Objects

The list of books in Polish that the Goldhar family decided to take along when emigrating to Israel consists mainly of works included in the canon of Polish literature, such as "The Doll" by Bolesław Prus, 'The Deluge' by Henryk Sienkiewicz and 'The Peasants' by Władysław Reymont. The willingness to take 720 books by Polish authors to the new country of residence (and the awareness of how much space they were going to take in the cargo container, the so-called lift) is a telling example of the family's inner need to preserve the memory of their homeland, its culture and language. The need to maintain the memory of Poland, and thus the symbolic relationship with the home country, appeared to be particularly important in the light of the political conditions which had closed the door on contact with relatives and friends left behind in Poland. 'You couldn't keep in touch all that time, until the regime change. Only when someone was travelling out of Poland, they could send a letter from abroad. And yes, until 1989 there was no possibility of contact', Janina Goldhar remembers.