Lost Histories

26/09/2024

It's not everyday that we come across the real, actual signature of a legendary Polish figure, Gen. Władysław Anders - in fact, in my case, I have never had a document before me where his real signature appears, so this is a big deal!😮😍

Courtesy of the Paszkowski family.

19/08/2024

Be careful what you wish for when searching for your family Coat of Arms. Our colleague Zofia Kusztal was looking into the family tree of her g-g-grandmother, which starts in modern Poland but goes all the way back to Hungary - and discovered the Csato Coat of Arms, which shows a Hungarian holding the severed head of a Tatar! She’s in two minds about displaying it on her front door!🤣

07/06/2024

Poland joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 which means it’s now been TWENTY whole years since we started doing Polish citizenship applications!

In 2004, I’d been doing genealogy and translations for several years, and so, when a client asked me to help him apply for confirmation of his Polish citizenship, I was thrown into the deep end. It was a steep learning curve and we’re still learning (Polish citizenship laws are complex!) but I have loved doing these applications because they’re about history, and every application has its unique, often harrowing history. There’s also some closure that comes with a client receiving confirmation of their Polish citizenship – they have been brought closer to their ancestry, and a Polish passport helps in often complex ways, to take back something of what was lost.

Twenty years after we started, today we’re doing applications for children and grandchildren of our original clients.

Our very first client was Andrew, who parents Wolf Rajcher and Dora nee Moszkowicz, were Holocaust Survivors from Sosnowiec and Częstochowa. In the last twenty years, Andrew has been doing incredible work in Poland. He is now the longest-serving volunteer at POLIN, where he has been a guide and Polish-English translator for 18 years (he started even before POLIN was built!) He is on the Executive Committee of the World Society of Częstochowa Jews and Their Descendants, he volunteers for CRARG, the Częstochowa-Radomsko Area Research Group, and he has established the Wolf & Dora Rajcher Memorial Fund, which makes substantial donations to projects of organisations in Australia, Poland and Israel. At the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa, Andrew has further honoured his parents through The Wolf & Dora Rajcher Memorial Academic Prize for the best new work on the history of the local Częstochowa Jewish community. And, of course, he’s been able to travel to Poland and live there for parts of almost every year since 2004, all thanks to his Polish passport😊.
Thank you Andrew for introducing us to Polish citizenship twenty years ago!

The Fund provides donations towards capital projects for not-for-profit or charitable organisations.

17/04/2024

(for English scroll down)

🟠 Dziś w nocy przypada 82. rocznica śmierci Menachema Lindera. Był członkiem grupy Oneg Szabat, w Archiwum Ringelbluma zachowało się m.in. sporządzone przez niego obszerne sprawozdanie z działalności Żydowskiej Samopomocy Społecznej w 1939 i 1940 roku.

🟠 Z wykształcenia był ekonomistą, specjalizował się w demografii i statystyce. Przed wojną prowadził badania poświęcone społeczno-ekonomicznej sytuacji Żydów dla Instytutu JIWO w Wilnie.

🟠 Był zaangażowany w rozwój kultury żydowskiej – także w getcie, gdzie założył podziemne stowarzyszenie JIKOR (jid. Jidisze Kulturele Organizacje) popularyzujące język i kulturę jidysz. Zabiegał o finansowanie szkół z wykładowym językiem jidysz, organizował wieczory literackie, odczyty czy akademie, podczas których sam też występował.

„Menachem nie zajmował się nauką dla samej nauki. Jako przekonany socjalista, wprzągł naukę do pracy na rzecz codziennej pomocy społecznej” – pisał o nim Emanuel Ringelblum.

Menachem Linder zginął w nocy z 17 na 18 kwietnia 1942 r. podczas tzw. rzezi kwietniowej, kiedy to Niemcy rozstrzelali w miejscach publicznych osoby powiązane z podziemiem.

🇬🇧 🇬🇧 🇬🇧

🟠 Tonight marks the 82nd anniversary of Menachem Linder's death. He was a member of the Oneg Shabbat group, his extensive report on the activities of the Jewish Social Self-Help in 1939 and 1940 has been preserved in the Ringelblum Archive.

🟠 He was an economist, specializing in demography and statistics. Before the war, he conducted research on the socio-economic situation of Jews for the YIVO Institute in Vilnius.

🟠 He was engaged in the development of Jewish culture. In the Warsaw Ghetto, he founded the YIKOR (Yiddishe Kultur Organizatsye), an underground society popularizing the Yiddish language and culture. He sought funding for schools with Yiddish as the language of instruction, he organized literary events, lectures and presentations during which he also performed.

“He wasn’t preoccupied with science for science itself. As a devoted Socialist, he applied science to his work towards everyday social aid”, Emanuel Ringelblum wrote about him.

Menachem Linder was killed at night, on 17/18 April 1942, during the April massacre – mass killings of people linked to the resistance by the Germans.
__________
Menachem Linder, zbiory Ghetto Fighters' House.

04/04/2024

The mementos some families have, never cease to surprise us. For example, Polish wartime zloty...

31/12/2023

New Year's Eve is called "Sylwester" in Poland, after Pope / Saint Sylvester.
The paradoxical beginnings of New Year’s Eve parties can be traced back to the year 999, when the world was supposed to end on the last day of that year. This is because of a widespread legend based on Sibyl’s prophecy, according to which the Leviathan monster, said to be imprisoned in the Vatican dungeons by Pope Sylvester I, was to wake up, break out of prison and breathe fire, burning the sky and the earth.
So as the year 999 drew to a close, there was real terror in Rome and neighboring countries, which historians call the “millennium crisis.” People who believed in the legend devoted themselves to prayer, penance and fearfully awaited the coming of the end of the world and the final judgment.
However, when that day came to an end and midnight struck, and nothing had changed in Rome - Leviathan had not appeared and the world had not ended - universal fear changed into spontaneous joy. People ran into the streets, wishing each other well and celebrating in the light of torches, and the then Pope Sylvester II gave his blessing "urbi et orbi" (“to the city and the world”) for the new year, century and millennium.
In this way, the joy of surviving the world and the beginning of a new millennium initiated the custom of celebrating the coming of the New Year, or Sylwester. (https://histmag.org/Skad-wzial-sie-wyk-swietowania-Sylwestra-23429)

Yet, while the world did not end then, we can be forgiven for thinking it might be ending now. War, conflict, poverty, suffering – all these still exist now, as they did back then – and we’ve added our special 21st-Century problems like global warming and plastics everywhere. It’s depressing, but history shows it was ever so – and Polish history especially. It’s hard for historians to be optimists! But when we find bits of lost puzzles of the past, we can give closure or joy to people – and that’s worth something!
(photo of Marysia Olszewska, in pre-war Warsaw with her brother Wiesław. She drowned not long after this photo was taken, so it’s a precious keepsake for the family).

27/07/2023

This work is often challenging, unrelenting, painful (how can it not be when almost every family has its sorrows, dysfunctions, silences, tragedies - both in the past and present?). But then we get something like this from a lovely client, and it makes everything worthwhile!

25/07/2023

A "history" lost, found, and returned - what a story!
https://www.polskieradio.pl/395/7991/Artykul/3212103,polish-wwii-soldiers-dog-tag-unearthed-in-israel-returns-home?fbclid=IwAR1mYalGaMF5oIhn0e7gcyk95vZ8-Z1uw-_GsZhZ5heSAFzn3b6DPN_c-Bs

A dog tag belonging to a Polish World War II soldier that was discovered in Israel, has been handed over to the soldier's family at a ceremony in Warsaw.

08/05/2023

How did Lost Histories come about?

It was largely thanks to Mark Baker, my irreplaceable friend, a one-in-a-million human: academic, scholar, writer, and so much more to so many.
Now he is no longer with us, taken too soon despite the strongest, bravest fight against cruel pancreatic cancer.
He was my academic supervisor 35 years ago and I was privileged to have him as a friend since then. Without him, I would never have worked in Polish-Jewish history, never have met and befriended Holocaust Survivors, never have gone to Israel, never have tutored or lectured in Holocaust and Genocide, and certainly never have started Lost Histories.
Vale Mark Baker (7 October 1959 - 4 May 2023) - eternally curious, charismatic, funny, always young - and invariably brilliant.
To be in his presence even for short bursts, was to experience a kind of magic which awakened you to the promises of life.

(Photo is us with Mark’s parents in Bołszowce, his mother’s birthplace, 1995). I will post my eulogy separately.

08/03/2023

Recently we've had many inquiries for German records from Poland. Apart from the German ethnic minority that lived in Poland for centuries, western Poland was Germany before the war, and the records are still in Poland. On her recent trip to the Opole (Oppeln) Diocese Archives, our researcher took this poignant photo where you can still see the pre-war German business name on the building. This and so many other physical signs are the ghosts of the past, calling for remembrance of a complex and painful history.

24/12/2022

Christmas is a time for history too - perhaps more than ever. We think of our loved ones, those gone and whom we miss; those long-gone whom we never knew, and those with us today, forging new histories. May they be always be rich and fulfilling.
Happy Christmas/ happy Holidays/ to all our friends and clients.💗

16/08/2022

Our lovely client who miraculously survived the Holocaust in Poland as a baby, now lives in Thailand. He's our first client who resides there, and we wish him well always!

07/07/2022

“You're off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting,
So... get on your way!”
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!

An Australian client using her Polish passport in London and beyond!

15/06/2022

Our client’s parents made the odyssey, just before 1939, from Szydłów and Łagów in Poland, through Panama, into Chicago where they finally settled. Their daughter now lives in San Francisco. Here she is with her Polish passport before the Bay Bridge. To us the photo is symbolic of the hope and freedom her parents sought when they left Poland all those years ago.🧡

13/06/2022

We must admit that the Polish Consulate in Tel Aviv is sometimes difficult to navigate, but we work with our former client and now colleague in Israel who makes things run very smoothly. She's an expert on Israeli documentation and in helping our clients with their consulate appointments. Here's one relieved family, passports in hand :)

10/06/2022

Our clients José and his daughter were just issued temporary Polish passports at the consulate in Barcelona, which is helpful for when you’re leaving the country soon. When they return to Spain in December they will receive their permanent passports then.
Some Polish consulates are very good and flexible in these matters!

08/06/2022

Things are a lot slower in Poland than they've ever been - not surprising given the country has taken in over 3 million Ukrainian refugees. But the citizenships office is still working and processing our applications, and issuing citizenship certificates to our clients. Messages like this from a new Polish passport holder in Argentina are always heartening to receive: "Hi Krystyna! I need to share with you that I finally have my Polish passport. All my thanks to you for your professionalism and dedication to get it. It would have been impossible without your assistance."

27/05/2022

A moving message from our client: "Just a note of thanks, as my Polish Passport has arrived. We have now come full circle from my grandparents' departure 84 years ago. I really appreciate all of your insights and guidance in making this possible."