A letter

The letter from Halina Altman to Emilia Endler in Polish, on two sheets folded into a triangle for dispatch, a stamp survived. This letter belongs to the most numerous group of letters in this archival group - correspondence between Emilia Ratz and Halina Altman. These are letters both to Emilia Ratz and her letters to Halina Altman - handed over to the Ratzes apparently after Halina's death by her daughter Anna Altman (or maybe they came to them only after Anna Altman's death in 1999?), otherwise in an envelope which also forms part of the collection. It is a business envelope of the editorial office of Trybuna Ludu, where Halina Altman worked after the war (she answered readers' letters). | The story of the Altmans was outlined in his memoirs by Marian Feldman, whose aunt was Halina's mother, Estera Edwarda née Szafran (Z Warszawy przez Łuck, Syberia, znów do Warszawy([From Warsaw, via Lutsk, Siberia, Back to Warsaw), Warsaw 2009, p. 54; Po wojnie (lata 1946-1960)([,,After the war , Warsaw 2012, pp. 2-3). Edwarda and Henryk Altman had two children: Halina (born 1921) and Andrzej (born 1926). After the outbreak of the War in 1939 they moved to Łuck. Only the mother and son were staying in Łuck at the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in June 1941. They did not escape to the East - as mentioned in this letter. They died in the Lutsk ghetto in August 1942. Halina Altman was a student in Lviv in June 1941 and evacuated deep into the Soviet Union. Her fate: stay in Gubash, joining the army, going with the army as far as Berlin - is documented by correspondence. Henryk Altman was in the delegation on 22 June 1942. Like his daughter, he evacuated to the East, ended up in Krasnovishersk on the river Vyšehra (already at that time he established contact with his daughter, which is mentioned in the letter), in 1943 he was dragged, as a pre-war meritorious communist, to Moscow, worked in the Union of Polish Patriots (about ZPP see https://sztetl.org.pl/en/glossary/zwiazek-patriotow-polskich); he later held important posts with the first communist governments of Poland (in the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare) - in Lublin, Warsaw, then from 1952 to 1965 he was Director General of the State Archives (see the biographical entry by Feliks Tych in Biographical Dictionary of Polish Labour Movement Activists, vol. 1, Warsaw 1978, pp. 58-59). Incidentally, the thread of his work in Lublin runs through the letters. See the tombstone of the Altman family in Warsaw's Military Powazki cemetery: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plik:Henryk_Altman_(gr%C3%B3b).JPG (accessed 10.10.2021). | From the content of the letter: With me very important news: I found my father. He lives in Molotov Oblast in Krasnovishersk, works as a teacher of literature [...]. You can imagine how happy his first letter made me. Unfortunately, it was also very sad - it turns out that my mother and Jędrek stayed in Łuck. They stayed. It is terrible, so terrible to think of their fate. In the note, the Ratz family was advised not to write anything about a person called Roma (one of the authors of the letter of 29.01.1943).