“A postcard came - he says - with the words: I’ve fallen ill, signed ‘Jadzia’. It was addressed to Józefów, near Warsaw, with no street name. The post office didn’t know what to do with it, so they gave it to alderman Sułkowski, a good friend of ours, whose sons were in the underground. Mom read it and noticed the stamp that said Częstochowa and then she immediately knew it was Jadzia, the dentist she had been childhood friends with.“
Leszek was living with his mother in a two-storey villa in Radość near Warsaw. His father died during the bombing of Warsaw. Mom went to Częstochowa right away. First she brought Jadzia Broniatowska and her sister-in-law, Adela Mitelman, and later Jadzia’s husband, Natan Rodał, with papers in the name Bolesław Marcinkiewicz, and his sister Natalia Frydrych with her five-year-old Julian. In mid-1943 they were joined by doctor Wacław Konar and his son Jerzy, also from the Częstochowa ghetto.
“Jadzia had ‘good looks,’ Aryan papers in the name of Maria Helena Pelikant and as the only one she could go out. She and mom were working at the Central Welfare Council (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza). I was in charge of the house. I was 15 at the time. The hardest part was keeping them together and away from the windows.”
There was a shelter in the landing, for emergencies. The alderman of Radość would often tip them off about German raids. He knew the mother was part of the underground.
“Their fear was the greatest when the soldiers were searching the houses in our street. They wanted to run for the forest, but mom stood in their way and said whatever their fate was, ours would be the same. Everybody made it and we remained friends.”
