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Phil Robinson
History and Photography
"On This page, I take a look into what we know About "Amalie Torba"(Polish Anna )"
She was known as "Big Anna", "Russian Anna",
"Polish Anna"
One of Bradford's more colorful characters
If you were around the City from the 60s to the 80s you would have known about her.
Most people were afraid of her.
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Polish Anna
Picture T&A
1909 -1985
Some facts about Anna's life.
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Anna would hang around John Street Market, helping the traders in exchange for cups or tea.
She was large, strong and wore lots of badges in the lapels of her jacket.
always carried a big, square, hessian bag full of money.
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She had a collection of baby's Dummy's on her walking stick
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"She wore an old hat, an Army great coat, and big boots.
She would whistle away, fingers in her mouth.
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She would sometimes sing in a thunderous voice that set the pigeons rising from the market roof. Or she would bang her walking stick down on dustbin lids, causing unsuspecting passers-by to leap for safety.
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People would make fun of her And also keep a wide berth of her.
She used her big frame to bully the traders and would demand food and drinks which they gave to her for an easy life.
Picture by Peter Ford 1983
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She also had a very soft loving side and would protect people in trouble. She loved children and it did get upset when they were cruel to her and run away.
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Lots of Bradfordians have fond memories of her
And would like to know more about her life. What's her story.?
How did she become known as
"Polish Anna."
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Many people knew Anna by sight and reputation, it seemed that no-one knew her story.
How she came to Bradford, where she came from, and what had happened to her.
There were rumors that she had been experimented on by the Nazis in a concentration camp.
Her behavior wasn't caused by an illness. It was because of the Horrors she had seen and gone through in her early life and at a concentration camp as a young woman.
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Her Story
The Baltic States were constantly under the control of either the Russians or the Germans - (They had a long history of it.)
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They were under control of the Germans just before the second world war and were actually treated better under the Germans.
When the war broke out, Russia - or should I say, that very unpleasant chap
Joseph Stalin decided in his evil plans, it was time to take back Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Stalin .
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People were taken prisoner by the Russians and sent to Siberia and never saw there family's again.
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Others were put into ‘starvation chambers (Whole families was wiped out that way.)
Villages and towns were surrounded by the Soviet troupes. Until they gave -up or starved to death.
(The Baltic people had to escape.)
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Escape from Riga
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Anna and her family were said to be in the town of Riga Latvia. Her father a Doctor. The Russians were occupying the town
Together They planed an escape.
But it went terribly wrong and her mother and father were shot as they made their escape.
Only Anna escaped in a hail of bullets and fought her way to the Polish border.
(She was helped by the human train that took escapes by sea through into Lithuania and then into Poland.)
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She hid and blended in with the Polish for a few years.
Anna was happy to be known as ‘Polish’ because she probably had an inbuilt fear of anyone finding out she was Latvian.
She was terrified of loud noises so I’m pretty sure she would have had an irrational but understandable fear of ‘Russians’
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She was taken in by the Polish and set to work in the hospitals. She was a very caring and helpful nurse.
Until one day she was betrayed by one of the patients and handed over to the Germans.
They sent her to be a slave worker in a tin can factory where the conditions were said to be terrible.
Anna's ID card
T&A
"Some more info about the id card from Simon Bean on the Facebook page"
The I D card is an "Ausweis" [foreign worker] identity work permit that was issued by a factory in Lubeck Germany it actually shows she was foreign slave labor in what I believe was a tin can factory in Lubeck. Conditions for workers would be terrible, but it shows she wasn't in a concentration camp at this time of her life ...
Her real name Aniela Torba is of Jewish origin so that probably led here too.........
(Dachau Concentration Camp was the first of its kind opened in Germany by the Nazi government in 1933, and it served as a model for later concentration camps. Designed to hold Jews, political prisoners, and other "undesirables," the camp is now a memorial to the more than 40,000 people who died and over 200,000 who were imprisoned here during the Nazi regime.)
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One can only imagine the horror she witnessed in this dreadful camp.
Only now that she has gone do some people have good memories of Anna.
Her life is somewhat of a mystery and a matter for speculation.
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She once told someone in another life she was as a
The rumor was that she herself had been experimented on!
Medical student when she was in Poland."But the fascists had put an end to that"
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(One day the camp SS Doctor walked around the camp asking if anyone was interested in helping with medical experiments and tests.
Of cause, Anna volunteered not knowing that she would actually be the experiment.
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"Many tyrants, dictators, and madmen, have had there doctors try to invent a Wonder drug that they could inject into solders to make them invincible in war."
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It is said that Anna and others were injected with an early version of steroids, testosterone and God knows what else.
Just to see what would happen.
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People told story's that there aim was to try to turn her into a man through chemical experimentation.
(But There was no evidence to say that she wasn't a woman.)
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(She had some damage to her head and always wore a hat to cover it. She had a number tattooed on her wrist from the concentration camp.
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When market traders gave her food she would wolf it down cooked or not.
The way she hoarded money were all reflections on prison camp behavior.
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When the war ended she found herself being ill-treated again, by the Russians who must have found out who she was.
She escaped from one tyranny straight into another.
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Nobody knows how she made it to England and to Bradford
"She must have been really lucky as the Nazis would kill off many of the people they had done experiments on before the allies got into the camps."
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One of the earliest pictures we can find is when Anna was at Morton Banks Fever Hospital, from 1950-52.
She helped out around the place.
"People were surprised how quickly she fit in and adapted to a hospital environment."
An early picture of Anna
Picture T&A
Picture T&A
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She loved the Royal family and all ways carried a picture of the Queen. One thing that terrified her were Marching Bands and she would run a mile on seeing or hearing one she didn't like loud bangs either. One insensitive boy once sneaked up behind her with a toy pistol and put it to her head she went mad and chased him all around the market.
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She was taken in by a Polish family in the early 1970s in Farcliffe Road, Heaton. (living in the dormer.)
Anna Had great strength
Because of this, she could get jobs in the local mills moving heavy bails About.
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She did have a friend who lived in Halifax, a small lady, with the same sort of tattoo. Anna used to go into the toilets at John Street Market and talk to herself in the mirror.
the other lady from Halifax used to do the same thing there.?
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later in her life, Anna used to sometimes sleep on the benches in Horton Park during the day.
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People begin to care about her...
Some friends in the Sun Pub 1980 s
A former Bradford market trader says he collected for a seat for Anna, in John Street Market and used to give her breakfast.
Finally..
"One day she didn't turn up at the market."
He went to her house in Chain Street but could get no reply.
The Police eventually broke in and found her laid at the back of the door with a broken femur.
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She was taken to hospital but died later.
As someone close to her, the trader was required to be present when the coroner's officer counted the money found in the house: £8,000 in half-crowns and two-shilling pieces.
A man who lived near her home in Chain Street picked up an envelope that had been thrown out near a skip. It contained a collection of photographs from Anna's life.
which are on this page!
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The funeral-directing firm of D Walsh and Sons did the funeral at St Patrick's in Westgate. Where she attended.
Anna is buried in the Polish section of North Bierley cemetery. Low Moor Bradford.
people thought she had no relatives but one did turn up, from Vienna. But no one thought to speak to her.
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So it's left to these photographs to offer some tantalizing clues to a young women's life in Latvia /Poland.
And Later life in Bradford of the woman called "Polish Anna"
What happened in between remains a mystery and a matter for speculation.
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Picture Phil Robinson 2011
Anna's Final Resting Place
Anna died in December 1985, aged 76,
This story has been the most commented about the story on AAB this year. It seems lots of people want to know her somewhat tragic Story. Some people have mentioned about a plaque around the John street market area as a tribute to her. If you or your friends would like to donate towards the cost of a plaque I can set up a donation button with PayPal and we could get one made to remember her. Let me know if you would like to donate.
Or if you know anyone who can make I plaque or direct us to a place where they can be made to give us an indication of the cost.
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In 2021 I went to have a loook at apiculture of her on the wall of John Street Market and a Drawing of her by artis Peter Ford .1983
Phil Robinson has made every effort to trace the copyright holders, but if they have inadvertently overlooked any, they will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
Some text and pictures from T&A 2007
see more stories http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/
Contact me philrobinson005@gmail.com
Bookmark this site and come back soon!!!
She was more terrifying to me than Dr who!
1909-1985
Polish Anna Guest Book
click the link
below...
http://users2.smartgb.com/g/g.php?a=s&i=g26-11318-b2
from the guest book :
When I worked in Rawson market Anna would come to our stall at Fitzpatrick’s. We would give her fruit and veg as we knew our boss Geoff Fitzpatrick would not have minded. She was frightening but if you smiled at her and were nice to her she would come inside the stall and come up to you and stroke your cheek, mutter something in Polish, smack her lips, laugh out loud and smile back. She had a difficult life but it says something about the folk in Bradford during the '70s and 80's-that they were good-hearted as they looked out for her. She was a Bradford character and we are honoured that you ended up in our home town. Good night and God Bless Anna. Xx. Julie Gardiner
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From Larry Ramsden.
Dear Sir
I once heard a rumor ( and I would put it no stronger than that) That when the West German government was offering to compensate victims of Nazi experiments she had claimed successfully, thus bearing up the story of her time in the concentration camp. I don't think she was feared in the market rather
her 'visits' were regarded as some sort of relief from the boredom of the day when the cry would ring out among the stallholders "hey oop, watch yer pockets
Here comes Anna ! ". All in the good-natured spirit of the time. Truly she can take her place as a Bradford character
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I Had an interview with Georgey Spanswick on
BBC Radio Leeds. About Anna’s life in Bradford
One of the last pictures taken of Anna 1984c
Picture sent in by John Firth.
John Street Market
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