How can an act of kindness be measured against the gas and thousands of bullets that stole the lives of the Jews of Poland? Yet among the ruins of the Jews of Poland, we came across rays of light that shone from the past into our hearts.

My wife and I showed up with our guide, unannounced, at about 11 a.m., at the region museum of Slupce. (The museum is located at Ulica (street) Warszawska 53, tel 063 275 26 40.)

Slupce was the small town from which my wife’s grandmother’s family hailed. Our guide explained that we were American Jews and that my wife’s family had come from this town. The museum director showed a deep interest in our quest for information about the town’s Jewish history. She showed us around the museum, asked about my wife’s family, and seemed quite knowledgeable about the town’s Jewish past.

(left to right): Slupce regional museum director, our guide, Jakob Lysiak, and my wife at the museum in Slupce.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the Nazis destroyed the Jewish cemetery of Slupce. All that remains are tombstones scattered about the outside of the museum. (http://zambrow.blogspot.com/2015/08/barest-remnents-cemeteries-of-konin-and.html)

My wife, however, told the director that she had family photos from her grandmother of her parent’s graves in the pre-war cemetery. The director excitedly asked my wife to send her the photos for inclusion in the museum’s information about the town’s pre-war Jews. These photographs will now became part of the regional museum’s collection, attesting to the Jewish presence in Slupce before the war.

Tombstones in the now destroyed Jewish cemetery in Slupce.

Family photograph of my wife’s great grandmother in the Jewish cemetery in Slupce.

Before we left the museum, we noticed a photograph on the director’s desk. She then told us the amazing story behind it.

Here is my photograph of the photograph:

In the center is the museum director. She is sitting with an elderly resident of Slupce named Grazyna Harmacinska. Before the war, Ms. Harmacinska befriended a Jewish girl, Danuta Rozental. They were best friends. In February 1940, some of the Jews of Slupce were exiled to Tarnow and Bochnia and, in July, 1941, the remaining Jews, including Danuta, were expelled to Rzgow, where the Nazis had established a ghetto. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%82upca#Jews_in_Slupca. This Wikopedia entry accords with what were learned from the director and our guide about happened to the Jews in Slupca.) The two friends carried on an intense correspondence, Ms. Harmacinska from Slupce and Danuta from the ghetto in Rzgow.

The two were such good friends that Danuta cut off a lock of her hair and sent it, along with a picture of herself, to Ms. Harmacinska. The picture that Danuta sent is in the top left portion of the photograph. You can see in the picture that a section of her hair is missing, the part that she cut off to send to Ms. Harmacinska.

Danuta suffered the fate of almost all of Slupce’s Jews. She was sent to the Lodz Ghetto and was eventually murdered at the Belzec death camp.

But Ms. Harmacinska never forgot her friend. She kept the letters, the photograph and the lock of hair. Eventually, she befriended the museum director and showed her the letters. They made a photo montage, with Ms. Harmacinska and the director together, and the photo that Danuta sent her. The letters are now at the museum as well as the lock of hair, which the director showed us. She is now in the process of trying to get the letters published.

As my wife and I left the museum, we kissed the director and wished her luck in her project. But even after we left, the photograph on her desk stayed as an image before us. A photograph of a photograph, of a Polish woman who lived through the trauma of the war in which her best friend was killed, of a middle aged Polish museum director who is trying to preserve the memory of the Jews of Slupce, and of a young Jewish girl, Danuta Rozental, one of the six million, whose photograph sent to her friend some 73 years ago before she was mercilessly murdered has now been woven into the present, sitting on the desk of the regional museum in Slupce, her gaze looking from the past to the director and her friend, and every visitor to the museum, asking not to be forgotten.

May the love and acts of kindness these women expressed be for a blessing, and may Danuta Rozental’s memory live on. It now does, in the hearts of my wife and I.