Mirror

The mirror is medium-sized and round, in a thick Art Nouveau silver frame, carved with a simple floral design. It is heavy, yet shapely, and neat. It seems to ask to be taken up and looked into...

While contemplating the blurred reflection of my face, I cannot help wondering how many women before me (and perhaps men too) have meditated upon their looks in this mirror. Who did it belong to before it was given to my grandmother for safekeeping at the end of the summer of 1940? All I know is that a  Jewish man knocked at my grandmother’s door in Lodz, handed her a bundle wrapped in brown paper, and pleaded: Can you hide it for me? We’ve got to go now, but we’ll come back after it is over. The package contained a thick green Jewish prayer rug with four Hebrew letters woven into it, along with the image of a temple, and this silver hand mirror. The man never came back. Over the passage of the years, the mysterious letters and the temple faded, and the rug became threadbare, arousing too much interest from moths, so in the end it had to be thrown away. But the old mirror, although tarnished, had kept watch. Whose was it, then? Speak, Imagination. 

I can see it lying next to two brushes in similar silver frames on the dressing table of the Jewish stationer’s wife, from whose shop my mother, Lidia (a schoolgirl at the time) used to buy her notebooks, dipping pens, nibs and ink, always bargaining hard - of which she was terribly proud.  Or perhaps it had belonged to the wife of another Jewish shop owner, the haberdasher around the corner; his was my grandmother’s favorite place to buy white satin ribbons for my mother’s long braids. The “pasmanteria” these shops are known as, in Polish, from French word passementerie, meaning lacemaking, trimmings; dressmakers could buy all kinds of lace and trimmings there, buttons of every size and color, sewing needles and thread. Or it could have belonged to the wife of the nearby Jewish baker who was praised to the skies and still remembered after the war for his wonderful buttery rolls and challahs. Or maybe it was part of the dowry of  the Jewish grocer’s wife who sold fresh cream all day. Jews had played an important role in the pre-war Poland’s everyday life, and they dominated the retail trade; in Lodz, Jews made up about a third of the population.

Lodz  was a key industrial center in Poland; its first textile mills were built by German manufacturers in the 19th century. Jews who emigrated to Lodz mainly from Russian Poland (i. e., from Lithuania, Belarus and West Ukraine), established retail and other businesses, eventually breaking into textile manufacturing as well. The city became the “Polish Manchester”, as it was known as. The rapid industrialization of Lodz was depicted in the novel The Promised Land by Wladyslaw Reymont, the first Polish winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. It tells the story of three close friends: a Pole, a German, and a Jew,  struggling to build their factory there. 

My family, Poles with Austrian and Baltic German roots, came to live in Lodz during the Ukrainian–Soviet War of 1917–21 that followed the Bolshevik Revolution. Before the sovereign Polish state - previously lost to Russia, Prussia and Austria - was reestablished in 1918, my maternal great-grandparents, their siblings and their children had lived in today’s Ukrainian cities and towns: Kiev, Odessa, Vinnitsa and Zhytomyr. There was a fairly large number of Poles living in Ukraine in the 19th century, especially in the territories that formerly belonged to Poland, the so-called Eastern Borderlands (or just Borderlands). My mother’s father, Mieczyslaw Wilinski, was born in Odessa in 1898; his mother, Maria Knoch was a Baltic Germans from Latvia or Estonia, but his father, Jan Wilinski,  was Polish. At the age of 20, Mieczyslaw joined the Denikin's White Army to fight the Bolshevik Red Army. My mother’s mother, Jadwiga nee Luckiewicz, four years younger than her future husband, was hiding with a group of people in the basement of the apartment house where she lived with her mother in Kiev, while Petliura’s troops were fighting both, the Bolsheviks and the Whites. (Petliura was the Ukrainian nationalist leader.) Some of the people in the basement supported the White Russians, some supported Petliura, and still others sympathized with the Reds. They would check who the current winner was, and only then would the one with the matching political convictions be sent to get food.  

The maternal side of my family’s documented history does not, however, start with Mieczyslaw shooting the Reds from the Denikin's armored train, nor with Jadwiga praying in the basement for a truce. It begins, in fact, three generations earlier with an Austrian textile merchant, Johann Gottlieb Grosse born in 1785, who decided to settle in Kiev and open a silk and fabrics shop on the city’s main street Khreshchatyk, alongside the most prestigious and expensive restaurants and hotels in Eastern Europe. In 1824 he married a 17-year- old named Marianna Paslawska. She was a Greek Catholic, he was a Lutheran Evangelical Protestant and was 39 years old at the time. They married in a Greek Catholic church in Chyrow, the Borderlands’ small town which at that time was part of the Habsburg Empire, and which remained in Austrian Galicia until late 1918. According to the marriage certificate, there were two witnesses present at  the church: Johannes Rebutycki and Joseph Zawichowski, both Poles, judging by their last names. In the early 1830’s, probably in Kiev, the Grosse’s son Karol was born. When he grew up, Karol took over the family business where his efforts apparently met with success, since he was able to marry a Russian countess, Eloiza Bezobrazova. There are two oval portraits in shiny black frames hanging in the living room in my mother’s apartment: Karol and Eloiza, both very handsome, dressed in heavy period clothes, are sitting in big carved chairs at a small oval table which is covered with an oriental carpet (like 17th century Dutch paintings). Karol and Eloiza Grosse had a daughter Jadwiga (my great-grandmother) who was born in 1863 in Kiev. She  died in 1954 in Warsaw, having outlived two husbands as well as two sons from her first marriage, which was to Waclaw Juniewicz. Her first son was born on May the 1st, 1888, in Starokonstantynov (in today’s Ukraine), and the second son, Kazimierz, was born a year later. Waclaw Juniewicz, a good-looking lawyer with a well-groomed Victorian handlebar mustache, accidentally cut his finger and poisoned himself with rat poison while browsing through some old documents in an archive. Some years later my great-grandmother remarried; her second husband, Stanislaus Luckiewicz, was an officer in the Tsarist army, who died  in 1916 from wounds sustained on the battlefield, leaving fatherless their two children: my grandmother, Jadwiga, who was only 14 at the time, and her 16 years-old-brother Stanislaus. (My grandmother was named after her mother, and her brother was named after his father.)

The revolution and the subsequent war changed Kiev and its main street Khreshchatyk beyond recognition. The people who had once lived there are long gone too. What remains of the family Grosse are small tokens: cabinet photographs in a heavy leather album with a brass lock, some jewelry, silver cutlery, several plates from various china sets, and a black ribbon with the name “Grosse” embroidered on it in gold thread. This had once served as their business  label, and was sewn on the fabrics they sold. The Grosse men from the old photographs are not very tall; they wear good woolen suits or the decorative uniforms of the Tsarist army and the then-mandatory mustaches - rather big ones - in accordance with the contemporary era's fashion.The women are of slender build, wearing perfectly tailored clothing, bracelets and earrings, with carefully groomed hair. Their long dresses are high-collared with puffed sleeves and ruffles and trimmings, and are adorned with small golden brooches. The women and their daughters also wear huge hats with lavish brims and ostrich feathers. The hats and clothes have not survived the Bolshevik revolution and two world wars (except for a pair of calfskin gloves and an ostrich feather), but some jewelry has. I have inherited several of the mementos, photographs and documents which were brought from Kiev to Lodz, where the family finally landed in 1920. We solicitously treasure these sentimental keepsakes, passing them from generation to generation, carring them over from place to place when we move, and treating them almost as holy relics. I am their guardian now. 

           Thus, the Lodz/Łódź (incidentally, the word łódź translates as  "boat" in English) of between the world wars was a multicultural melting pot of Poles, Jews, Germans, Russians, and even Czechs. The mosaic of languages, religions and customs created a uniquely accommodating atmosphere. If there were some antagonisms between Poles and Russians, some between Poles and Jews, some rivalry between German and Jewish factory owners, this did not disrupt the functioning nor the growth of the city. The factories were in full swing, some  owners prospering, while the others went bankrupt, and the workers - as always - struggled with the hardships of everyday life. In Lodz, the Wilinski family had lived a relatively comfortable life: my mother’s father, a law graduate and Polish Army officer, was working on documenting the two-year history of his regiment, my mother’s mother was enjoying the role of an elegantly dressed officer’s wife, and my mother’s religious grandmother spent a lot of time in church. My mother  attended a prestigious private schools for girls, and being linguistically talented, she became an outstanding Latinist.  As an officer, my mother’s father was entitled to an orderly, or ordynans (Ordonnanz in German), who, apart from his normal duties (which included pressing the officer’s uniform and shining his boots), gladly helped my grandmother to run the house. The Wilinski women spent their summers in the countryside, away from the hustle and bustle of the smoky city. 

This fairly predictable life came to an end in September, 1939, when the  country plunged into panic and chaos. My grandmother and mother left Lodz with my grandfather’s regiment, which had orders to retreat to Romania - but Romania closed its border just before they reached it. A few weeks later, my grandmother and my mother managed to return to Lodz. Meanwhile my grandfather, always fearless and emphatic, had joined the underground army in Warsaw. As a Polish officer who had not surrendered to the occupant, he had to vanish from Lodz, cover his tracks, and conceal his present whereabouts. 

Lodz became a German city then, and its name was changed to Litzmannstadt. My grandmother and my mother were evicted from their comfortable apartment to make room for a German family. They moved in with my maternal great-grandmother, then 77 years old, whom they left in Lodz when fleeing the city. Fortunately, the German family allowed them to retrieve some of their books, documents and souvenirs which the new family had no use for. My grandmother -  who had never worked before - got a job at a stocking factory (called “Kebsch’s”, after its German manager). My mother, then only 17 years old, and gifted in languages, found work at a luggage store, claiming that she could speak fluent German. Needless to say, both the stocking factory and the store had been requisitioned by the Germans from their Jewish owners. A similar fate befell the other Jews: the haberdasher around the corner, the baker who baked those buns which melted in my grandmother’s mouth, the grocer …

Jewish friends and acquaintances began to disappear from their life, begining with the Kleszczelski family. It was very difficult for my grandmother to come to terms with the loss of the dentist, Doctor Jozef Kleszczelski: in addition to having been his patient for almost twenty years, my grandmother had maintained cordial relations with his whole family; she knew his wife Maria well, as well as their daughter Liza, and their son, Doctor Arno Kleszczelski, a respected urologist in Lodz with a medical degree from the University of Vienna. Liza Kleszczelska was married to an American businessman, an explorer and inventor, Richard Mark Sieradski-Sherton. Perhaps the marriage was not a happy one, or for other reasons, Liza preferred to live in Warsaw rather than accompany her husband on his numerous trips to Brazil she preferred to live in Warsaw. The whole Kleszczelski family joined her there in 1940, and soon after, they all were sent to Auschwitz. Being an American citizen, Liza could have saved herself; she chose not to. She didn’t want to leave her family behind. She and her old parents perished without trace, as did millions of others, as did the unknown  mysterious Jew who brought my grandmother the silver handheld mirror for safekeeping. 

The war did not spare my family either: in 1942, my mother’s father, Mieczyslaw Wilinski, was arrested in Warsaw and sent to Auschwitz, as a reprisal for his clandestine military activities. Three month later, on February 16, 1943, he either died of typhus (according to the death notification mailed by the Auschwitz clerk), or simply was shot as a political prisoner. Shortly before that fateful date, a postcard arrived from Auschwitz, written in German and addressed to his fake aunt in Warsaw, a woman in the Polish resistance, in which Mieczyslaw asked for a woolen sweater, socks, a tooth brush, dental powder, and lard. He spoke fluent German, which perhaps explain why his profession in the camp documents was listed as a “translator”, not as jurist, nor as a Polish army officer.  

As we know, a handful of Jews did manage to survive the horrors of the war. In February 2015, I met Miriam Greenstein, nee Kominkowska, when she spoke about her Holocaust experiences in front of a large audience at the Public Library in Tualatin, Oregon, where I live.  She was only 10 years old when she found herself in the Lodz ghetto. She had lost all her family there, and in the concentration camps, except for one uncle who had emigrated to the United States  just before 1939, to marry an American. Thanks to him, Miriam has a few of her pre-war photographs, which she used to illustrate her book In The Shadow Of Death, A Young Girl’s Survival In the Holocaust. In one picture taken in the summer of 1939, she is riding with her father on a motorcycle; she reminds me of myself at that age: a chubby girl in a black school robe with a white collar and pigtails. I, too, have a picture of myself with my dad on a motorcycle. Although my photograph was taken 20 years later in a different little Polish town, they look like two takes of the same scene with a different set of actors. 

There is another peculiarity connected with this story: I was born in the old hospital located in the very center of what was the poor Jewish quarter before the war, which subsequently became the Jewish ghetto during the war. Every Jew in the Lodz ghetto had to work to get meagre food rations in return - children too, so the teenaged Miriam got a job at Moebelfabrik, a furniture factory, in the staining and polishing department. Miriam and her mother had to pass by that hospital on their way to work every day, or to the nearby market where one could try to barter goods (although it was forbidden in the Lodz ghetto) in order to purchase food.

Did the Jew who had entrusted his valuables to my grandmother also work at this factory? Did his wife? Or his children? Did they ever meet Miriam, by sheer accident?  Might they ever have exchanged a word - or at least a look? There were many factories  and workshops in the Lodz ghetto, so it is very unlikely, but not entirely impossible. I think that I have, in a certain sense, honored his intention, and his trust in my grandmother by giving his silver mirror to her; she is watching it for him now. 

In January, 1945, most of the German population fled the city in fear of the Russians. My grandmother and mother moved back into their pre-war apartment. They found there a lot of things there that were not theirs: among other things, the German family left behind two framed oil paintings which have always puzzled me. One is a portrait of a young girl with long brown braids reading a magazine; the girl is dressed in a blue school uniform tunic worn over a dress with a red tied bow. She is sitting with her back to a table covered in a white cloth; the clay pot with a white cyclamen on the table covered with white cloth brings to mind a country cottage, but she is too subtle and too neat to be a country girl. The painting is signed simply signed “S. Meisner”, with the illegible date, probably 1938. “Who was this girl, who was the painter?,” I used to ponder. I recently found out that Solomon Meisner was a Jewish portrait painter. He died in the Lodz ghetto in 1942 at the age of 56. How had the German family had acquired his paintings? Some questions must remain unanswered.