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 | Myself and Leon around the time of our wedding. |
I was very conscious of the fact that none of our parents had lived to see us get married. I didn’t want any music at the wedding and we had a simple Jewish ceremony. After the wedding, Leon moved in with me and we both continued working until after I got pregnant — news that excited both of us a great deal since we wanted to have children. Leon now insisted I quit my job. His small business was doing well and he was earning enough to support a family. That was important to him. I quit reluctantly because I would have liked to have worked a little longer.
Rick was born on November 5, 1948, in Cieplice-Warmbroon, a suburb of Jelenia Góra. Rick’s birth was difficult. I was in labour for two days. But I had a good doctor, Zigmund Regula. Leon and I were delighted to be parents. I used to dress Rick in beautiful little suits and couldn’t stop asking friends and relatives, “Isn’t he beautiful?” And he was. We named him Zigmund after my father. (The doctor thought for a while that I’d named Rick after him.)
 | Rick, the skinny baby. |
Rick was a very skinny baby. He wouldn’t eat. But the doctor told me he was healthy like seven fishes, a common saying at the time. “Wait till he grows up, he’ll eat,” he said. And that’s what happened. Rick was only on the breast for a short time. I didn’t have enough milk. Although I wasn’t a very good cow, it was important to me that he be breast fed. I’d shared my hospital room with a woman, Wanda Witecka, who had given birth to a little girl a day before Rick was born and she had lots of milk. She and I became friends, as did our husbands. She would express milk in a bottle and Leon would go and get it. I remember Leon and Wanda’s husband drinking vodka out of her milk pump in the hospital.
At first, Rick didn’t sleep well. We’d put him in the buggy and half the time it would be on my side of the bed and half the time on Leon’s. We’d take turns rocking him, while trying to get some sleep ourselves. I have so many memories of my children when they were small. I remember Rick sitting on the potty, making up stories. When he was about four, he was playing outside and there was an old metal bathtub in the yard. It had sharp edges. I was working in the kitchen and suddenly I heard screaming. I looked out and Rick was covered with blood. I grabbed him, put my apron to his cut and ran with him to a medical centre which was not too far away. He had some stitches and they gave him a tetanus shot. I think maybe I was more protective of him after that.
 | Rick, Leon and I around the time Eva was born. |
I became pregnant with Eva when Rick was almost five. Leon and I were thrilled; we’d wanted to have at least two children. (I’d had a msicarriage a couple of years earlier and felt devastated.) Rick was excited too and waited impatiently for his baby brother or sister to arrive. Eva was born on June 19, 1954; she was delivered by Zigmund Regula in the same hospital where Rick had been born. Hers was a much easier birth. We named her Ester, after Leon’s mother.
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