In June 1946 my grandfather’s health must have improved enough for him to be able to travel and he applied to his commanding officer for permission to return to Poland:

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Sir,

I would like to report that I would like to return to Poland.

My decision is guided by the hopeless state of my

health, longing for my country and my surviving wife

and an only daughter who time and again call for my

return to Lodz (Source: Hoover Institution Archives,

Stanford, CA).

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The request was accompanied by the declaration

signed by my grandfather  and two witnesses saying

that having been informed by his superiors about the

political situation and conditions recently existing in

Poland, he nevertheless declares that he would now

like to return there and will not have any claims

against anybody because of that.

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Repatriated to Poland from Polkemmet, Scotland on

4 October 1946.

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On 22 October 1946 my mother wrote to a friend from Lodz:

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I have so much to tell you that I do not know where to start. Well, the most important event was the return of my daddy one week ago. We went the three of us (Mommy, Janek [her fiancé and future husband, Arnold Majorek] and myself) to Gdansk to meet him. Our meeting was, of course, different from what I had imagined – daddy was in a transit camp and we could not even speak freely. It was only after three days that he got his papers and could return home. Mommy and I got a lot of presents bought in the most exotic countries and in most diverse circumstances. It is really moving how daddy all the time thought about us.

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But my grandmother saw his return in a different light. Responding to Maryla Erlich’s letter she wrote:

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I have not been able to relax since 1939. There were some happy moments when I had learnt that my husband is alive and that we shall be together again but when I saw him I started to cry, nobody was able to pacify me. I felt that we shall not be together for long. My husband returned gravely ill. 

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But, well, considering what could have happened, one can speak about a happy end  for this small Jewish family from Lodz who, against all odds, survived WWII.  How my mother and grandmother survived in Poland is a different story which I tell here. For now it is enough to say that my mother had a photo album of her own!

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