Branded box made of chrome-plated, varnished steel sheet. It has the shape of a rectangle with a trapezium base meant to resemble a butterfly, with rounded corners and concave sides. The lid is attached to the back wall on two hinges. It is decorated with a raised embossing depicting a butterfly. The sides of the box are lasered with light golden paint. Along the sides, in the middle, there is a garland ornament consisting of multi-coloured naturalistic images of butterflies (including common brimstones, monarchs, peacocks). On the lid, there is a detailed, colourful image of a peacock butterfly overlaying the embossing. A small inscription is placed between the antenna of the butterfly: “A. Laufer / in Przemyśl”, and under the abdomen: “Company store / of candy and chocolate”.
Abraham Laufer was born in 1866 in Dobromil (Dobromyl) to Jakub Leib Laufer and Hinda Laufer. He was a Jewish merchant. He eventually settled in Przemyśl and opened his business there – he ran a candy and chocolate store at 28 Franciszkańska Street. He also sold tropical fruit, coffee, tea, and chocolate for diabetics, but regular chocolate became his most popular product. Laufer would frequently buy advertisement space for his chocolate in the local press. With time, he started to brand the company boxes with his own name. One example is this colourful butterfly-shaped box from the collection of the National Museum of Przemyśl.
Abraham Laufer died on 18 January 1939. He was buried in the Jewish cemetery at Słowackiego Street in Przemyśl.
The item forms part of Anna Strońska’s collection of Judaica. After her death, the collection became fragmented. A small part of the holdings was purchased for the collection of the National Museum of Przemyśl in 2008, and some of the items went to POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
Anna Strońska (1931–2007) – she was born on 14 March 1931 in Przemyśl, the daughter of Władysław and Zofia née Niemczyńska. Her family was well known in Przemyśl, her father Władysław (1890–1947) served as the local governor until the mid-1930s, and her mother was a music teacher by trade. Anna was the niece of prominent painter Marian Stroński (1892–1977). Together with her parents, she lived at Kmity Street. She went to the State Junior High School No. 3 in Przemyśl, and her homeroom teacher was accomplished and highly esteemed pedagogue Anna Fischer. Anna was a diligent student and displayed a particular talent for the humanities. As a thirteen-year-old, she made her debut as a poet in the Młoda Rzeczpospolita teen magazine. She later attended the State High School in Przemyśl and sat her leaving exam in May 1949. Immediately after graduating from high school, she enrolled in the University of Warsaw to study journalism. She made her first forays into working as a reporter in the 1950s, writing for Gazeta Krakowska. At the time, she won first awards for her feature pieces (published in Polityka and Argumenty) and short stories (in Nowa Kultura and Widnokręgi). In 1960, she won the annual Julian Bruno Prize for her lifetime achievements in journalism. In 1963, she became a permanent writer for the Polityka monthly, with which she cooperated for nearly 20 years. She authored fifteen volumes of literary reportage pieces, short stories, and sketches shedding light on the struggles of rural communities, especially in Poland’s mountain regions, as well as the experiences of people living in the borderlands of various cultures and ethnicities. Jewish themes were a particularly important element in her oeuvre, particularly the life of Jews during World War II and after its end. Some of the more prominent works tackling this subject are: Okopy Świętych Grójców, Głupi ślub, Niewolnicy z Niepołomic, Proszę nie podawać nazwiska, Panno piękna, piękny mój aniele, Kup mi serce. After leaving her permanent position at Polityka, Anna started to write for the Paris-based Kultura. She made her debut as a playwright in 1980 with the Partner monodrama. Her next play – Przyjechała Żydówka – was a great success not only for the author but also for the actor, Ryszarda Hanin. Anna Strońska gained further acclaim as the screenwriter for Jan Łomnicki’s popular film Jeszcze tylko ten las, warmly received at the Venice Film Festival in 1990 and later screened in Toronto, Montreal, Washington, and New York. She was awarded numerous literary prizes and won several theatre contests. Her play Zgubny nałóg won the Grand Prix in the contest organised by the Fundacja Sceny na Piętrze “Tespis” in 1997. The Czeczotka drama was awarded an honourable mention at the 2000 edition of the same contest, as well as the Silver Microphone Prize of the Merkury Radio in Poznań. Another play by Strońska, Krzyk ryby, received the first prize in the First National Contest for a Contemporary Polish Play organised in 2002 by the “Drama” Cultural and Educational Association (Polish: Stowarzyszenie Kulturalno-Edukacyjne Drama) in Warsaw. Strońska was decorated, among others, with the Gold Cross of Merit and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. She was also widely known as a collector. Hanna Krall mentioned her passion for collecting Judaica in Zdążyć przed Panem Bogiem: “Jews at the Umschlagplatz, this is what you see in Strońska’s flat […]. Crowds, literal crowds of Jews: on the shelves, tables, above the sofa, by the walls […] my friend Anna Strońska collects folk art, and folk artists like to depict their pre-war neighbours. Strońska brings her Jews from all over, all of Poland, from Przemyśl, where she can buy the prettiest stuff for the cheapest […], from the Kielce region, but those from Kraków are the most valuable”. The year 1993 saw the publication of Sennik Galicyjski, a work depicting 19th- and 20th-century Przemyśl and the author’s fascinating family story – more precisely, the story of three noble dynasties: the Pierzchałas, the Dzikowskis, and the Kozarskis. Anna Strońska died in Warsaw on 5 June 2007.
