A CARD FROM THE CALENDAR - HELENA GRZYWIŃSKA
Helena didn’t have children of her own, but looked after the children of her sister, Irena Rzepnikowska, with great devotion and love. During the Second World War, she lived with her sister’s family in Łódź-Helenówek, on Zgierska Street, and worked in their small store. Theirs was a very close relationship. “She was our beloved aunt” – this was how Maria and Ryszard remembered her years after she’d taken care of them as little children. In 1940 Łódź, there already was a ghetto, the second-largest in occupied Poland, inferior in size only to the one in Warsaw. Thousands of children lived there in cruel conditions, in poverty and hunger. Helena found thinking about these small, innocent children heartrending. Every day, she’d disregard potential consequences and take a tram to the Bałuty district, right next to the ghetto, where she provided the Jewish children with food. This continued until the ghetto’s liquidation in August of 1944. Helena lived to an old age and died surrounded by those closest to her heart: Maria and Ryszard.
