A Day of Discoveries....

Today, my family and I went to the two towns where my grandparents grew up. My dad hired a lovely guide named Isabella and a driver for the day. To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect. It could have gone either way. My dad emailed Isabella all our pertinent information including some document information I had discovered earlier this year in the Yad Vashem archives. We had no idea whether she was going to follow through or to what extent she would be willing to spend the time researching a family that she knew nothing about. And I'll mention here that Isabella was not Jewish...

She first took us to Sosnowiec to the street and the house my grandmother grew up in, 16 Warsawska Street.  The apartment block was there and it was exactly as my great uncle has described. But the neighborhood was modernized and we had a hard time picturing our grandmother growing up in the neighborhood before the war. We found the entrance to the building and as soon as we opened the door (which was in the alley behind the building) it was as if we had been thrown back in time. The stairwell of the building hadn't been changed since before the war, the steps broken and chipped away and the paint peeling off the sides of the wall.  We climbed the three stories to the top of the building and went to the last apartment on the right hand side.  There was a distinct marking on the doorframe where a mezuzah had once been.  While we stood there sort of speechless, I (being the true Israeli that I am) knocked on the door. Everyone sort of panicked but after a few minutes a man (who looked like he had just woken up or was stoned - take your pick) opened the door.  He let us inside and we took a picture but we couldn't believe that we had stood in the same spot where my grandmother had stood more than 75 years earlier....