In 2015, Witold Malesa donated three candelabras to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews - two chanukiot and a menorah. These items had been entrusted to his family by the father of his mother’s friend.
The Boniecki family lived on ul. Leszno in Warsaw, where they were on good relations with their Jewish neighbours. They shopped in Jewish stores, visited Jewish doctors. WItold recalls a dentist named Szpinak. His mother, then a young girl named Wanda, was friends with the daughter of the shopkeeper, Estera Beckermann. Estera's family, along with her younger brother Szmulik, were Orthodox. Her father was a teacher in a cheder. The two girls often played together in the yard and visited each other's homes.
When the Germans began establishing the Warsaw Ghetto, the Boniecki family was forced to move to the "Aryan side", taking the place of the Jewish family who had been sent to the ghetto. Repressions against Jews were intensifying - searches and property confiscations became more frequent. Before the Boniecki family moved out, Estera's father came to Aleksander Boniecki with a request that he store the most valuable items which the Beckermann family owned – three candelabras. Fearing for his family's safety, Boniecki bricked up the items in an abandoned Jewish printing house on ul. Leszno.
After the war, upon returning from the camp in 1946, he found the items and brought them home. Witold’s family kept the candelabras, taking them along during their subsequent moves, waiting for the rightful owners to return. After many years, realising their historical and cultural significance, Witold Malesa decided to donate the objects to the museum, so they could be properly preserved and displayed.
