Marek Edelman - Żania Kormanowa (36/145)

To listen to more of Marek Edelman’s stories, go to the playlist:    • Marek Edelman - Recollecting my parents (1...   Marek Edelman (1919-2009) was the last surviving leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He had remained in Poland following the Nazi defeat and was active in domestic and international politics while at the same time becoming one of Poland’s leading cardiologists. [Listeners: Anka Grupinska, Joanna Klara Agnieszka Zuchowska, Joanna Szczesna]; date recorded: 2003] TRANSCRIPT: Żania Kormanowa is a crazy woman who, when Tosia Goliborska was the wife of a Polish airman whom the Russians had imprisoned in Kozielsk, she didn't know he'd been taken to Kozielsk, that it was on the Russian side, so then Żenia Kormanowa was escaping, since she was a great communist who demoralised all those young girls terribly through communism. That Kaleckiej's class was full of commies, those girls were nutcases, to this day they long for communism, so Żania Kormanowa, she gave Żania Kormanowa... Russia, cold, a pullover, warm trousers wrapped around a jar of dripping and inside that a big cut of pork loin. Żania Kormanowa searched for Gołąbek, that husband of hers, throughout the whole of Russia, she didn't find him. After 5 years she came to Poland, Tosia had survived and so she gave her back the package, because I spent the whole war looking for him so here, take the package, whole. It's true that the meat had to be thrown out but the dripping was still edible and the pullover wasn't moth-eaten. That's Żenia Kormanowa. But Żenia Kormanowa is related in some way to Margolisowa. I met her once and spoke with her because she had a fixation with playing patience, like Piłsudski. So she was sitting at this table on Przejazd, laying out the cards in a game of patience and I came past. I didn't know her, I knew who she was because that communist I don't want to say what etc, etc from Kalecka Street. I looked and saw a fat, ugly woman playing patience, something wasn't working out, so I looked and she'd made a mistake so I said, 'A history teacher making a mistake, and this is how she makes a mistake in the whole of history?' The way she glared at me, I thought... at that time she was the chief director of education throughout the whole of Poland, but nothing happened. But when that she-devil fell ill, she lived in Żolibórz, that house is there to this day on Słowacki Street with these glass triangular, glass stairs that you can see from outside, then she came, I don't know how she found me, but she found me and wanted me to come not as a doctor but because she'd made a few mistakes in her life although she thinks that everything she did, she did well for her pupils and for the entire proletariat. That's a communist. A real one.