Photographs from the inter-war period of the Warsaw Rozengarten and Hermelin families, as well as photographs of Aleksandra Rozengarten (who accepted his husband's last name Kaniuka after the war) as a child, from her time in hiding in the early 1940s. We know the story of the families from her account, given when she donated the objects to the collection of the newly opened POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews (in early 2013), as well as from an account given in 1992 to the Association of Children of the Holocaust in Poland project (see https://zapispamieci.pl/aleksandra-rozengarten/, accessed 24.12.2023).
The Rozengarten family, Irena and Samuel Stanisław with their only daughter, lived before the war at Nowogrodzka Street (the building was bombed in September 1939). They survived the Holocaust separated: the father, Samuel Stanisław Rozengarten, survived in the East and returned to Poland with the Berling Army (probably), the mother Irena (née Hermelin) and her daughter remained in Warsaw, escaped from the ghetto and hid on the so-called Aryan side.
Her mother was a highly respected person as the owner of the Hermelin ribbon and tape factory on Leszno (she inherited it shortly before the war from her father, Chaim Wigdor Hermelin). She was of a gentle disposition, the memory of which among the staff probably played no small part when she attempted to leave the ghetto. One of the helpers remembered by Aleksandra Kaniuka was Stefan Wróblewski (surname probably false). It is likely that Irena and Aleksandra were directly assisted in getting out of the ghetto by Józef Wróblewski, who was also in the ghetto. After escaping, they stayed in various hiding places in and near Warsaw, including tenements on Stępińska Street, Targowa Street (possibly in the house no. 15), and also in Wawer and Michalin. Aleksandra spent about two years (1942-1943) with a nanny in Radziwiłłów (her mother had to earn money to live; most likely she started smuggling, what included walking from Lublin to Warsaw on foot), then, due to mistreatment (“She would throw me out of the house into the woods and make me wait until she came for me, because her friends came to her. Very often for any reason she would beat me, shouting at me that I was Jewish, that she would go away and leave me”), she was handed over to the care of the nuns in Śródborów for a certain period. Later, they hid with their mother in Warsaw at 43 Grójecka Street and Stępińska Street (they were helped by Helena Wojdowa). In the summer of 1944, they stayed in Miedzeszyn.
After the war, the family lived in Poznań, Gniezno and Łódź (in Łódź between autumn 1945 and the turn of 1950s). Her father, a military officer, was the chief accountant at the Sterling plant in Łódź due to his education at the Warsaw School of Economics and his professional experience in positions requiring high responsibility. In Łódź, they lived at Kilińskiego Street, after moving to Warsaw they initially resided in Żoliborz district, then moved to MDM.
After the war they decided to use the surname Bobiński, under which mother and daughter hid. Father was very unhappy about this necessity and never came to terms with the name change. For many years, mother did not treat any of these homes as permanent lodgings. She didn't even hang curtains in the windows. They did not go to Israel nor did they ever visit the surviving part of the family settled there. The parents hid their Jewish roots from their daughter out of fear, so much so that they never took their daughter to the Powązki cemetery to visit her grandparents' grave (to this day she does not know where it is). Aleksandra Kaniuka guesses that when her father died in September 1978, her mother destroyed all documents and even family photographs related to their Jewish past.
