A letter

A letter to Paulina Włodawer from Fania Landau (on information about the sender see the note related to her letter of 2 December 1941, MPOLIN-A4.1.26). The author of the letter, who stayed in Asino at the same time as Włodawers, deplores the illness of Artur Włodawer and reports on her own and her companions condition in Samarkand: “As for us, we are going through the hardest period in our lives. We have sold out everything to the very end, it's a miracle that we are alive. The author works at a school. She describes men that due to the situation are trying to enlist: “They were given category E, like most of ours. What will come of it, and whose ordinance it is, the future will show. Anyway, we are beaten again, the chosen people . In the last lines of the verso page, it says that Jan Bajer is coming to his family (the most resourceful of the whole group of the families from Asino, as is also clear from the diary of Paulina Włodawer). The next letter will bring the information that he contracted typhus, but was rescued by his sister, Ewa Bajer.This is how Paulina Włodawer recalled Ewa Bajer, her married name: Bożykowska, from the Siberian period (diary’s entry of 20 November 1980): Ewa, a kind, bright, young blonde, worked as a waitress in the NKVD canteen (in the one for the leadership), which made her an invaluable person, regardless of all her other virtues. She had never had a problem with vodka, but besides that, she was really good by nature and always tried to find something for the children from the barracks (they didn't have their own). Once she even brought them… mandarins! We all came to watch it and at least sniff them; we have almost forgotten how such fruit tastes like. These mandarins were brought to this restricted canteen by accident and Ewa managed to get some.