The fates of the Warsaw-based Zajczyk and Hochsinger families intertwined when Natalia Hochsinger married Szymon Zajczyk. We do not know the date of their wedding (we know that they were already married in 1936), but their daughter Zofia was born on 28 May 1939. It was she, Yael (Zofia) Rosner, living in Israel, who donated to POLIN Museum valuable documents, letters, and photographs connected to the family of her father and mother (including a set of letters from 1936–1950 written by Natalia to her sister Anna Zimmermann living in Palestine). Before the outbreak of World War II, Natalia Zajczyk (1901–1950) was a teacher. In the Warsaw ghetto, she worked at Mira Szolcowa's primary school, which conducted secret education (Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute, Relacje. Zeznania ocalałych Żydów [Relations. Testimonies of Surviving Jews], call no. 301/5562).
Szymon Zajczyk (1900–1944), an art historian, excellent photographer, author of works on the architecture of synagogues, was an associate of the Polish Architecture Department at the Faculty of Architecture of the Warsaw Technical University before the war. He also kept photographic and descriptive records of synagogues at the Central Monument Inventory Office. Zajczyk's colleague, the distinguished post-war historian Stanisław Herbst, recalled: "Everyone held him in high esteem as the best expert in Jewish architecture and sculpture, an excellent photographer, a scrupulous devourer of archives" (S. Herbst, "Wspomnienie o Szymonie Zajczyku", "Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego" 1962, no. 43–44, p. 60).
In November 1940, the Zajczyks, together with their one-year-old daughter Zosia, Szymon's parents, and Natalia's siblings, were confined in the Warsaw ghetto. Szymon's parents died in the ghetto, most of the members of the Hochsinger family died in Treblinka in 1942. Natalia with her daughter, her brother Józef with his wife, and probably their sister Sabina with her sons Hipolit and Mieczysław looked for help on the so-called "Aryan side" (for more on Mieczysław Bresler's death, see Radecznica – Kurkowe Dołki | Zapomniane [Forgotten], Accessed 10 November 2021).
Natalia's Kennkarte, issued in the name of Halina Kowalczyk, comes precisely from that difficult and dangerous period of living "on Aryan papers." On 27 May 1944, Zajczyk was denounced and murdered soon afterwards. Zofia and Natalia, as well as Józef and his wife, survived the war. Their post-war fate is told through letters and photographs from the family archive.
Renata Piątkowska