Barbara Klimkowska was a young, energetic girl. She was attending school, went to scout camps, and made friends with her peers. Her exact biography is not known - what we do know comes from correspondence that has found its way into the POLIN Museum collection. In addition to the 23 letters, some photographs have survived, including an original portrait of Klimkowska for the documents and a full-face photograph taken in Równe, now Rivne in Ukraine (a contemporary photographic print), so we know what she looked like. Her fate was determined by her Jewish background: together with her mother and sister Jolanta, she perished in the Holocaust in the first half of 1942. The memory of her and her family survived thanks to Maria Łotysz, to whom Klimkowska regularly wrote letters - the addressee saved them in her home archive until her death in 1994. The correspondence then became the property of Maria's daughter, Elżbieta Orhon-Lerczak, a Poznań-based artist and documentarian. She kept the memorabilia to preserve the memory of Klimkowska and the friendship that was important to her mother. In 2016. Orhon-Lerczak decided to donate the archives to the POLIN Museum's collection.
Barbara Klimkowska and Maria Łotysz were friends. They shared a strong emotional bond. They had known each other since the 1930s. They frequently wrote each other between 1938 and 1942. Eighteen letters by Klimkowska have survived. In addition to their emotional layer, their content includes descriptions of everyday life just before and during the outbreak of the Second World War. A letter dated 25.08.1939, concerning the evacuation of summer visitors tourists from the Hel Peninsula a few days before the outbreak of war, is extremely interesting. It is known from letters that during the war Klimkowska lived in Równe with her mother and sister Jolanta, while her father stayed in Warsaw. Łotysz was living in Lublin at the same time. The correspondence shows the life of young people in Równe during the Soviet and then German occupation. The change of occupation forces can be seen in the changing addresses of letter senders. Despite the war, the girls' friendship continued. They went to school, studied, worked, tried to live. After the Germans closed the school in Równe, Klimkowska began working as a translator in the office of the German police for the Równe province. She wrote about this in a letter dated 4.12.1941. Klimkowska's last letter is dated 24.02.1942. In it she continued to describe her work for the Germans and the situation in the family home. This is where the correspondence between the friends stops. The next letter to Łotysz, dated 15.07.1942, was written by two of Klimkowska's friends from Równe, Irena Kapinos and Wisia Kwaśnińska. In it, they announce the death of their mutual friend. Klimkowska, together with her mother and sister, were taken from the flat by the Germans and murdered. Five letters by Kapinos and Kwaśnińska to Łotysz have survived. They are all about Klimkowska and contain memories of her and what happened to her. They carry a strong emotional charge related to the tragic death of a friend. The collection of letters is complemented by photographs of Klimkowska - a smiling young girl.
