Hannah Fisk - January 24, 1983
Finding Niece
Mm-hm. Mm-hm. Hm. Did you talk about what happened to you when you first came here? Did people ever ask you questions about the camps, or...
About the concentration camps?
Hmm...
Well, like I say, I was on the uh, Wayne University, they ask me questions.
No, I mean earlier when you first came here, came to this country.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, sure. I always talk about it, with my kids. My Allan is going make a book, too. He's going to write a book.
Uh-huh.
I think you were here last time when I show you the book he wrote.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, he's going to write a book. And then I have another story. When I was there in 1945 in Poland, my brother and my sister-in-law had a little baby in 1942, which I was no have knowledge of it at all because I was already in camp. In 1943, when they went to Zródła and they were making the Judenrein, there was a woman living upstairs. I happen to know her because this woman used to wash clothes for my sister-in-law. So they figure they're going to Auschwitz and they gave away their little baby to her. She was a half a year old. He didn't have no knowledge or nothing, but when my sister-in-law gave the kid away, for some reason, she had a Polack, and that Polack was going to my brother--to Irving--and told him that they are going for Judenrein. She couldn't say what but they went to Auschwitz and she gave away the little baby. To whom, how, what--nothing. After the war in 1945, the woman was very poor. I understand she struggle a lot to raise Miriam. That was my niece, my brother's child. So she went to the Jewish community center and she put down a, a little--that she have a Jewish kid. And she named by her Jewish name, Miriam Sarah Monczyk. Because she adopt her and her name was Mirosława Łączkowska...
I see.
...she wouldn't kept the Jewish name. My brother happen to be Orthodox and he prays for the people like my father ??? shalom. So, the rabbi shaved his beard and went to Sosnowiec. And he went in the--in that Jewish community center and she find--and he find the little hanging, the little uh, slip there, and he wrote down the name exactly. When he came back, he says, "Mr. Monczyk, how do you spell your name exactly?" He wrote it down. He says, "Mr. Monczyk, you have a kid in Sosnowiec." And she was already sixteen.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn