Rafal, my great-grandfather lived in the middle of the 19th century, in a region of the former Kingdom of Poland called the Grand Duchy of Litva, which after the third partition of Poland in 1795 became a province of the Tsarist Imperial Russia. Great-grandfather was Polish and Roman Catholic. He lived on his landed property in Lachowicze area, now Lyakhovichi in Belarus.

Great-grandfather's ancestors owned a large estate near Darewo in the Baranowicze (Baranovichi) district. Half of that estate was confiscated as a punishment for two family members taking part in the Polish "November Uprising" against Russian rule in 1831. The guilty had been deported to a remote part of Arctic Russia. The rest of the estate was later sold by the family. Some relatives from Darewo bought or leased small properties in the area between Baranowicze, Nowogródek (Navahradak) and Nieswiez (Nesvizh). My great-grandfather bought land in Nacz and Burakowce near Kleck and Lachowicze.

I could not remember his name. I only remember my father saying to me that my appearance and manner were similar to grandfather's. Was it his grandfather's or mine, I am now not sure. But thanks to the internet search and contact with Rafal's descendant, Jadwiga Rymaszewska, now living in Belarus in Lyakhovichi, I discovered that his name was Rafal.

I also confirmed that Rafal had two sons, Aleksander, my grandfather, and another son, called also Rafal. Also a daughter Józefa.That Rafal(2) had number of children, including Mieczyslaw and granddaughter Jadwiga, my contact (See Ch.14)

Typical Lachowicze (Lyakhovichi) district landscapes, where my great-grandfather Rafal and his family lived.

My paternal grandfather Aleksander, the son of no.66, was born around 1868.
At the end of the 19th century, Aleksander had some connection with an estate Nacz (Nach), in Lachowicze area, Baranovichi district, because I knew for sure that my father Michal, his son, was born in estate Nacz in 1894. Perhaps it was the property where Aleksander's father, my great-grandfather Rafal lived with his children. This I confirmed later through unexpected contact on the internet with Jadwiga mentioned above.

A detailed military map, published between 1925-1935 in free Poland, shows in this part of Eastern Poland (eastwards from LACHOWICZE, or westwards from KLECK) the location of nine places named Fw. Nacz or D. Nacz . "Fw." is an abbreviation for "folwark", meaning "a grange", and "D." is an abbreviation for "dwór", meaning "estate manor".

The NACZ grange close to Burakowce grange (arrow in a circle) is the place of birth of my father, where his father Aleksander, the brother of Rafal, who owned the adjoining Burakowce grange, originally lived.

Later, however, my grandfather Aleksander, with his young family, moved from Lachowicze area to live on his own estate called Zascianek in Polesie district, next to the village Plotnica, later described as Mala Plotnica (Little Polotnitsa), because there is another Plotnica in the south of Polesie. Mala Plotnica was located to the north of PINSK, about 9 km north-east from Dobroslawka (Dobroslavka), 17 km southwest from Malkowicze (Malkovichi).

After the fall of Tsarist Russia, the family continued to live in Zascianek in free and independent Poland between the first and second world wars. Everything ended during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in 1939. Aleksander's estate was confiscated by the communists and the family destroyed. The estate was converted to a "collective" farm owned in effect not by the people but by the Soviet state. As an infant I have visited Zascianek with my parents and I remember it.

Grandfather ALEKSANDER's
"Zascianek" Estate, near MALA PLOTNITSA , POLESIE, POLAND

The estate of Zascianek consisted of an extended single story family house, a lot of outbuildings such as stables, barns with hay lofts and stork nests on roofs, cowsheds, piggeries, poultry houses, and a big cellar, part of which was filled with ice in the winter and used as a cold store. The rest was used for storing potatoes, beetroots, turnips, carrots, as well as barrels of soured cabbage, pickled cucumbers, dried mushrooms, bilberries, cherries, cranberries and so on.

There was a smoke-house where they used to dry and cure hams, sausages and other meats, and there was also a log cabin for making butter and cottage cheeses some of which were dried.

Behind the farmhouse was a vegetable garden and an orchard with few beehives next to it, and beyond that, was a field of hemp which was used for making ropes.

In front of the farmhouse were fields where wheat, rye, oats, potatoes, millet, buckwheat and peas were grown. The family toddlers were always warned not to stay near the hemp field as it would give them nasty dreams.

On the southern side of the estate was a canal which had a ford where cattle used to cross. Beyond the corn fields was a meadow, on which there was a row of oak trees growing, and beyond that was a wet meadow.

On the western side was a dark forest of pines, oaks, ash and some maple trees, where they used to go to pick bilberries and mushrooms.

On the southern side was a paddock for horses and a woodland of spruce and fir trees and beyond that was the village of MALA PLOTNITSA (Little Plotnitsa).

Aleksander's wife was Ewelina Piotrowska (66.1 w), my grandmother. Ewelina and Aleksander had four children, one of whom was my father.

Grandfather Aleksander died around 1929. There was only Orthodox cemetery at Plotnica, close to Zascianek, so grandfather was buried at Ploskinia (Ploskin, Ploskino) about 5 kilometers from Plotnica, at a Catholic cemetery. Grandmother Ewelina died some years before him, due to illness, and was buried at the same cemetery at Ploskinia.

66.11 - The eldest daughter Bronislawa (Bronka) married Pawel Sloka. They lived on her father's property in Zascianek near Mala Plotnica, helping to manage the estate. They had four children: 2 daughters and 2 sons.

66.12 - Michal, my father, was the only son in the family. He was born on 20 October 1894 in "Nacz (Nach) estate" in Lachowicze area, Baranowicze district. Being a son, after the Primary school, he was sent to a college to receive further education. He went to Pinsk and studied in a College run by the catholic church (Jesuits). Later he went to a Russian Higher Technical College. At home, my father and his sisters had additional private lessons in Polish language and history which was not taught in schools during Russian times. The family attended church on Sundays, riding there in a light carriage drawn by horses.

66.13 - Emilia, the second daughter was born on 15 August 1897. She married Czeslaw, also Rymaszewski from the Rymaszewski clan, and moved to live in Malkowicze (Malkovichi). They had three sons. Click "More" to Family 67.11.

66.14 - Jadwiga (Jadzia), the youngest of three daughters, married Feliks Sarnacki. They had two children, a daughter and a younger son. They also continued to live in "Zascianek" estate.

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On grandfather Aleksander's death, his land was not divided among his children, as often was the contemporary practice. My father, was not interested in farming. He had a good public service position, left the family land, and eventually settled in the main town Pinsk.

Emilia, the middle daughter, moved with her husband Czeslaw to Malkowicze where they had their own property, and Czeslaw was employed as a government forest ranger.

Only the eldest and the youngest daughters Bronia and Jadzia, with their husbands, continued to farm on grandfather's property in Zascianek.

In his youth, during school terms my father lived away from his country home in Zascianek. He was boarding in Pinsk, where he studied. He completed a 7 year Polish Private College "Gimnazjum", attached to the Jesuits Catholic Church and run by the Jesuits.

Pinsk : 1910 - Market square with Jesuit Fathers' Church and College behind.

Kiew Street scene in Pinsk dated 3 April 1916. Chemist shop on the right and restaurant "Bristol" above it.

Afterwards, my father attended a Russian Higher Technical College where he studied new sciences and technology of telegraphy, telephony and radio.

After graduation, at the age of 21, he obtained a job in the government Communications Services ("Svyazi sluzba") in Pinsk. He had a technical staff position in the Telephone and Cable Telegraph office that used Morse code.

Photo of my father Michal Rymaszewski, dated 22 August 1915, in a uniform of a tsarist "chinovnik ", i.e. a Russian public servant in the Communications Services.

My father is sitting. Unidentified person is standing and therefore considered a subordinate.

Father is still single - age 21.

In Pinsk he met my mother Aleksandra Leszczynska who was native of Pinsk. Late in 1916 he married my mother . They were both aged 22.

• Market square in Pinsk in 1910, when my mother was 16 year old. Behind is Jesuit Fathers' Church, founded in 1646 by Polish prince A.St. Radziwill when Pinsk and the Eastern Borderlands (Kresy) were part of Poland.
• During the Soviet occupation of Pinsk after the Second World War, the church was purposely blown up by Communists in 1953.

• My parents married in the Polish Catholic church in Pinsk, still under Russian Tsarist rule. I remember seeing my parents' marriage certificate, written in Russian, dated 1916.
  
• On the certificate, my father's status was written as "dvoryanin" i.e. nobleman ("szlachcic") and my mother's as townswoman ("mieszczanka").
  
  
• The Constitution of independent and democratic Poland (post-1918) made all people equal in law and finally discontinued the noble status in 1921.
  
  
• The marriage certificate, together with other family documents, were taken away by the Soviet Secret Police (NKVD), during my father's arrest and imprisonment in 1940.

FIRST WORLD WAR
During the First World War, Russia was engaged in combat with Germany. After two years, since late 1915, the Eastern Front came close to the territory where all Rymaszewski families lived. It become an arena of combat between Germans and Russians. Living conditions drastically worsened for the population. The shifting frontiers left in their wake considerable damage and famine.

The Emperor of Russia, Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown in March 1917, and later, in October, during the Bolshevik Revolution, was murdered by the communists together with all his family.

German troops wearing Prussian spiked helmets entering Pinsk.
On the left, a Jewish merchant in a horse cart.

As the world war, the Russian revolution, and the civil war in Russia raged, the eastern frontier was in turmoil. Hundreds of thousands of inhabitants became refugees. Then the Bolshevik Russia, a former member of Entente alliance, pulled out of the war with Germany and signed a separate armistice in December 1917. By the Treaty of Brest Litovsk in March 1918, they ceded Eastern Poland, the territory where the Rymaszewski families lived, to Germany.

My father got a postal job further east, in a small town named Zytkowicze (Zhitkovichi) on the railway line between Pinsk via Luniniec and Mozyr to Gomel. Their first son, Edward, was born to my parents in Zytkowicze on 11 July 1918. The country was then under German military and political occupation. By the end of 1918 however, Germany and Austria (the Central Powers), collapsed themselves.

The Poles then proclaimed an independent Polish republic and began, from November 1918, to disarm the Germans and form Polish local councils.

The eastern frontiers of Poland then became a theater of war against Bolshevik "Red" Army by anti-Bolshevik "White" Russian armies and others.
My parents moved west with the refugees, to Lódz, past Warsaw, to now independent Polish territory.

In 1919 the Bolshevik Red Army, having crushed all counterrevolutionary forces inside Russia, now aimed to spread the international communism to Germany and Europe, but Poland stood in a way because Polish workers and peasants were too patriotic and religious to be interested in the communist revolution. So the Red Army attacked Poland.

POLISH - BOLSHEVIK WAR 1919:1920

During the Bolshevik attack, my father answered marshal Pilsudski's call for volunteers to save the newly won independence. He joined the Polish army. After the decisive battle near Warsaw, called "the Miracle of the Vistula", Russian Bolshevik armies were defeated and were driven back to Russia. An armistice between Poland and Russia was signed on 12 October 1920.

Father returned from the war to my mother in Lódz for Christmas in 1920, to see for the first time his second son born in his absence. Zygmunt was born on 3 October 1920 in Stryków near Lódz.

In March 1921, by the Peace Treaty with the Soviets, Poland established her eastern frontiers which included many native areas of the Rymaszewski families. In the spring of 1921 my parents returned to family property in Zascianek in Eastern Poland (Kresy). Then father got a Polish government position as the Postmaster in Hancewicze.

My mother's family was missing and their house in Pinsk was destroyed. Her father died, and her mother and one step-sister, escaping eastwards from the war front, found themselves trapped in the Bolshevik Russia.

My mother, as the only surviving heiress, successfully claimed her family's large block of town land in Pinsk.

Map of North-East POLAND where the Rymaszewski families lived (1918 - 1939)

In the north one can find Wilno (now Vilnius in Lithuania).

Then going south by train, past Lida and Baranowicze further down is Hancewicze (where I was born) and Malkowicze (where my father's sister Emilia lived with her family).

Then changing trains in Luniniec go west to Pinsk where we had our house and property, and I went to college. All places are now in Belarus.

My father, demobilized from Pilsudski's army, after Poland's armistice with the Bolshevik Russia, returned from Lódz with my mother and two infants Edward and Zygmunt to his parents land property in Zascianek, in 1921.

Father, with his technical qualifications, previous telecommunications experience (under Russia), and Polish army volunteer service, was offered a government position as the Postmaster in charge of the Post and Telegraph Office in Hancewicze (Gantsevichi).

Hancewicze (is a town, situated on the railway line between bigger town of Baranowicze in the north and Luniniec in the south. I was born in Hancewicze in 1923, then my younger brother Zbyszek in 1926.

We had government accommodation. The front half of a large single storey building near the railway station was the Post Office and the other half at the back was our home. We also had a domestic servant.

HANCEWICZE : year approx. 1926

My father, the Postmaster in charge of the Post and Telegraph Office in Hancewicze, sitting at his desk in his office. His assistant, Mr Ansilewski, is standing beside him.

Notice the huge ledgers they used. On my father's left is his personal cable telegraph equipment. At that time the invention of the telegraph communications was regarded as modern a technology as the present day Internet.

Hancewicze springtime, about 1926.

My father (with a mustache, sitting on the right) during Easter Monday visit to Mr and Mrs Rusiecki (on the left).

Coloured Easter eggs on elevated glass plate in front of my father, and carafes of Polish vodka of various flavours including "krupnik".

My father's signature dated 23 June 1931 (rubber stamp underneath)

Above : Mrs. Weronika Wojtkiewicz (pani Wojtkiewiczowa), a friend of the family in Hancewicze. She loved embroidering, tapestry, crochet, etc. Left photo shows her surrounded by her handicrafts. Her husband, I think, had some position with the railways, because she lived near the railway station in a house built by the Railways Department.

The Post Office and our home was close to the station too. We often visited Mrs. Wojtkiewicz. In her garden she kept a young roe-deer, which became tamed. The right photo shows me feeding the roe-deer.

OF MY GRANDFATHER

I remember when my grandfather Aleksander (66.1), who lived in the country in Zascianek, visited us in Hancewicze around 1926. I was almost 3 years old.

It was summer and the two of us were standing together, outside the house. I remember the scene because, for the first time in my life, I saw something new in the sky. I saw a biplane! It was flying overhead in our path, making frightening noise! We both were craning our necks watching the thundering flying machine.

Grandfather died approximately two years later. I was around five years old and I also remember the night when he died. Father received a telephone-telegram and came home looking very pale and said to us: Children, "dziadek" has died. Kneel down and say a prayer for "dziadek", please.

I remember this event because the night sky over whole, mostly timber built Hancewicze was lit up with a bright glow. Somewhere, there was a very large fire in our town! The two events combined into a terrifying night for me. This fire glow, I thought, must have something to do with "the Death" in a white robe, with a scythe, who came to take "dziadek" away.

Later, when we lived in Pinsk and I was 15 just before the second world war broke out, I visited my grandfather's grave in Ploskinia (Ploskin) in the country with my father. When we knelt at the grave and quietly prayed, I glanced at my father and saw him... crying. It was the first time in my life that I saw my father cry.

It was the last time too. In only 7 months time it was I, who cried for my father when he was arrested in the middle of the cold winter night and led away into the darkness and snow by the invading Communist apparatus of terror - never to see him or hear from him again!

Late autumn in 1931 my father was promoted to a position in Pinsk and we moved there by train, the furniture was loaded and sent beforehand by a freight-car. There was not much road transport in marshy Polesie. I was almost eight years old and I remember the day of departure, because the very first fine snow, heralding the coming winter, was gently falling and melting on the railway platform in Hancewicze while we waited for the train.

Our own new house had just been built in Pinsk at no. 3, Ochowska street. My father planned this move to give his children education and better opportunities in the district's large main town.
          Postcard: Pinsk and the river Pina

MAP OF PINSK - year 1930
No. 3, Ochowska street marked thus:
Ochowska street is the diagonal street with the short left turn into Wodociagowa street.
No.3 was on the inside corner of the street, where the star is.
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Baroque churches, dignified stately synagogues, golden domes of orthodox churches — it was my Polish Pinsk, where members of the Orthodox Church, the Jews and Catholics always lived there in harmony.
(Barokowe koscioly, dostojne synagogi, zlociste kopuly cerkwi — prawoslawni, zydzi i katolicy zawsze zyli tu w zgodzie)

My father was born on 20 October 1894 on "Nacz estate" near Lachowicze, Baranowicze district.

He held a position of General Manager of the Telephones and Telegraphs Office in Pinsk, a Department of the Public (Civil) Service.
Photo dated 1935.

My father was a good man caring for his family and very kind to all. He was popular with his subordinates and neighbours, and had many friends, also among clergy. He was modest and rather shy person, definitely not an extrovert. Perhaps for this reason he did not accept a good offer for a position of a Controller of Posts & Telegraphs, involving frequent travel to other Offices throughout the region.

Year 1936 - faded Kodak photo.

My father, General Manager of the Telephones and Telegraphs Office in Pinsk, sitting at his desk in his office, and his personal secretary Irena ?.

Note the early telephone set (box on his left, with not visible handset on top), ink-stand, blotter, and abacus on the desk.

This photo was taken during Opening Day of a modern, new Main Post Office building in Pinsk built at Oginski's street. Selected members of the public were invited to inspect the offices and facilities.

Father, normally in a suit, wears a uniform of a senior postal officer. The uniforms were customarily worn for special official occasions like national anniversaries, ceremonies, etc.

My mother was born on 29 November 1894 in Pinsk.

Her parents owned a large block of land in Pinsk and a house, not far from the railway station. Her mother Anna, a widow with two daughters, married Mikolaj Leszczynski and my mother Aleksandra was their child.

Photo dated 1935.

Aleksandra married my father in 1916 at the age of 22. At the outbreak of the Polish-Soviet war (1919-1920) my parents, with their one year old son Edward, moved with the refugees westwards past Warsaw to Lódz.

After their return to my father's family estate in Zascianek in 1921, mother discovered that during the war her family's house in Pinsk was destroyed and her elderly father died. Her mother Anna and one surviving step sister were caught up in the war upheaval and were swept by the Bolshevik troops into the USSR. Anna was not allowed to leave Communist Russia, where every citizen was practically a prisoner, and the contact with her was cut off during Stalin's terror. Anna lived and died in Gomel, Soviet Russia. My mother claimed inheritance of her family land in Pinsk.

Aleksandra, like most women of World War One generation, had only primary education. During our life in Pinsk she stayed at home looking after our family. At times we also had a sleep-in domestic servant.

We had no close relatives on my mother's side in independent Poland, except some family who lived in Pohost Zahorodski, Polesie (by a large lake), and I called them "uncle Jan and auntie".

They had two daughters, an elder one called Janinka(?) and a younger Malwinka, and their surname was Juszkiewicz, I think.

Their photo above, around 1926.

Edward, the first son, was born on 11 July 1918 in Zytkowicze (Zytkovichi), 150 km east of Pinsk - the place remained in Russia after the war just beyond the new 1921 Polish-Soviet border.

Edek had a domineering personality and he was a bit of a delinquent. He kept bad company and once run away from home. He liked outdoors, football, swimming, circus, movies. He kept rabbits in cages in our garden and had lots of pigeons in the roof of our storehouse. He was setting traps to catch birds with bright plumage.

He was quite intelligent but had frequent problems with schooling. So father sent him to a boarding college run by Salesian Fathers in Oswiecim near Cracow (During the war, under Nazi occupation the town Oswiecim became the notorious German Auschwitz).

Edward returned home much changed. He did a course in Warsaw, paid by father, and obtained combined Driving Licence and Motor Mechanic Diploma, which for those times was quite useful.

Then, with his driving ability in not yet very motorized Poland (railway was the main transport), Edward got a job in Parcels department of the Main Post Office in Pinsk, no doubt recommended by my father.

This photo of 18 year old Edward was copied from his Motor Mechanic Diploma combined with Driving Licence, awarded on 2 October 1936 in Warsaw.

Zygmunt was born on 3 October 1920 in Lódz (Stryków), Poland.
Zygmunt was musical and liked singing, so father bought him a violin and arranged violin lessons for him.

However, he did rather poorly at School. So father decided to send him to an Agricultural College. It was a good boarding college in Duboy near Pinsk, which he attended till the war broke out in 1939.

Zygmunt, around 1938, age 18.

Zbigniew (Zbyszek), the youngest of four boys, was born on 8 May 1926 in Hancewicze, Polesie.

He went to State Primary School No.2 in Pinsk.

He was very close to me and used me as his mentor.

Zbyszek, 10 years old in 1936

I am 11 years old and I have just completed year 5 of Primary School in Pinsk in June 1935
6 July 1936. I am 12 years old. I just completed year 6 and passed the tough entrance exams to Grammar College "gimnazjum".
The cover of my student's patriotic pocket diary published when the war started in 1939, just before the Red Army invaded Poland and entered Pinsk, when it was forbidden to be sold.

I was born on 25 October 1923 in Hancewicze, Polesie.

I was called Franek and I was praised at school and home for very good study results. I was chosen for school plays, student's committees, etc. Father regarded me as his "namiestnik" (deputy and successor). They forecast good future for me. It was a bit worrying to live up to these expectations. But I always did my best as I did not want to disappoint my father.

Being the only reliable son, I did responsible errands for my father such as, for example, taking money to the bank to pay his bills of exchange, etc. On the other hand I had privileges. I had my own new bicycle. I had a Savings Bank passbook (PKO) to deposit my allowances which were to be used for school necessities. But sometimes I got tempted to buy gellato ice-cream and had to fiddle my records. Father bought me a full 12 volumes encyclopedia by Gutenberg. He also announced that all his books in his library are now mine and I could subscribe to a book club. Sometimes he took me to cinema to an educational film and often we went on bicycle trips to nearby forest (he had a bicycle too, to go to office). We rode on footpaths alongside the railway tracks. During our trips I learned a lot of interesting things from our discussions.

Myself at home in our garden during summer vacation. Five weeks before the outbreak of war in 1939. I am 15 years old and I have passed to final matriculation year of "gimnazjum". I am wearing my college jacket with college badge on my left upper arm.


My certificate of smallpox vaccination issued on 2 July 1935 by the City Council Health Centre in Pinsk, signed by Dr. A. Michaylov.

The Józef Pilsudski College (Gimnazjum and Liceum) at Kosciuszko Street in Pinsk.

It was a modern Grammar school preparing for the university, which I attended four years from 1 September 1936 till my arrest by the Soviet Terror Police, and deportation to Siberia on 13 April 1940.

Photo, taken from a small park on the opposite side of Kosciuszko street, in 1935.

Pre war Polish banknote, value two zlotys, dated 1936

We had a very large block of land filled with beautiful gardens each end of our house. Also a separately fenced flower garden with two benches in it, on which I sat reading books, while admiring and smelling flowers.

In the gardens there were raspberry and other berry bushes, nut and fruit trees, sunflowers, all the vegetables you can imagine, even lots of potatoes which we stored in the cellar for the winter. Also we stored large barrels of sauerkraut and Polish dill cucumbers, all grown in our garden. The gardens had a deep black soil.

We picked cherries from our own cherry trees for father to make the wines and for mother to make candied cherries.

The gardens with its insects, caterpillars, butterflies, dragon flies, birds, etc. and the nice fresh things to pick and eat, were my enchanting land and a wonderful world of discovery of life around me.

What has become of our home and garden in PINSK?

IMAGES OF PREWAR PINSK AND POLESIE - 1938

Boleslaw was living with his wife and family on his own estate probably in the Lachowicze area, Baranowicze district. He married Izabela Dziedzielewicz. Boleslaw and his wife Izabela had three children. When the children grew up and left home, Boleslaw moved to live with his son Czeslaw in Malkowicze.

THEIR CHILDREN : 2 SONS AND 1 DAUGHTER

67.11 - Czeslaw RYMASZEWSKI (1897 ? - 1946). The eldest son, married Emilia Rymaszewska, my father's sister, and moved to live in Malkowicze. See (MORE

67.12 - Konstanty RYMASZEWSKI (1898? - ?). Second son, emigrated to the USA in the early 20 century and lived in New York, where he owned a hotel.

67.13 - Janina RYMASZEWSKA (1900? - ?). Daughter Janina became a schoolteacher in Kartuska Bereza. She married an army officer named Adamczyk who was an army topographic surveyor. Czeslaw's son (67.112), my cousin Mietek, vaguely remembers that Adamczyk's son emigrated to Australia.

During the Polish-Soviet war in 1919-1920, Czeslaw volunteered to the Polish Army under marshal Pilsudski, same as my father did, and he was wounded at Bobrujsk (Belarus).

In Malkowicze, Czeslaw had a government position of a ranger in the forestry department. Also he owned a house and a farm.

Malkowicze (now Malkavichi) is a small town in the very heart of the Polesian forest, situated on the railway line between bigger town of Baranowicze in the north (now Baranavichi) and Luniniec in the south (now Luninets). There were huge forests all around Malkowicze with lots of various wild life.

The younger sister of my father, my best and loved aunt. See "Previous" (Emilia 66.13).

Emilia married Czeslaw, from the Rymaszewski clan, with the same surname as hers.

Photo of Emilia, aged 20 years, and her husband Czeslaw, taken in Luniniec by Jewish photographer Globerman about 1917 still in Russian tsarist times,

 

 

 

 

They had three boys, as follows

THEIR CHILDREN : 3 SONS

 

Witold, their first son was born on 11 November 1919.

Mietek, the second son was born on 1 February 1921. He was talented and imaginative. He loved exploring forests around Malkowicze. In year 2000 he sent me a letter from England, where he now lives, in which he described those times.   "Mietek's memories of childhood" .  The letter includes a photo of the church in Malkowicze built by his grandfather Boleslaw Rymaszewski. Under the Soviet occupation the communists, implementing their policy of robbing Eastern Poland, demolished the church and removed the materials to Russia.

Romuald, the youngest son was born in 1926.

• Bronislawa, my father's eldest sister (1893 ? - 1997) married Pawel SLOKA (1893 ? - 1975). They had two girls Irena and Lodzia, and two boys Rysiek and Maniek. They lived on land in Zascianek, which was my grandfather's estate.
• Jadwiga, my father's youngest of three sisters (1900 ? - 1975 ?) married Feliks SARNACKI (1900 ? - 1945 ?). They had a daughter Bogusia (Boguslawa) and younger son Gienek. They also lived on land in Zascianek.