Once a train station (Jewish friends in Bärwalde)

     When, in1934, my mother, Edith, was christened, a Jewish friend of the family was present and gave her the above hand-made cloth. ("ES" stands for Edith Schultz.)
     When Edith and her Aunt Marthe fled the Russians in 1945, they could take very little with them, but they did take this. When mom emigrated to Canada in 1951, she again took it with her.

An abandoned train station in Bärwalde (Barwice): the last time my mother saw her "Jewish friends" was here

Mom's "mother" (actually, her Aunt Marthe) ran a business, as became necessary when her husband (my mom's stepfather) died in 1941.

Marthe had many good friends in town who were Jewish—evidently in the garment industry. My mother remembers some of these friends well.

This old house was perhaps the home of mom's doctor—likely Jewish.

Yesterday: wandering through the graveyard, finding no familiar names.

Yesterday: a random gravestone

My mother and her Aunt Marthe at mom's father's grave, c. 1941

Mom's Bärwalde home, during the war. It was destroyed during the Russian advance

Edith this morning in Bad Polzin, Pommeria

My father this morning

It's good; it's over (Bärwalde)

     Bad Polzin, Pommern, in 1902. In those days, the town was German. It seemed to specialize in sanitariums. Still does.

     Here's a pic of the Hotel Marta Spa in Bad Polzin (nowadays, Połczyn Zdrój) in West Pommern (northwestern Poland). It's very European, very quaint. Near the park, which is fabulous.

     When my mother was ten (in 1943), she suffered some sort of appendicitis. She was taken to the hospital in Bad Polzin, where she received various treatments for two weeks or so. Then she was sent home, but, after a few weeks, she took a turn for the worse and was brought again to the hospital, where surgery was performed, removing her appendix. (Oddly, her sister, Ilsa, came down with the same problem and received surgery at the same time.) Mom remembers recuperating in the hospital and occasionally walking through the well-known park nearby.
     That park was fabulous then and it is fabulous now. I don't think I've ever seen a nicer park. Everything is blooming, and the smell is overpowering.

     18 kilometers from Bad Polzin is my mom's actual hometown of Bärwalde. Today, we took mom to this town that she hasn't seen since 1945, when she, her "mother," and her sister escaped from the Russian advance. All they took was what they could carry in a child's wagon.

     I'm afraid that, today, she found things to be disturbingly different than they had been. Her home had been destroyed. Some of her relatives' homes were unrecognizable. 

     She couldn't find any of her relatives at the cemetery. Not her beloved step-father, no one. Evidently, a photo of her had been etched onto his gravestone. But none of the old German graves remained.

     "Well, now I know that the town of my childhood no longer exists," she said. "It's good. It's over."

     We returned to Bad Polzin for dinner. The downtown area is very old, very quaint. Not many restaurants, though.

     We went to a restaurant that was happy to have any customers at all, even German/Americans. The cook made a special pizza for us. Nice people.

Mom's family, on her father's side, circa 1912. That's father Hermann at far right and Aunt Marthe at far left. Marthe and her sister (far right) worked at the time for the Berlin Opera