not speak Polish and Jadwiga did not speak English very well. They made it work by using a language dictionary, and began learning about each other.

Time went by, and Christmas came. Jadwiga was enjoying a cup of orange tea when the telephone rang. The warm, sweet tasting tea was soon forgotten when Jadwiga answered the call and an old woman said, “My little Klarica.” Jadwiga knew that her birth name was Klarica. She wondered if the call was really from someone from the past who knew her. After a talking for a few minutes, she learned that it was someone that knew her, it was her Aunt. Her aunt was now ninety years old. They spoke for hours. That was one of Jadwiga’s favorite Christmases ever.

More time went by and one evening Jadwiga’s daughter told her mother about a book she heard about. It was a book of Jews living in Gdansk. The book was called The History of Jews in Gdansk.  Jadwiga now knew that her father was originally from Gdansk, so she got the book a couple of days later and started to read it. She was disappointed that the book contained nothing about her father, but she had an idea. Jadwiga decided to contact the author in case there was some information that he did not include in the final version of the book. Maybe he still had some information about her family. The author was very helpful. He told her that before he started to write the book someone contacted him and told him a story. That person was not just someone to Jadwiga, it was her grandfather.

Jadwiga found out that her grandfather was in Gdansk at the start of the war and was transported to a concentration camp.  He, along with one hundred and fifty other people, was then shipped to Switzerland. Out of all the people he was transported with, he was the only one that made it to the destination. He stayed in Switzerland for the rest of his life, thinking all of the rest of his family had died. His name was Herman Gross.

A couple of years later, a journalist asked to do an interview with her. Klara accepted the offer. She told about her life, her search, and how she found the identity she thought was lost forever. Jadwiga left her Polish name out of the interview. Even though she had not seen them since she was sixteen years old, she was still afraid of her alcoholic foster parents. She could remember the smell of alcohol on her foster mother’s breath as she screamed at her. She did not want them, or anyone related to them, to know where she was.

A few months after the interview, the journalist called her back. He said that he had received a few messages for her. One of the messages was about her parents. The message was from a neighbor from when Klara and her family were lived in Pińczów. She told her about how she remembered little Klarica running around. The other message was from the son of the person who met her when her parents got her out of the Ghetto.

Jadwiga contacted the woman first. When she called her the woman asked if she knew her birth parents’ occupations. Jadwiga explained how she discovered that her father had been a lawyer. The woman on the phone informed Jadwiga that her birth mother had been a painter. Afterwards, she sent a photocopy of one of her paintings to her. The copy was precious to her, but she yearned for the original painting. She spoke with the woman again and asked if she still owned it. Unfortunately, she had sold it to a man. Jadwiga tried repeatedly to buy it from the new owner, but the man would not give up the painting.

Jadwiga started to go to meetings at schools and other places to tell about her life. One day she went to a reunion to speak. The man who owned the painting was there. He surprised Jadwiga by giving her the painting as a gift. She touched the canvas and felt the brushstrokes that her mother made. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could smell the faint scent of the paint her mother used. Jadwiga was overwhelmed. She finally had something that made her feel connected to her mother. This brought hope that there were more connections with her mother and her father yet to find.

Jadwiga, also known as Klara Gross, is now 75 years old. Her search to learn about her past continues. It is a search she will never give up. Any information, big or small, is important for her to find. Jadwiga married and had a son and a daughter. She has a family of her own, but has never lost her need or desire to find out about her first family. Her identity is not as lost as it once was, but it is still not completely found.