A letter to his wife, in which Wacław Baruch writes, inter alia, on vaccinations against dysentery: "Do you have to vaccinate dysentery twice, next week we will vaccinate ourselves, two times I.50, but some people have had very swollen hands and fever, I am curious how it will be with me [...]". From the content of the subsequent letter: "Janka will come back, maybe she will bring me some notes, maybe I will find a pub, so I have to remember some of the little pieces Janka did not bring me all those I asked for, so Nachess dances [?], Sarasati's Zigeunerweisen, 2 Hubaj's czardas, Chopin's nocturne Es-dur, 2 waltzes by Kreisler, Rosmarin and Liebesleid, Zefir Hubaja, kujawiak and [unread.] by Wieniawski, that are on the shelf amongst papers, is my violin okay. I played in the church on Tuesday, nicely, they say."
It is known that in 1936, for family reasons, Baruch did not accept the proposal of Bronisław Huberman, who invited him to the Palestinian Symphony Orchestra in Tel Aviv. Parts of Baruch's biography indicate a potential important reason of this decision. Baruch, in the 1930s in paticular, was deeply assimilated and strongly identified with Catholicism. This can be seen in the letter above - at the end of the quoted fragment, as well as in other letters.
At the Warsaw Archdiocese Archives there is an entry preserved in the book of marriages of the St. Aleksandr’s parish in Warsaw – a catholic wedding certificate of Witold Hugo Baruch and the daughter of Stanisław Dutkiewicz and Władysława née Krzemińska. They got married on 8 February 1921, at the age of 31, 32 (Zofia was of the same age as her husband). The record shows that Witold Baruch's parents, Szymon and Rozalia Lewkowicz, were also probably Catholics (their parish - the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Krakow was emphasized in the wedding certificate).
The last names of the wedding witnesses also show the degree of assimilation, expressed by embedding in the non-Jewish elite of the Republic. These were of soldiers occupying high positions in the Polish Army: 2nd Lt. Edward Kubik and Major Tadeusz Różycki-Kołodziejczyk (in the act noted as Rózycki, but most likely it relates Różycki-Kołodziejczyk, biologist, Legion soldier; in 1921, before the subsequent promotion – a major, head of the Historical Section of the General Headquarters and one of the organizers of the Historical Bureau; see: Sz. Brzeziński, K. Fudalej, „Pracownicy naukowo-dydaktyczni Instytutu Historycznego Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego 1930-2010. Słownik biograficzny”, Warszawa 2012, p. 100).
Przemysław Kaniecki
