Children from the photo. A letter by Elżbieta Buczyńska

In the 1920s, my mother attended a female middle school in Łomża, where she became friends with a girl seen in the photograph (on the right) accompanied by her siblings. Her name was Sonia. The photograph is beautiful; and so are the children. I remember that as a child I was fascinated by them. I used to say to my mother: “How they look at me with their big eyes.” Unwillingly, my mother allowed me to look at the photograph. “Careful,” she used to say, “don’t damage it; this is my only memento.” She never told me anything about the children from the photograph. I left my family home very early, and only in 1993, a year before her death, my mother had told me the shocking story of the children from the photograph. During the war, already as adults, they had hidden at various friends’ homes. Among them, at my grandma’s, Stefania Bortnowska, who was 66 years old in 1941, and who lived on the outskirts of Łomża, at 4 Słoneczna Street. There was a big garden there, where a shelter was dug out, and where Sonia, her siblings, and two other unknown children were hidden. However, they stayed there only for a week. They did not want to endanger other people’s lives and despite the host’s insistence, one night they moved to a cemetery and hid in a tomb. They thought it would be the safest place for them.

Unfortunately, after a month a gravedigger discovered their hiding place and brought the Gestapo. The Jews were dragged out of the tomb. Beaten and dripping with blood, they were led through the streets of Łomża. This was a horrible sight. People who had known them, school friends, neighbors, and friends looked at them. And they could not do anything. My mother said that that sight left the most tragic imprint on her memory. “As if someone had torn my heart out,” she said. After my mother’s death, I have inherited this photograph and kept it with utmost reverence. But now I am 70 years old and would like to transfer it into good hands. So that it does not become mishandled. Maybe someone will recognize those children. Maybe they survived. 

Translation: Joanna Sliwa