„I’m turning to someone, I don’t know whom,
and I ask for a favor which will soothe a
mother’s heart. I have not heard from my
daughter since July last year…”
On Tuesday the 3rd of November at 11 a.m. a never-before-seen set of 39
postcards sent from the Warsaw Ghetto to Lisbon, London and Paris will be
added to the Jewish Historical Institute’s collection.
The postcards will be turned over to Professor Paweł Śpiewak (Director of the JHI) by
Professor Anita Prażmowska, extraordinary historian and lecturer of the London
School of Economics, who took possession of the post cards after Tamara Deutscher, to
whom most of them were addressed, passed away.
This correspondence paints a horrifying picture of life in the ghetto, the constant
hunger (“I received two packages of sardines (two cans in each) for which I am
eternally grateful”) and cold (“…could we possibly get some clothes? Some warm
underwear, stockings and a warm blouse or sweater.”)
Letters sent from occupied Warsaw were heavily censored. When the Germans began
the mass transportation of Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka, one of the postcards,
written in Polish and sent from the “Aryan side”, contains a hidden message
concerning “fighting for survival- as we did hundreds of years ago”, the location of the
Jews during Grossaktion Warsaw is signaled by the enigmatic sentence “We live under
the idea of >>returning to nature<<”.
Tamara Deutscher, a Jewish woman from Łódź, left Poland shortly after the start of the
war. When her family was imprisoned in the Warsaw Ghetto she lived in London. The
only channel of communication was the Polish diplomatic post in Lisbon, where Stefan
Rogasiński, Tamara’s friend, worked. He sent to Warsaw the packages often mentioned
in the correspondence (relating in his letters to Tamara what goods he sent to her
starving parents), he passed on the postcards from the ghetto to the United Kingdom
which was at war with Germany.
After the war Tamara Deutscher (writer and historian) did not wish to discuss the
Holocaust so today we can only try to discover the fate of her family by immersing
ourselves in the world revealed in the surviving correspondence and thus add a tiny
piece to the laboriously recreated mosaic that is the history of the murdered Polish
Jews…
Since 1947 the Jewish Historical Institute has been collecting and researching any and
all evidence relating to the fate of Polish Jews during the Second World War. This is
why Tamara Deutscher’s depositaries decided to turn over this heartbreaking family
correspondence to the JHI’s Archives. “It is at the Jewish Historical Institute that
researchers and families search out information concerning Jewish history, this is
where the priceless Ringelblum Archive is housed- we should not scatter the sadly
scarce testimonies documenting life in the ghetto”- says Marian Turski, the driving
force behind the transfer of this priceless gift to the Institute at Tłomackie.
Date: November 3rd 2015, 11 a.m.
Place: Jewish Historical Institute, Exhibition Hall (2nd floor), no. 3/5 Tłomackie Street,
Warsaw
Participants: Marian Turski, Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland
Profesor Anita Prażmowska, London School of Economic (Donor)
Professor Paweł Śpiewak, Director of the Jewish Historical Institute
Dr Karolina Szymaniak, Yiddishist, Holocaust researcher, JHI
Dr Piotr Kendziorek, historian and philosopher, JHI
Agenda:
- distributing information packets to the press
- professor Paweł Śpiewak greets the guests: the donors- professor Anita Prażmowska
and Marian Turski, the researchers, museum representatives and publishers
interested in the topic of Jewish history
-ceremonial handing over of the 39 postcards from the ghetto by professor Anita
Prażmowska
-short speeches by the key participants, presentations by dr. Karolina Szymaniak
concerning the postal service in the ghetto, and by dr. Piotr Kendziorek concerning the
Deutscher family and their role in history
-Q&A
Six of the 39 postcards (2 written in Polish and 4 in German) have already
arrived at the JHI and will be exhibited during the ceremony; the Press Kits will
contain their scans and translations.
Contact:
Anka Chylak, Head of the JHI’s Communications Department
achylak@jhi.pl
tel. 604125849
Małgorzata Krzanowska, Senior Communications Specialist at the JHI
mkrzanowska@jhi.pl
tel. 602510090