A letter

A letter written to Paulina Włodawer by her Warsaw friend, Emma Bialer (Bogusławska) at the time when Paulina and Artur Włodawer were sent from Lutsk to Siberia, to Asino (the author of the letter remained in Lutsk). A note from Tutek Bialer and Heniek (Henryk) Gutaiser and Emma's father. Emma Bialer writes: From your address I conclude that Pepcia is already working in the hospital, because I do not want to accept the second possibility that any of you is sick (Paulina Włodawer actually worked in the hospital as a nurse). Another fragment of the letter: So far, all is more or less the same as far as we are concern. That beautiful night we were in for the same that happened to you, our passports were taken, they searched the premises (Sewek was there) and it seemed that we would follow your fate. At least for now, we already have our passports extended and we live more or less peacefully. [...] we are now completely alone, because all our friends were either sent or received passports with the 11th paragraph and had to leave. Ewa also sent a message from Asino, do you see her sometimes? [...] Our cousin Henio Waldberg is somewhere beyond Arkhangelsk and lives in barracks. Dear Pepcia, Heni [Gutaiser, the husband of the author of the letter] recently had a dream about you and you were very sad, do you have many reasons for that? not counting the most obvious one? Your fate was also shared by Dr. Kobryner from B-ku [Białystok?] with his family, Świeca and a whole bunch of other friends. Emma Bialer reports that after the Włodawer family was taken, there came letters from Arthur’s brother (he wrote [...] that they are all right, that they miss you, they all added something including their father) and from Emanuel (he is generally fine, but [...] he misses you), however she adds: Forgive us, but we had then destroyed all our and yours letters, but I enclose one letter from Regina. We do not know which letter was the one attached, most probably it survived and is now part of this family collection.

Paulina Włodawer writes about this family in her diary (MPOLIN-A4.1.1) in her entries dated end of September 1980. Recalling the period of her funcioning in Warsaw in 1939 before the escape, she points out that she visited Mrs. Bialer with her husband: She was alone with two youngest children; the older one, Tutek, had previously left with his father, Emma and her husband at the time, Heniek Gutaiser (Adek Drozdowicz's cousin), were also on the other side, in Lutsk (Adek did not want to leave his father). Just in case, we took different addresses.

In another moving note, already regarding the Lutsk period, she mentions Emma's father Bialer: You cannot judge the human behavior back then applying knowledge that we have accumulated later on. [...] probably nobody was aware of the 'finality' of the decisions made. The parting was painful and hard, in both cases one was facing a great unknown, and after all, no one could have foreseen that we would never see each other again and to what fate we were leaving those to whom we said goodbye. Bialer could never really forgive himself that he left his wife with younger children in Warsaw, remorse tormented many, but I am not even able to blame our friend W., who (at the beginning) left his wife and child on the road for them to return, because it was too hard for them to walk, and he went on. These are fruitless deliberations; we were not going to a picnic.