From Poland with love – the untold story of a Holocaust heroine

MIRAH LANGER

She’s also a Jew. And a Catholic.

Wanda Helena Albińska, born Rotstein, is a Holocaust survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. She has her mother, Halina Rotstein, to thank for saving her life, and her son, Luc Albinski, for dedicating the past few years to telling the story of their family history.

“I would call her mamushka or mama,” reminisces Wanda about her connection to her mother during her childhood in Kutno, Poland, before the darkness of the Nazi regime stifled their lives.

“My mother was tolerant, and she loved company. She was also very contemplative. She engaged in life from a cultural and moral point of view. She was always interested in other people and their needs. At school, she would always help the other students who struggled with their work.

“Later, when she had my [three] brothers and myself, from the beginning, she taught us. She would read us stories. I felt very motivated. By the time I was five years old, I could already read the books.”

By the time Wanda was five, she was also already an inmate of the Warsaw Ghetto. Her father had fled from the region owing to his connection to the now exiled Polish government, and her mother, a doctor, was working tirelessly in a ghetto hospital to try to stem the suffering of her people.

In 1942, her mother organised to have her children smuggled out of the ghetto with friends. However, she decided that she would stay, continuing to help all those who were under her care.

Wanda and her brothers were taken in by various friends of her mother. Central to saving Wanda’s life was Dr Andrzej Trojankowski. In particular, Wanda became close to his wife, Stefania, a devout Catholic. In 1945, Stefania decided to have the children baptised, also giving them false names and papers. In the years that followed, Wanda was enrolled in a Catholic children’s home.

Wanda recalls these years as nurturing, stimulating, and happy. “The directors of the home knew that I was Jewish. It was a beautiful home, and very pleasant. I had good friends.”

Wanda would go on to study chemistry at university. She soon met her beloved husband, Wojtek Albiński, on holiday at a cafe. They had an adventurous life living in Iraq, Paris, Switzerland, Botswana, and South Africa. Wanda cherished the experience of becoming a mother to her two sons. She continues to commute between Poland and South Africa.

However, Wanda would never see her mother again. In September 1942, Halina made an extraordinary decision. Having twice turned down the chance to be saved, she elected to go with her patients when they were deported to Treblinka. She would have been gassed almost immediately upon arrival. She was 35 years old.

Halina’s decision is one that Wanda has mused over all her life, coming to accept its complexities.

“On the one hand, I have thought, ‘How could you leave us – three small children, and a baby?’ It must have been some kind of madness. I could never do this. I would go to death with them, but I would never abandon them. I would never want to live without them.”

Maybe, ponders Wanda, “She was experiencing such desolation and felt such responsibility for all these people dying in the hospital in the ghetto where all these dark and inhuman things had occurred. Perhaps she didn’t want to survive anymore, or maybe she couldn’t abandon those people, she felt so close to them.”

Simultaneously, Wanda has the deepest admiration for the strength, dignity, and humanity her mother displayed at this time of horror.

“I’m proud to have such an extraordinary mother. She really was amazing, displaying courage, selflessness, and goodness. I would like my children and grandchildren to take her as an example.”

Wanda’s father was exiled to Russia and was never able to return to Poland. For the rest of his life, he never spoke of Halina again, except to say, “She was a saint.”

For decades afterwards, the story of Wanda’s Jewish origin and her mother’s profound choices remained untold.

“After the war, no-one spoke for the next 40 years. Nobody wanted to remember. They tried to forget as soon as possible.”

Wanda and her husband decided not to tell their sons about their wartime experiences. The children were brought up Polish Catholic.

As such, for Luc, it was a shock when during a trip in 1990 to cousins in America, they told him of his Jewish roots. He became intrigued by this information, and so began an extensive journey into the past. Most recently, it has culminated in him writing a book, The Varsovian Covenants, and serving at the helm of a documentary on the subject, titled Nobody Told Me.

Wanda and Luc say that his pursuit of the past has been a profound experience. The two have travelled this newly opened road together quite literally, jointly attending the March of the Living in 2018 and the Johannesburg Holocaust & Genocide Centre’s Poland and Germany study tour last year.

The multiplicity of identity has brought depth and meaning to their lives.

Wanda says that above all else, she remains Polish first. “Catholicism and Judaism have a lot in common for me,” she says. She embraces beliefs of redemption and compassion. “These are beautiful ideas. That you can try and perfect your character if you do something wrong; and that you can work hard to help others.”

“I love my identity,” shares Luc. “I can understand the Polish Catholic point of view, and I can understand the Polish Jewish perspective. I love things that that are double barrelled – it promotes richness and understanding.”