Krzysztof (Chris) Malczewski
O Guide to the Past
Pewnego dnia w maju 1995 zadzwonił do mnie mój kuzyn Gary Widlitz i oświadczył że chciałby odwiedzić Ostrów Mazowiecki miasto jego przodków i że potrzebuje przewodnika. Zwróciłem się do jedynej osoby którą wtedy znałem i mogłem się zwrócić o poradę Fay Bussgang. Fay poleciła Krzysztofa Malczewskiego, którego ona i jej mąż Julian poznali w czasie jednej z ich wizyt do Polski.
Dwie rozmowy telefoniczne i spotkanie z Krzysztofem nie tylko że zmieniło tok mojego życia, ale również miały dramatyczny wpływ na rozwój badań genealogii Żydów Polskich.
Wszystko to co zaczęło się od poszukiwań wśród moich przodków pewnej cechy genetycznej zwanej beta talasemią doprowadziło do powstania JRI-Poland. Historia JRI-Poland, w której Krzysztof gra niezwykle ważną rolę to dłuższa opowieść do której jeszcze być może kiedyś wrócę.
Trudno mi sobie wyobrazić poszukiwań moich przodków i podróży do Polski gdyby Krzysztofa nie było. Jestem pewien że gdyby nie on to cała nasza podróż do Polski by się nie wydarzyła.
W czasie mojej kariery zawodowej nie spotkałem się z człowiekiem o równych mu zdolnościach i inicjatywie własnej. Nie tylko że potrafił dostrzec okazje i odpowiedzieć na ich wyzwania, ale również potrafił sam je tworzyć. Wielu z jego klientów opisuje jego staranną uwagę i twórcze podejście do rozwiązania ich kwerend.
Godność zawodowa, poświęcenie, wrażliwość i profesjonalizm z jakim Krzysztof reprezentował JRI-Poland mogła tylko wychodzić z jego serca. Wychowanie w domu pełnym miłości i wzajemnego szacunku, stosunki z jego żoną Małgorzatą i dziećmi Mateuszem i Agatą stworzyły człowieka konsekwentnego a jednak pełnego dobroci i delikatności.
W ciągu naszej ponad 20 letniej znajomości w sprawach JRI-Poland przejechaliśmy po Polsce, osobno, razem lub z innymi kolegami, tysiące kilometrów. Gdziekolwiek by on nie był, w archiwach, urzędach stanu cywilnego i bibliotekach Krzysztof podbijał serca I zdobywał przyjaciół dla siebie i dla JRI-Poland.
Mimo niezliczonych godzin które razem spędziliśmy planując i marząc, nie wiele było okazji by być razem. Teraz tu na tej konferencji, gdy jesteśmy razem, w obecności setek badaczy polsko-żydowskiej genealogii mamy niepowtarzalną okazją by uczcić Krzysztofa i gorąco podziękować mu za jego bezcenne wkłady do sprawy JRI-Poland.
W imieniu kolegów, przyjaciół i klientów życzę Krzysztofowi wiele lat zdrowia i wielu dalszych sukcesów.
Stanley Diamond
One day, in May 1995, my cousin Gary Widlitz phoned me to say that he wanted to visit Ostrów Mazowiecka and walk the streets where our families once lived and needed a guide to help him. I turned to Fay Bussgang, the only person I knew in those early days who might be able to make a recommenda_on. Fay recommended Krzysztof (Chris) Malczewski whom she and husband Julian had met on one of their visits to Poland.
Those two phone calls and the introduc_on to Chris not only changed my life, but had a singular and drama_c effect on the history of Jewish genealogical research in Poland.
What ini_ally started with the goal of documen_ng the beta thalassemia gene_c trait in my family and then led to the birth and then success of JRI-Poland is a story in itself. But that story has Chris’ stamp all over it. I do not exaggerate when I say that I not only cannot imagine what the journey would have been without Chris, but I’m prefy sure that it might not have happened at all.
No one I met in my business career can begin to match Chris Malczewski’s talents and inner drive when it comes to seeing and then responding when an opportunity presented itself, or, for that mafer, crea_ng opportuni_es with innova_ve thinking and thoughgul considera_on as so many of his touring/research clients have commented in this book.
With dignity, sensi_vity and a devo_on that comes from his very soul, Chris has represented JRI-Poland with the highest degree of professionalism. His determina_on is without parallel, his never-ending gentleness and kindness a reflec_on on what must have been a boyhood home full of love and respect just as it is in his beau_ful rela_onship with his delighgul wife Margaret and accomplished daughter Agata and son Mafhew.
I have known Chris for 23 years. Alone or together with one or more JRI-Poland colleagues, we have travelled thousands of kilometers together on the highways and by-ways of Poland, visi_ng archive branches, civil records offices, libraries, and anywhere we could advance the JRI-Poland mission. Everywhere we went, Chris has made friends…for himself and JRI-Poland.
While we have spent countless hours on the phone and Skype, planning, dreaming and more, our packed schedules rarely gave us the _me to really celebrate together. That is why this conference in Warsaw, this moment with hundreds of researchers with Polish roots, assembled in one loca_on, presents us all with an occasion to extend our heargelt gra_tude to a unique man who has made an unques_oned difference for all of us.
I know I speak for my colleagues and his countless clients and friends when I wish Chris many more years of success and good health.
Stanley Diamond
I have known Chris since my first visit to Poland in 1998 with Stanley Diamond. He has an incredible skill of finding the perfect people to speak to in the towns visited.
One of our most enjoyable trips was in June 2015 with my Uncle David, Aunt Priscilla and Cousin Sara from Israel. It was their first trip to Poland and Chris drove us up to Ostrolenka and the Lomza area to see our TOBIAS ancestral towns. To give them a better flavour of shtetl life we arranged to visit Tykocin - the old village and the beautifully restored synagogue. Chris and I had kept quiet about our accommodation plans and, as we neared the town and night was falling, we started to talk about the campsite we had booked and the problems of mosquitos. This had the desired effect and the family started getting concerned.... Chris and I kept 'milking' the story, but eventually we could not keep up it up and burst into laughter. Of course many months earlier we had booked to stay in Tykocin Castle (Zamek).
Another reason for that particular visit being memorable was that Chris started sharing some of his own family background and their experiences during the War. It was the most I had ever heard from him about his own family.
Michael TobiasOur trip to Poland in September 2014 was an incredible experience. We attribute this to Chris Malczewski. In addition to a very informative and interesting tour of Warsaw, Chris made numerous arrangements to visit ancestral towns that allowed us to “walk in the steps of ancestors.”
We visited the towns of Ciechanowiec, Sokolow Podlaski, and Wegrow. Chris contacted people from each town who, much to our surprise, told us about surviving Jewish records, previously unknown. Chris helped us locate houses where family members lived and took us to Jewish cemeteries where family members were buried.
Our visit to Ciechanowiec was the most memorable. When we arrived in the town, Chris brought us to the information center and asked for the Mayor of the town to be contacted. A few minutes later the Mayor arrived and invited us to his office. Within seconds Mayor Mirek Reczko handed us his copy of the Ciechanowiec Yizkor Book. The Mayor told Chris about surviving Jewish vital records, which could be shared with us.
Even though Chris was our private guide in Poland, Jewish Records Indexing –Poland was never far from our minds. Chris arranged for a presentation at the Siedlce Archives. We were graciously received and made arrangements for the Siedlce vital records to be scanned and provided to JRI-Poland. At the Siedlce Archives, Chris was at his best and made things happen!
We will forever be grateful to Chris for our outstanding visit to Poland and know that his long-time dedication to the Jewish Records Indexing – Poland projects will always be appreciated. Thank you Chris!
Susan and Gary StoneI've traveled with Chris in Poland at least six times. Each time was an adventure and a pleasure. Chris has been able to introduce me to the right people in the right environment each time. I've traveled alone with him. I've traveled with other researchers, a historian, and Margaret, Chris' lovely wife. Chris has taken my whole family, my husband and four kids (Josh, Beth, Aaron, and Nathan) through a family history adventure in Poland. He's shared significant events in our family like having the first legal drink in a bar with Josh and Beth on each of their 19th birthday years. We've been to other places and had other guides, but Chris is the only companion about whom my kids have said: "Chris isn't 'like family' - Chris IS Family". Chris touches everyone he meets.
Knowing Chris is like having a gift that keeps on giving. He remembers everyone and everything. Chris matches people and places, stories and connections. Each experience adds to his remarkable knowledge of the Jewish story in Poland. Each time I travel with Chris, I ask him to take me to someplace new. Usually we check on a synagogue that might be falling down or a person who he has met and would like to pay a visit to. Once it was a lady who runs a restaurant. Another time it was the last Jew of a town.
But my favorite moment happened during the first time I visited Poland. I was five months pregnant with our youngest son, Nathan. I had come to Poland with the preconceived notion that it is a tar pit. I thought of the whole country as a cemetery, but as we were driving from here to there, a magnificent double rainbow appeared in the sky and I asked Chris to stop the car so I could photograph it. It was so large that I could only capture part of it.
That was the moment that crystalized my current view of Poland: Who would have thought that rainbows are still possible in Poland, in this land of ash? A rainbow is a promise that God won't destroy the world this way again. Poland no longer represents Death to me. I feel opportunity in the air, and that is thanks to Chris and how he creates opportunities and guides each experience for his guests.
Thank you, Chris! We all love you!
The Magid Family
Robinn, Dan, Josh, Beth, Aaron and Nathan
My first meeting with Chris was during a trip to Poland with my parents in 1997. Chris guided us to Lomza, the birth place of my maternal grandmother.
My mother, who was known for her sense of humor and wit, sat in the front passenger seat and they quickly bonded and became friends. When Mom's humor became too much, Chris would jab her with his elbow to stop. I think the only problem that Mom had with Chris is that he wore a Met's cap and she was a diehard Yankee's fan. They would meet again during a subsequent trip to Poland and when Chris visited my home in Queens. When Mom died in December 2007, Chris sent me a lovely and moving letter to me about his fond memories of her.
Due to our mutual involvement in JRI-Poland, I met with Chris during many subsequent trips to Poland, we visited each other homes and we became not just colleagues and friends but family.
Hadassah Lipsius Dear Chris-Though we travelled together for 5 days in 2012, the memories are as vivid as yesterday.
We packed our itinerary full and hardly took a moment to stop for lunch... there was always an archive or someone to meet in the next town and you kept us on task always... records come first, then lunch. We laugh about this often.
We will always remember the wonderful highlight - our day in Żarnowiec. We ate pizza for lunch on a patio where we could see the beautiful fields. You worked your magic to make sure I could hold my grandfather’s birth record.
You found one of the oldest couples in town who invited us into their home for fruit soup and cookies. When I told the man our family had a bakery he immediately said “Langer?” Though it had been 70 years since my family resided there he still remembered the name, he even told us where the bakery was, coincidently directly across the road from his home. Through your amazing way with people, you spoke to the owner and we were able to visit inside my ancestral home. The most special item in my house today is the brick from the bakery doorway given to us as a gift by the owner.
You are the best guide, translator, driver, professional colleague and researcherall in one person.
I have always said that there is a difference between looking at something and seeing something.
Without you, I know we would have just been looking, at a surface level, and for answers.
To travel with you was to truly see, in depth, in context, and with true meaning.
Thank you,
Bryan and Brittany LangerI have known Chris for about 17 years since I traveled to Poland with Stanley Diamond and Michael Tobias in October 2001. Chris has provided outstanding service to JRI-Poland and to me personally. He builds a rapport quickly with all the people at the Archives from the receptionist to the top Manager. No wonder JRI-Poland has indexed well over 5 million records.
During those trips, one incident sticks out for me. During that first trip in 2001, we were at the USC office (civil records office) in Bialystok. Chris was helping me to obtain official extracts of my grandparents’ marriage, my mother’s birth, and my two uncles’ births. In addition to that, Chris asked if they could provide information on other records with the surname PERLIS, my mother’s maiden name. Of course, the clerk was happy to accommodate Chris. When she brought back the four official extracts, she produced a piece of paper with names and dates of other PERLIS vital events. I thought the clerk was giving me this piece of paper, but no, she was only letting me look at it and I had to return the paper. Carrying my digital camera, I took a photo of the paper and handed it back to the clerk. I found out quickly that that was also not allowed. The clerk was apoplectic. Chris quickly went into action, calmed down the woman and then disappeared for about 15 minutes. I had no idea where he was until he returned with two bouquets of flowers for not only the one clerk, but both of them. Catastrophe avoided. This was not the first or the last incident that Chris was able to fix with quick and decisive action.
After the Conference, my wife, three other genealogists and I will be returning to Bialystok and nearby towns for six days. Chris will be our driver, guide, and fixer. I am sure we will have some more stories to tell.
Although I cannot find my photos from that 2001 stop in Bialystok, I would like to share two other photos. The first is a photo of the JRI-Poland team including Chris with the Polish State Archive team at an annual meeting in 2005. The second is a photo of Chris and the JRI-Poland team (Michael Tobias, Mark Halpern, and Peter Jassem) at the Grand Opening of the POLIN Museum in 2014.
Mark Halpern
Chris’s role as a “miracle worker” actually began several years before he worked with me and two Israeli cousins during our 1998 trip to Poland. Immediately after Alexander Beider told me my mother’s uncle, Jankiel Jaskolka, and his family, had lived at 24 Twarda St. in Warsaw, I asked Chris to try to find out whatever he could about them. I know Jankiel had died in 1934, but believed his wife Sala and children Wolf, Zvi, Jeremiah and Josef had all been murdered in the Shoah.
Nothing prepared me for the information Chris sent me several months later -- that in 1959, a man named Jeremiah Jaskolka had applied to the Civil Records Office in Warsaw for a duplicate birth record, listing his parents as Jankel and Salomea. Two weeks afterward, Chris sent me the following message: “And now to the essencenamely JASKOLKA JEREMIASZ, about whom I asked the Central Address Agency. Finally my query was answered and I learnt that he had left for Israel on July 25, 1962.”
I found Jeremiah in Israel, and learned that in the “hope that someone from my family would have survived and would find me,” Jeremiah had not allowed himself “to change my typical Polish name – Jaskolka.” Fifty years went by, and then, as a result of Chris’s research, Jeremiah heard from me. As a result, Jeremiah wrote, he “stopped being “rootless” and disconnected Now I, too, have strong and massive roots, spreading over 250 years. I have found a whole magnificent tribe to which I belong, and to which I have returned.”
In September, 1998, Jeremiah, our sabra cousin Yuval Ben Dror and I met in Poland, where we spent nearly a week with Chris. Chris took this photo of the three of us Jaskolka descendants in Nur, where my mother, Jeremiah’s father and Yuval’s grandfather all had been born.
Judy Baston
Our family first met Chris in 2002. It was my daughter Natalie's bat mitzvah and we had already been to Israel so many times, I was looking for something unique, meaningful, and something that Natalie and her brother Jonathan would remember forever. Since both my wife's family and mine come from Poland, we thought that tracing our family's genealogy would be special. A friend referred us to Chris, who not only scoured the archives in very early internet days and found our ancestors back almost 200 years, but also planned a 10 day trip throughout Poland to visit the towns where our families originated. Chris made us feel like we were not just plain Jews, but descended from the House of David. He injected excitement in everything we did, meticulously planning a tour itinerary that I marvel at to this day. We became good friends and corresponded over the years.
Then, five years ago, Chris helped make a lifelong dream of mine come true. In 1932 my father and a group of nine other boys from the Zionist youth group Hapoel bicycled from Warsaw, across Europe and ended up in Tel Aviv where they made Aliyah. I called Chris, gave him the itinerary that my father followed on his bicycle, and he created a 10 day bike trip through Poland for me and my children through the very towns my father rode, researching and finding actual locations where the boys stayed. Not only that, but Chris brought his own bike and rode with us while his brother Andrew drove the support van! There's not enough space to express our family's love for Chris. We wish him good health and long life. We are sorry we can't come for the Conference but can't wait to see Chris again soon.
Warmest personal regards,
Dr. Robert K Zurawin Houston, TexasWhat can I say about Chris Malczewski? He opens doors. He finds people. He makes things happen.
I’ve been to Poland three times with Chris as a guide; in 2002 with my daughters to visit Ilza, the small town where my mother was born; in 2006 on a trip to rededicate the Jewish cemetery in Ilza; and in 2015 visiting towns around Zamosc on behalf of a client. And I’m looking forward to seeing Chris just before the conference in Ilza, on a heritage trip with 18 family members.
On the first trip, just as we arrived in Ilza, Chris abruptly stopped the car to ask an elderly lady he saw on the street whether she perhaps had known some of our Feldman family. The next thing we knew, she was in the car, taking us to the site where the synagogue used to stand.
A day later, we were eating in a local café when Chris “found” a wonderful local man, also Krzysztof. This Kris proceeded to give us a short lecture of Ilza and its Jewish records and to take us on a mile-long hike through farmers’ fields to see the remains of the Jewish cemetery.
Chris took me to the Radom archives to search for family records, but he allowed me the thrill of finding my grandmother Bayla Riwka’s Russian birth record all on my own.
In Lublin, we found that the Yeshiva was closed, but Chris just went to a side door and found the caretaker, an old friend, who took us on a private tour.
In Zamosc, we went to the museum on the town square after we found the synagogue closed. Chris easily made friends with the lovely lady in charge, who called a local ethnographer for us and arranged for us to meet her for lunch to tell us about Zamosc’s Jewish community.
Chris is fun. He is resourceful. He knows great places to eat. He knows and cares about Polish Jewish history.
When I came back from my first trip, I phoned my mother. She said: “I couldn’t go on the trip, but I’m glad that you and the girls went. Thank you for giving me back my childhood.” Thank you, Chris, for giving me back my heritage.
Barbara Sontz New York, New YorkIn May 2011, I traveled from America to Poland with my husband, Dave, and met up with Dave’s sister, Val Levy, who lives in Prague. Dave’s paternal grandfather was born in Sokolow Podłaski and his paternal grandmother was born in Zwolen. Chris was our guide in what turned out to be, because of Chris, the dream trip of our lifetime.
Our itinerary began in Warsaw, then to Treblinka, Sokolow Podłaski, Siedlce, Włodawa, Lublin, Zwolen, Radom, and back to Warsaw. A note: We went to Włodawa due to the fact that our surname, “Wladaver,” is almost the same name as the town. So far we have not made a connection, but the case is not closed. One special person Chris contacted for us to meet in Sokolow Podłaski was Katarzyna (Kasia) Markusz. Kasia spent two days with us, helping us re-live the way the town was when my grandfather lived there.
The letter we wrote to Stanley after our trip summarizes all that Chris did for us. Here is an excerpt from the letter:
Dear Stanley,
We had a wonderful trip to Poland and Chris was the perfect guide. He did everything he could at all times to make our trip be just what we wanted. He listened to us and understood what was important to us. We “went with the flow” as new things were discovered. This aspect of traveling with Chris made it especially fun and successful. His desire to go the extra mile and make the trip a once in a lifetime experience for us made him really special.
In Siedlce we stopped at a bookstore to buy a new book about Siedlce. They did not have the book, so Chris made numerous phone calls to find out the exact name of the book so we would be able to buy it in the future. Also, in Siedlce we found some entries of interest in a Book of Residents. In order to find where the people had lived, Chris knew a taxi driver would be the best source of knowledge as to the location. He got the answer from the taxi driver, and then we drove through the area. There are many more examples similar to these.
In the civil records offices and PSA branches, his knowledge and charm was just what we needed. Also at the Jewish Historical Institute we were very successful finding Wlodawer Holocaust survivor registrations.
Chris was a fantastic guide who did anything he could to make our trip fulfilling, productive and fun. His knowledge, determination and charm made our trip so successful.
We are so pleased to be able to be a part of this ceremony to honor Chris. Thank you, Chris !
Carolyn and David WladaverI first came in contact with Chris in early 2016 while I was conducting my own family's ancestral research and had been communicating with Stanley Diamond. I was planning a trip to Konskie (my ancestral home town) with my wife, one of my daughters and another couple with whom we often travel. In preparation for that trip, I reached out to Chris and spent a number of hours on Skype working with him to plan the visit to Konskie. I also hired him to spend the day with us in the town, along with the town's resident historian and Aron Raszkiewicz, another researcher who supports JRI-Poland.
All I can say about Chris is what a thoughtful, intelligent, creative and kind individual he is. Chris's ability to find information that I thought was "unfindable" or non-existent is remarkable. His dedication to what he does and to preserving the history of the Jewish people in Poland is almost without peer. For our trip, Chris found the individual who was the local town historian in Konskie and engaged him to spend the day with us, taking us to important historical sites, including the site of the old Jewish cemetery and buildings that had been preserved from the days of the Nazi occupation of Konskie. He was able to find my grandparents' childhood homes prior to emigrating to the U.S. and their parents' businesses. And we had a particularly emotional and meaningful visit to the site of the original Jewish temple that was destroyed by the Nazis in 1943.
In addition, it was clear during our visit that many of the townspeople did not want us there (unsurprisingly, there are no Jews left in Konskie) and they were highly suspicious of our motives. Chris helped diffuse a couple of somewhat tense situations with the citizens. Chris was careful to ensure our safety and the success of the visit. He was particularly focused on ensuring that my daughter, who was 28 at the time of the trip, understood the importance of where she was and how close she was - physically and spiritually - to her ancestors. He had a remarkable impact on her and all of us. At the end of the trip, Chris was even so kind as to drive his colleague Aron back to his home in Kielce and, from there, drove the rest of us to Krakow where we were based. That provided us with a number of additional hours to talk to him about Polish Jewish history and his work.
(continues)
I will always remember the time we spent with Chris and the remarkable effort he put in to assist with one of the most meaningful trips of my life. I also want to point out that in the last few years Chris has been working in an atmosphere of political change. While he doesn't say so, I believe he is always conscious of risks associated with being a bridge between the questions and expectations of visitors and the Polish narrative. But he is so connected to his country's history in general and to that of the Jewish people who once lived in Poland that he shows no concern and is always thinking about his clients and what they need to make their research and visits as meaningful as they can be. I'm so thrilled that JRI-Poland is honoring Chris. Many owe him a huge debt of gratitude.
Steve Skorka
Chris,
On my first visit in 2009 to my home “villages” you accompanied me. It was discovery for me and together we met our new friends in Rybotycze whom we still visit each year.
Since then we have travelled to so many places: Pzemysl, Bircza, Dobromil, Olesko, Bedzin, Sosnowiec, Sulejow, Oleszyce, Rzeszow, Dynow, on and on, meeting so many people, sometimes in the most unexpected places and times of the day, meeting your wonderful family, sharing moments of discovery, joy, sadness, a multitude of emotions. We discussed the state of the world over Zurek at breakfast and our research over a late Lezasjk beer in the evening.
I do not need to tell you how you make the impossible possible (including the many unscheduled and lengthy detours). With your patience, perseverance, and understanding of the depths and needs that most of us have felt when traveling to Poland, you bring our lost families back to life.
I remember with humour, you and I going to meet a lady in Kalwarija Paclawska. We did not want to be hindered by a local admirer who wanted to ask my hand in marriage. You and Stazov devised a plan in which Stazov volunteered to have an early morning drink with the admirer to give us the opportunity to interview our lady. Needless to say the drink lasted over 2 hours.
I remember us stopping in the middle of nowhere, near Nowa Wies and you jumping out of the car and calling to a couple working in the field. You began helping them and at same time we asked them about the Jewish families who had live there. They remembered.
On our trip last summer, my family accompanied me for the first time. Late in the evening you stopped the car and asked locals who was the oldest person in the little town. We went to visit this 98 year old gentleman. His memory was perfect. The next day we returned and he was waiting for us with a list of the Jewish families that had lived in his village of Srednia Wies. He had been waiting a long time to show it to someone.
You have always treated the people we have met on our journeys with gentleness and respect.
I cannot even begin to list all of our shared encounters and stories, but I thank you dear friend for having accompanied me and been part of such a meaningful journey. The IAJGS conference being held in Warsaw, your hometown, is really the symbolic moment to thank and honour you Chris for your special magic.
Your friend in Antwerp, Jackie
SchwarzMy parents grew up in Sokoly, in northeastern Poland near Bialystok. They met in first grade at the Sokoly public school in about 1926 and left Poland shortly before the war. In 2015, I visited Sokoly and neighboring towns with Chris.
I can never thank Chris enough for his efforts to connect me to my ancestors, both by finding and translating records from the Bialystok Archives and by introducing me to people in the towns that figured in my family’s history. Most important, he introduced me to an English teacher at the same school my parents had attended. Jolanta showed me the locations of the former Jewish cemetery, synagogue, and other places. I gave her a copy of my mother’s seventh-grade diploma from 1933. When I returned to Sokoly with Chris in 2017, Jolanta invited me into the school and showed me the diploma, now prominently featured on the bulletin board. (I only wish Mom’s grades had been better ) She and I communicate often, and I cherish my new friend from Sokoly—the human face of my parents’ hometown.
I’ve taken many memorable trips, but none could ever surpass these two for the connections that Chris helped me make to my ancestors. He worked tirelessly throughout our trips, often getting up early to research some branch of my tree in an effort to break down a brick wall. And always with incredible patience and a great sense of humor. I often had to make sure Chris was in sight, because if he wasn’t, it was because he was about to “abduct” some likely nonagenarian in the street who might have a story to tell about the war years.
I’m now busily looking for other ancestors from other towns so that I can hire Chris for a third trip!
Sharon SlodkiA Day in Przemysl
Fannie Metzger, my mom’s mother and my grandmother was one of 9 children from the town of Przemysl, in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains in southeastern Poland. We knew that one of her brothers, Isaac, had survived the war, returned, remarried and later died in the early ‘70s. It was our hope to locate his adopted son, who we believed to be named Jerzy.
May 8, 2003 started early at our hotel in the Rzeszow, about 50km up the main highway from Przemysl, over coffee and cold cuts with my parents, Mel and Dorothy, our driver, Jan, and our guide, Kris. Rzeszow, Kris noted, was once known to Poles, pejoratively, as “Mojzeszow” (‘Mosestown’), owing its once large Hasidic population. Today it is a dreary industrial city with little outward charm.
To simply label Kris Malczewski as a tour guide doesn’t even begin to capture the true meaning of his work. His formula is equal parts detective, linguist, psychologist, anthropologist, salesman, and entrepreneur, sprinkled liberally with a frenetic activity level, a compulsive drive, and a likeable country boy personality, and all topped off with a surfeit of raw chutzpa. None of the wonderful things that transpired this day in Przemysl could have been possible without him.
Our first stop was Smolki Street to see Rozia Felner who Kris knew from his past research work. She is one of the very few Jews who survived the war and resettled in Przemysl. Perhaps she knew of our Isaac, who had also survived and returned to the city. We pulled up to her street, across from the 4-story apartment building where she lived. Kris, always thinking and working, ran to a corner store and bought her a box of chocolates.
Rozia lived alone in the modest but quite comfortable flat. After she proudly served us coffee and cakes, we got down to business. Our guide Kris is, in addition to his many other talents, a gifted translator capable of going from Polish to English as sentences are being uttered. Soon after we began, she looked at us and said that she knew where our relative was buried, next to her husband in the Jewish cemetery, and that his wife, Aniela, was still alive but quite infirmed. It’s hard to convey the sledge hammers impact of hearing, first hand, that a previously unnamed and unknown wife of an almost mythical uncle was still alive.
At 88 Rozia has seen and lived through more than anyone you’re ever likely to meet. In a touching moment, when we had asked about her life, she looked at Kris and said but a few words which he did not translate for us. Later we learned that she had told him she could not bear to recall too much of her life as it was just too hard to deal with and for fear of kindling nightmares. A few days later in Krakow I bought a book that contained short life stories written by survivors from Przemysl. Rozia was one of the authors. She gives a brief but gut-wrenching account of her ordeal and improbable survival amid unspeakable horrors. In closing, she offers: “I am many times lonely now, and I don’t like to think very much about the war and the losses of the Jewish people.”
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She knew of a man who would know how to find Aniela. She suggested, no, more accurately she told us, that we would all go to see him, stopping at the cemetery on the way. The very few post war stones are in front with the vast majority of older ones set back into the encroaching forest. As you walk deeper into the forest, you walk further back in time. This is an intensely spiritual place. Rozia asked me to light two candles she had brought for her husband’s grave, a duty I was honored to perform. With only a dozen or so post-war stones to look at, it took but a moment to locate the grave of one Edward Metzger. Our initial confusion over the name was quickly explained by Rozia, who knew our Isaac by his ‘street’ name, Edward. Given that he had married a Catholic woman, Aniela, and with the political climate as it was in communist Poland, it is not surprising that he adopted a more Christian name.
Later, we piled back into the van to find Joachim, a friend of Rozia’s who she thought could help us. Jochiam showed us the area he thought she lived in. As it turned out, this was to be a dead end. Kris stopped all sorts of people on the street, asking everyone and anyone if they know of an old woman named Aniela who lived in this block. She didn’t live there.
Not even remotely ready to quit, Kris decided to visit the city hall. We entered the records division and were promptly ushered next door into a room filled floor to ceiling with metal file boxes. Kris, who had been working overtime charming the middle-aged lady clerks in Polish started probing for data with one of the women who appeared to be in charge and manned the computer console. The computer was an index to the records and looked to be from the age of ‘pong’. Unfortunately, we seemed to be striking out on searches for any Metzger. Some combination of Kris’ charm, his name dropping of the town mayor and what I believe to have been genuine kindness and unspoken understanding with the clerks all conspired to rally the office to our aid.
Just as we were ready to give up and leave, one of the women comes through a doorway from another archive waving a 5x7 card. And there it all was. Like a mini Rosetta stone, this card laid out, in longhand, the life of one Aniela Tyczynska of Tarnowskiego Street. She was born July 26, ’22 as Aniela Binczak. Her first married name was Wojtowicz, which is also the name of her son Jerzy, born June 11, ‘41. After the war she married Isaac Metzger, who’s street name was Edward. He died in 1971 after which she married a third time with the name Tyczynska. Kris called the apartment on his cell and quickly arranged for us to meet.
On the walls of her apartment were photos of her children and grandchildren. Particularly striking was a wedding portrait of her son Jerzy and his beautiful wife Anna, a dead ringer for a young Kim Novak. While we know that Aniela is not Jewish, curiously, there were few if any obvious Catholic symbols to be found in her apartment.
Aniela began to talk in Polish, translated as she spoke by Kris. Isaac didn’t follow his siblings to America because he had been drafted into the Army in the 30’s. On release, he married and unknown woman, c. 1938. She knew him pre-war because her family, the Binczak’s and the Metzger family were neighbors and friends, living on ‘Kopernica Street ’. Isaac left voluntarily by train for Russia in ’39 with a group of other Jewish men, presumably to fight on the Soviet side against the Nazis. Aniela’s family receive messages from him, indicating that he first went to Lemberg then on to Sambor
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He returned to Przemysl in ’44 as a corporal in a Polish Army unit formed in Russia and fighting alongside the Red Army. On return, he found his wife gone, presumably murdered in the Holocaust. Aniela’s family hid his identity cards to protect him from the partisans. He and Aniela married soon after the war, her first husband having died, likely as a soldier.
She remembers visits post-war from many of Isaac’s Polish Army comrades who later immigrated to Israel. He was a ‘tinner’ or a metal worker and a member of the Communist party. Later, he became a worker at a library/bookstore on the ground floor below the very apartment we were in.
He was jailed in the late ’50 for something to do with mis-appropriated clothing and repatriated workers from the east. Aniela downplayed the entire episode, saying she hired a lawyer and he spent only a short time in jail. We suspect that there is much more to this tale, and a significant political angle, than she was willing to tell us.
She remembered receiving care packages from the Metzger family, especially from my grandmother Fannie, or Fania to her, who could read and write in Polish. She also recalled fondly visits from Edward’s American relatives; his nephew, Bernard Flamenbaum and wife Barbara during the late 50's, and a visit from his sister-in law, Molly Metzger on her way to Moscow in the 60's. Finally, she recalled that the Metzger’s had a family bakery on ‘Ratashova Street’ until 1939.
We then heard all about her family. Recently retired Jerzy and wife now live in Stalowa Wola, a city about 100km to the north. Their children are Kasia or Katarzyna (m. Leszek Warchol – both doctors) and Marta (m. Darek Banka – both teachers). She has several grandchildren and beamed as she proudly showed off snapshots. While not blood relations, she was clear and emphatic on how close Isaac/Edward and Jerzy were up to his death and how he was grandfather to the children.
Aniela has advanced Parkinson’s and tires easily. The 90 minutes we talked had taken its toll on her, both physically and emotionally. But this is a strong and proud woman who clearly enjoyed our visit almost as much as we treasured meeting her. As we left, we exchanged the hugs of a family.
David Semmel
Some_mes you spend only a few days with another person and yet those days resonate and have an influence far beyond your _me together. That's the way it was with the _me we spent with Chris Malczewski in Poland six years ago. He was our guide on the "roots trip" that Irwin and I took aqer the IAJGS conference in Paris that summer.
Within minutes aqer he picked us up at our Warsaw hotel, we felt as if we had known Chris for ages. The three of us talked non-stop for the next four days and I s_ll remember so much of what he told us about his life, about Jewish life in Poland, especially in the 20th century—the extent of intermarriage about which we had not thought much—and about how many Poles covered up their Jewish heritage aqer the Shoah.
Given the glowing recommenda_ons we had gofen from so many others who had used Chris's services, it was not surprising that he was a fountain of informa_on and crea_vity. It goes without saying that we learned scads of informa_on about our families—both then and from the research he did for us aqerwards. What did surprise—and totally delighted us—were his local contacts in every place we went. We s_ll correspond with Elzbieta, a woman who did her own archival research and discovered that she is one hundred percent Jewish.
My favorite memory though is from a roadside restaurant that Chris chose. The extensive menu, wrifen in both Polish and English, listed something called "beef, Jewish style." When I asked Chris what that might be, he went off to confer with the owner and returned to report that it means "beef cooked with lots of garlic!"
Sallyann Sack-Pikus
A Poignant Adventure with Chris Malczewski
My brother, Joe, and I hired Chris to be our guide and driver in Lomza Gubernia in April, 2012. It was my second trip to Poland, and first for Joe. The intent was to go back to the communities where our father, Michel Cynkus, and his family were born and raised...stepping in his footsteps, touching the doorposts of his childhood.
Chris first arranged for us to have a meeting with Mariusz Prusaczyk, the Secretary of the Ostrolenka Town Hall - in the town of our father's birth - and we felt honored. On the way to Lomza, I told Chris that we needed to stop in Sulki, a bit of a town on the road between Ostrolenka and Lomza. Sulki/Sulca is also known as Cyncu (in Cyrillic) and that is the origin of our family; the records from the 1800s are the farthest back that I can go in the b/m/d documents.
Sulki/Cyncu/Sulca is a one road line of farmhouses on one side, potato fields on the other. I had been there in 2002, driving down the road with George Malenczyk ,no resident in sight - until we turned around and unexpectedly saw an elderly man leaning against a fence, watching our car go back and forth. Stefan Szabtski, then 75, was curious and open to us; his wife, Halina, came downstairs..and they happily accepted the gifts I'd brought for whomever would speak with me - boxed teas,soups,drinks,toiletries,cards etc.,and then Henryka Tercjak - a sisterinlaw-joined us. They were the only people in Poland in my towns who would speak with me - and had no history of their village nor of my family. We exchanged addresses, and I sent 'care' packages for a few years, and received Christmas cards.
So, now, in 2012, the road was again empty - until we turned around at the end of the road and an elderly woman was leaning against a fence watching us drive by! I told Chris to stop, he got out to speak with her as I was getting out of the back seat, my brother still in the car, curious of it all. The woman took one look at me, shrieked "THE AMERICAN"..and we all stood hugging, in tears and disbelief. Chris was the most shocked of the three of us - it was miraculous - the family, now 85 years old - dressed in layers of thin clothes on a cold day, the same house with a dairy barn behind it. Halina took us to the back of the house, and a woman began to come downstairs - took one look at us, and ran back up into the house. She, Henryka, emerged in moments, hugging a photo frame - it was the photo of me with my first grandchild, born in 2005 - which I'd sent to them. They recalled my telling that I had one son, newly married.
The chatter and laughter and tears were abundant - Chris talking with the women and translating for us, more tears and hugs, and my brother standing by, curious and stunned... Chris, himself - was just in a state of disbelief - it was overwhelming - who had ever dreamt these people were still living, and in the same home. Stefan pedaled up on his bicycle a few minutes later - took one look at me, and came for hugs and chatter and laughter.
As delighted and joyful as I was, I think that Chris was the most affected by it all - certainly nothing like this likely had happened on any of his other private tours. These lovely and welcoming people live in such a small world - Stefan had asked me,on the first trip, with: "We have a cousin in Chicago - do you know her?"
It was a gift, an honor of sorts, to be with them once again - something neither my brother nor I nor Chris will ever forget.
Thank you, Chris, for being an essential part of that journey.
Judie Cynkus Rice Los Angeles July, 2018
I had an incredible journey with Chris in 2010. It was just the two of us! It was actually an unusual time in Poland. The President, his wife and 94 dignitaries had died in a plane crash the day before I was due to travel to Poland. I called Chris from Boston to ask him if I should not come, as the country would be in mourning. He said, "Of course come! Life goes on and we will be able to go everywhere." So off I went. My husband and teenage son were supposed to join us after Chris spent four days taking me to my towns of Jaroslaw, Przemysl, and Bialystok.
We were at a shtibble in Lublin when my husband called me to say that a volcano in Iceland had erupted and air traffic had come to a standstill, so he and my son were not able to come to Poland. I had five extra days with Chris in Warsaw. While air travel came to a standstill all over the world, I wondered how I would EVER get home. Chris actually offered to drive me to the south of Spain so that I could take a boat to North Africa and fly home from there. Who would DO that??? Only Chris.
We made the most of the extra time we had together. We went to Treblinka and then Bransk, where my PREDMETSKY clan originated. There Chris introduced me to the town historian, Zbigniew Romaniuk, who felt certain that my family surname originated from the word "Przedmiescie", which means suburb. He then took me to the outskirts of Bransk where I could walk the streets of my ancestors.
One night after I went to bed, Chris was able to locate the only Jew living in Jaroslaw and invited him to meet us for breakfast at our hotel. I came downstairs and found this gentleman who has refused to join his family in Israel in order to preserve Jewish memory in Jaroslaw. Chris was my translator and it was an incredible morning.
Then, in Bialystok, Chris introduced me to the inimitable Lucy Lisowska. Lucy, who refuses to leave Bialystok, showed me the Jewish cemetery and shared with me that there were many more Jews in Bialystok who do not admit publicly that they were Jewish.
Just a few weeks ago, I returned to Poland on a Boston mission and had the opportunity to spend time with Chris in both Warsaw and Krakow. He is a loving, sensitive man, and when I caught his eyes welling up with tears as we said goodbye, I got teary as well. Chris, congratulations on this incredible honor. May you go from strength to strength.
Marilyn Lipton Okonow Needham, MassachusettsIn 2001 I had travelled to Poland with my late cousin, a Survivor, and another cousin who was born in a DP camp. We found the cemetery in Siedleczka where our families came from. It was in ruin. I was determined to have it restored. Fast forward 7 years. I had raised enough money to rededicate the cemetery, which was scheduled for August 2008. On this trip I brought my wife Charna, and our three sons, Joshua, Ira and Noah. With my wife’s cousin Akiva's help we hired Kris.
Kris picked us up at the airport and had already done research on the area of the cemetery. In the hotel, he read a passage from a book about a pogrom in Kanczuga that happened to the Jews who returned after the war. He translated the Polish script and read aloud the names of those who had survived. Among those names were my great aunt, great uncle, cousin and my mother. He had no idea who these people were at the time. Kris had an excellent rapport with all three of my boys ranging in ages from 9 to 17. They fondly remember him and he was instrumental in connecting them to the county and their heritage.
Kris knew so much about the area where my mother's family came from. He was definitely prepared for the six day trip. Prior to the rededication of the cemetery, we met with a local family in Gac who remembered my mother during the war. We found the barn and fields she hid in during that time. Kris graciously translated the stories into English so we could record them on video. At the cemetery restoration, Kris volunteered to video and photograph the entire ceremony which was attended by 100 or so townsfolks, the Mayor, the head Priest, and television and news reporters. After the ceremony, Kris drove us to the family home of the people who hid my mother. During the story telling, I saw Kris grow very emotional and break down while he continued to tell us in English what was being said.
Kris then took us to Ozarow where my wife's paternal grandparents come from. There he was able to show us the old synagogue and where Charna's grandparents lived. When confronted with some anti-Semitism from a local townsperson, he was able to explain that even without Jews, antiSemitism exits.
We owe an unfulfilled debt of gratitude to Kris for his invaluable assistance in helping us attend the restoration of the cemetery and showing us Poland and telling us of what it was like to live there as a Jew immediately before and during the war. Our best wishes to him and his family on this auspicious occasion.
Howard Nightingale TorontoMy friend Chris Malczewski will forever be in our hearts as he was our guide in 2006. We went to Poland when I discovered my aunt, who was murdered by Gestapo as a member of the underground, had an actual gravesite. We had been told she was buried in a potter's field. This information was discovered through a posting on JewishGen which led to meeting the woman in Krakow who wrote a biography on my aunt's husband.
We waited a year to go as we wanted Chris as our guide and no other would do. He was absolutely amazing – contacting the source of the gravesite story as well as others. Chris met us our first day in Warsaw and took us to the cemetery where he had arranged for Mr. and Mrs. Jan P., who had known my aunt during the war, to meet us there. He then took us to a café where he acted as translator for a visit with the couple.
Chris did so many amazing things to make our trip one of a lifetime. I have referred him to countless others.
His spirit, energy and curiosity are boundless. When we were visiting the Remuh Cemetery in Kazimierz (Krakow), we could hear a craftsman working. I asked Chris what he was doing and he said "I don't know! Let's go find out!!" It turned out he was a tombstone restoration craftsman. We had a very long 'talk' with him and learned about the Krakow Jewish Quarter restoration project.
Chris MADE our trip. It would have been nothing without him. Twelve years later, thinking about him and our trip still brings tears to my eyes. I am forever indebted to him.
Connie Fisher NewhanVery simply, Chris transformed my life.
In 2009, I decided to trace my mother's family's Holocaust history to its origins in the small villages and the ci_es of Poland. I had afempted to do so once before back in 1984, but without Polish language skills and lifle informa_on about my ancestry, this earlier trip was a failure. This _me, I contacted Stanley Diamond who told me that if I was going to Poland, I must hire Krzysztof Malczewski as my guide. When he met me at the Krakow Airport, I no_ced that the pickup truck he was driving didn't have a GPS, so when I asked him about it, he said, "GPS? I don't need GPS. I have emo_onal GPS."
As it turns out, Chris' other jobs made him very familiar with small-town life in Poland. He had an uncanny way of ingra_a_ng himself with strangers, pulling over on the side of the road and asking people for local and historical informa_on. He wasn't only a guide and interpreter--he was a cultural translator as well. To illustrate, when we approached my ancestral village of Jezow, I was beside myself with an_cipa_on. It was early aqernoon on a Friday, and I knew we had to get to city hall before it closed. But Chris insisted on stopping for lunch. As we pulled into a gas sta_on, he stated, "Debbie. We eat. Djurek. Na_onal soup of Poland. Good soup." It wasn't a ques_on. I explained to Chris that gas sta_ons usually weren't be best places to eat in the U.S., but he affirmed: "Good soup."
Chris gave our food order to two young women at the counter, and I could hear him talking to them about the "American woman." The girls disappeared, but in a few minutes, the owners of the gas sta_on, the Galinskis, came from their home behind the gas sta_on and greeted us. The soup was homemade by Mrs. Galinski, and indeed, it was very good. The Galinskis were excited about my quest to find out informa_on about my great-grandfather, and apparently Mr. Galinski's family had lived in this town for centuries. They invited us to their home to enjoy some more Polish food, but I was worried about whether we were ever going to make it to City Hall. Then, Mr. Galinski made a phone call to City Hall and made sure that City Hall knew we were on our way.
When we arrived there, a clerk by the name of Alina met us at the records office. She was clearly upset that Chris and I had arrived near quizng _me asking to see the collec_on of birth, marriage, and death records of this village. Chris warned me not to say anything, so I remained anxiously quiet while Alina opened a large storage cabinet, revealing dusty leather-bound tomes of beau_fully inscribed records. She started slowly looking through them for the surname Galas, and at her pace, I knew we were not going to ever find the records I so desperately wanted to see before the office closed.
Chris said something, stepped behind the counter and took one of the record books himself. In a few minutes, he stopped and looked up at me: “Debbie, I have a Galas.” It was a birth record from 1919. I turned to Alina, and though I knew she could not understand English, I said to her with tears running down my cheeks: “Pani Alina, I have been looking a long _me and have come a very long way to see any record that my family existed, to validate that I belong somewhere in this world.” Chris turned the book so I could see the birth record of my mother’s cousin with my mother’s uncle’s signature, the first evidence of my roots in this shtetl. Needless to say, when Chris turned the book to me, another fountain of tears gushed from my eyes. I laid my hand on top of that worn, yellowed page and the lovely script of the record. I closed my eyes and felt the history of the page through fingers. And then another miracle: though it was well past closing hours, Alina and Chris started going through all of the vital records, lezng me photograph all the ones that were related to my family.
As it turns out, the records from Jezow led me to a discovery of cousins who, aqer libera_on, had made their way to Sweden. Aqer more than 50 years of searching, I found a surviving remnant of my mother’s family and we have now gathered together numerous _mes, including last May’s reunion of 3rd and 4th cousins, all descendants from our ancestor in Jezow. There are many other miracles of discovery that I experienced during that week in Poland. None of them would have been possible without Chris’ persistence, skill, and yes, love.
What else could explain Chris’ desire to help? He has a fundamental sensi_vity to the human need to connect, to find family, to restore that which has been lost, and to heal those who have been hurt. Chris, you remember I taught you the American expression, “You are worth the price of admission”? You are worth far more than that, my friend. My family and I are eternally grateful.
Love you!
Debbie LongWe are delighted to send our heartfelt congratulations to Chris Malczewski upon his receiving the well-deserved honor and recognition by Jewish Records Indexing – Poland at the International Conference in Warsaw on Jewish Genealogy in August 2018.
Chris worked with us for well over a year prior to our visit to Poland where he guided us through an amazing and eyeopening journey to discover our family’s history dating back three generations.
Growing up in New York City with the last name of Leo, it was understandable why most folks thought we were Italian. But that just wasn’t the case. We were Jewish! In fact, our grandfather, Samuel Leo was an Orthodox Jew having emigrated in the late 1800’s from Lipno, Poland, a shtetl about 100 miles northeast of Warsaw. As Samuel’s grandchildren, we became curious about our Leo name. Our fathers told us that it had been changed when our family came to the U.S. from Poland. Our family surname wasn’t Leo but rather Lira (or Lehrer/Leohrer).
We learned anecdotally that a different wing of the Leo family had the exact same story about their surname. They were told by their grandparents it was not Leo but Lira, their ancestors having emigrated from the small town of Lipno in Poland. Our own research in the United States led us to various documents - marriage certificates, death records, arrival and census records, all which turned out to be informative but insufficient to confirm our family’s real name and history. That was the case until we connected with Stanley Diamond who introduced us to Krzysztof Malczewski. Chris soon became our family’s genealogical researcher, master guide, laughing buddy, and friend taking us on our journey to Poland and our historical family city of Lipno.
We simply wanted to know more, answer questions about our family and the connections, fill the gaps of our past, experience Poland and Lipno first-hand, and ultimately document our findings for our family to have for generations to come. And wow, did we do just that . and more!
We arrived in Warsaw and were met by Chris holding up a sign with the LIRA name. His sense of humor matched ours. And with that we began the journey of a lifetime too long to describe in these few paragraphs but memorable enough for us to treasure the rest of our lives!
With Chris’ tenaciousness, compassion, and passion for his work he discovered archival records (in Cyrillic) which his wonderful and brilliant assistant Stash translated for us as we sat in a food court in a mall in Warsaw. As Stash read the documents, we heard the story of our great-great grandfather selling his Lipno house at the turn of the century to his son Selig, our great-grandfather. It was emotional and chilling at the same time.
Enough said, Chris, we thank you for your outstanding professional work on behalf of those of us who wanted and needed to learn of our past. We honor you for your care, loving devotion and dedication to JRI Poland, and we wish you continued success as you provide the same to others who follow in our path.
With deep respect & appreciation,
Gary & Steve Leo/LiraIn Poland with Chris – July 2014
In 2011 I hired Chris for a three-day research tour of my grandfather’s family shtetl, Wysokie Mazowieckie in northeastern Poland. Words cannot adequately describe this genealogical experience! Before meeting we had several email and phone conversations about my goals and Chris tailored the tour around this. We started at the Lomza archives where we retrieved birth and marriage certificates from the mid 1800s. The thrill of holding these pristine documents still sends a chill down my spine.
Next we visited Wysokie Mazowieckie where the principal of the high school was our guide. He maintains the town museum with many pictures from when this shtetl was half Jewish. I was touched when, as we walked into the mostly destroyed cemetery, our local guide took a kippah out of his pocket. He refused payment and it took persistence for him to accept a couple of bottles of wine.
Everywhere we went, Chris knew a local guide. In Bialystok, where my grandfather may have learned tailoring, a Jewish woman was our guide. Since the early 1980s she has been pressuring the city to preserve the Jewish heritage landmarks. She spoke of her successes and failures and the Star of David picture is one of her successes.
Upon returning home Chris retrieved more marriage certificates for my great grandmother’s siblings. Two siblings came to the US and two remained in Poland. None of the US families knew of siblings in the US and did not believe we were related. Chris’s careful reading of the marriage certificates determined that the parents were the same resulting in an expansion of the two trees and my being invited to give a talk at their family reunion.
I am saddened that I cannot be at the IAJGS-2018 to join many others honoring Krzysztof Malczewski. To summarize, I am indebted to Chris.
Steven Krisch
We have been to Poland twice with Chris. Our first trip, in 2009, was a voyage of family discovery. Chris, with his inimitable style, managed to gain access for us to the 1929 census of Jewish Mezritsh (Miedzyrzec Podlaski). There I discovered my mother's sister Blima, murdered by the Nazis in September 1939, and came to understand that I was named after her - a fact my mother had never shared with me. I found my entire mother's family in that dusty book. It was a life-changing moment.
I had brought with me a photo of Blima sitting in a tree, looking beautiful and young, and wanted to learn as much as I could about the photo. Chris brought us to a forest ranger who lived in a little cabin in the national park he was charged with caring for. This man received us with open arms, Coke and cookies, and later shots of vodka. He shared his vast knowledge of the history of the area under the Nazis, identifying the tree my aunt Blima sat in and even the month in which the photo was taken. We would never have experienced these amazing moments without Chris' help.
We returned to Poland this past January (2018), this time with our children and some close family friends. Chris led us on an unforgettable family history tour. Chris brought us back to the "expected" places in my family's history, of course, but also opened a unique view into unexpected and exciting aspects of Poland's Jewish past. He was generous with his time and knowledge, his kind demeanor gaining us access to places that would certainly have been closed to us otherwise.
We visited a newly uncovered ancient mikveh (ritual bath) in the town of Chmielnik, watching the property owner unwrap artifacts he had unearthed there, while listening to the story of its discovery. We visited a beautifully restored synagogue in Lancut, and an impressive reconstruction of wooden synagogue in Bilgoraj. And in my mother's town, Miedzyrzec Podlaski, we spoke with a stone mason about repairing the badly damaged gravestones of my mother's aunt and cousin, buried there during the war. Chris enabled the forging of a new link in the chain of generations, connecting my children to their Polish ancestors in an enduring way.
Jamie KotlerTraveling with Chris Malczewski in August of 2010
My eleven days with Chris Malczewski was the highlight of a memorable and meaningful month-long trip to Poland in August 2010. During these days we covered much ground, from southeastern Poland up to the Bialystok region, visiting numerous cities and towns, museums, historic and religious sites - Jewish, Christian and even Tartar-Muslim. We went to archives and to a number of synagogues, cemeteries and Holocaust monuments. I had wanted to combine a custom-designed roots trip, for all my grandparents were born in what is now Eastern Poland, along with a rich cultural experience, traveling to different historic places of interest, and had a general outline of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see. As my travel guide on this my first trip to Poland, Chris added immeasurably to my experience, not only for his welcomed company, especially as we got to know one another, but also for his excellent English and driving skills, his knowledge of Jewish sites and out-of-the-way restaurants throughout Eastern Poland, and his ability to engage with people and uncover relevant information.
We were joined on the Galician part of the trip by his friend ElŻbieta Kwapisz. We spent time acquiring records at the archives in Skołyszyn, Sanok and Przemyśl, where Chris also reviewed the 1930s Book of Residents for Krzywcza, where my paternal grandfather was born, for the names of the Jewish families who lived there at that time. In nearby Krzywcza Chris went into the pharmacy to inquire about the Jewish history of the town. The pharmacist gave him the name and phone number of the local expert who had identified that the wooden building that housed the pharmacy had been the rabbi’s house. That led to meeting Piotr Haszczyn, who had learned much about the town’s Jewish sites and its residents from his father and has a website on the town’s three cultures - Polish Catholic, Ukrainian Greek Catholic, and Jewish. Piotr gave us a tour of the town, pointing out the houses that had belonged to Jewish families and took us back to his house.
In Białystok, Chris introduced me to Lucy Lisowska, the Bialystok representative of the Jewish Community of Warsaw. Bialystok is where my maternal grandmother was born, worked in Janowski’s cigarette factory and had been a member of the Bund. Lucy gave us a tour of the city’s Jewish heritage sites. While Chris had his car repaired, she helped me acquire birth and death records of relatives in the Białystok State Archives. The three of us enjoyed our meal at the Café Esperanto in the Bia ystok rynek. Chris and I had a memorable lunch at the restaurant adjacent to the synagogue in Tykocin and, on a subsequent day, at the Tartar restaurant Tatarska Jurta in Kruszyniany near the Belarus border and visited the nearby mosque and Tartar cemetery. While searching for the Jewish cemetery in Krynki, I remember him turning the car around rather quickly to reverse direction, as he inadvertently had driven just over the border into Belarus!
From there we went to Narewka, where my maternal grandfather was born and had lived for the first 20 years of his life before immigrating to London. We met with Katarzyna Bielawska, the cultural affairs instructor at the Narewka Community Center, who accompanied us to the Jewish cemetery and the site of the 1941 massacre of the town’s Jewish men. Among those murdered were my grandfather’s brothers and nephews. We learned of a film about her grandfather’s love for a local Jewish girl and Chris made a copy for me to bring home. Chris engaged with local residents who lived on the street where my family had lived, asking them what they might have known about the former Jewish families who had lived there.
After saying our good-byes to Narewka, we stopped at the Museum of Blacksmiths and Locksmiths in Hajnówka, as my great-grandfather and greatuncles in Narewka had been blacksmiths. Chris tried out different tools and we learned more about the blacksmithing profession. Also learned how one of my great-uncles, a deaf-mute, would have undertaken his work.
All in all, I can’t believe all that we did and saw and am grateful to Chris helping me explore the towns of my ancestors and experience first-hand the rich multi-ethnic history and culture of Poland.
-Joy KestenbaumA Trip to Remember in 2007
Our trip with Krzysztof (Chris) Malczewski in the summer of 2007 was a special experience for me and my cousin Jilliene. Our goals were simple: to walk the same streets as our Bolker ancestors and learn more about how they lived. With Chris' help, we did these things and more. After learning which towns we wanted to explore-- Mlawa, Wyszkow, Zareby Koscielne, Przasnysz, and Sieczchy-- Chris took charge of the trip, providing ample background resources and introducing us to people who were researching local Jewish history and creating monuments to the Jewish past. He also brought us into contact with ordinary Polish residents of these places who remembered the Jews who had once been their neighbors.
I particularly remember our visit to Sieczychy, where our Bolker great-grandparents and their family had lived, a village so small it is missing from most maps. Bolker births, deaths, and marriages were recorded in nearby Wyszkow. We learned that 150 years earlier Sieczychy was hidden deep in a forest known as the white jungle. Finding it was still difficult in 2007. Another cousin, Alexander, joined us for this part of the journey. We drove down a long bumpy paved road and then a smaller dirt road, having to reverse course because we were going the wrong direction, before we finally found the small farming community.
As he did in each town we visited, Chris sought out the oldest inhabitants. We visited with Balynska, the second oldest woman, because we were told the oldest had dementia. Balynska was born in 1921 and came to Sieczychy to be married, long after the Bolker family had left. But she remembered having Jewish friends, and she cried when she spoke of the Jews who were murdered. We then sought out the third oldest woman, known as Babsha. She lived at the end of the village with her son, his wife, and their two daughters. She remembered many details about the eight Jewish families she said lived in the town before the war. We had tea and cake with the family and snapped a group photo in their fields.
In Wyszkow we met Wojciech Chodkowski, former Wyszkow City Council president. In spite of local opposition, he had created a memorial for Mordechai Anielewicz (the leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising) who was born in Wyszkow. Later we visited the memorial, beside the Bug River-- a river mentioned in Bolker family lore.
"Kris was like a guru for me,” Chodkowski said. “He opened my eyes to things I've never seen before.” Chodkowski said he learned that “If a person comes to visit where their ancestors lived, you need to show understanding and sympathy.”
In Mlawa, Jilliene and I waited in a corridor for a long time while Chris negotiated limited access to records of our family. Chris was able to read from one of the books that our twice-great uncle Nussen Bolker died in 1926.
We sometimes stopped at local libraries, where Chris found history books to fill in the blanks in our knowledge. In the trunk of his car he carried his own supply of cherished books, which he would frequently consult, translating the text for us.
During our trip we also went to Sokoly to try to talk the mayor into letting JRI-Poland index records to help find a match for a little girl who needed a bone marrow transplant. While in the area, Chris searched the JRI-Poland database for documents referring to Jilliene's Topor family. At the vital records office we went through one book after another, searching for the records. Jilliene, a novice researcher, was very moved by the experience.
When our week in Poland came to a close, Chris brought a friend with him in the car to help us get across the border into Ukraine, where we were to meet up with a different guide. The crossing took only an hour and 45 minutes, which they said was a record.
Beth Galleto
Chris spent two weeks with me in October, 2012, in Suwalki and in Warsaw; Chris’ friend and colleague Stasio joined us for much of the time. Chris provided research assistance in the archives, chauffered me to Suwalki, arranged for the hotel we stayed at outside of Suwalki, served as interpreter and translator. His multiple roles in providing transportation, translation, expedited archives access, research assistance and guidance and advice made my trip far more rewarding and successful then if I had done it on my own.
On top of all that, his pleasant and informative company was an unexpected bonus. I especially remember our walks in the countryside and some good meals.
His unexpected ability to arrange for special favors from the archives, including extra hours, daily file requests far exceeding the usual limit, and getting archives staff (and the director in Suwalki) to identify previously unknown file sources, was invaluable.
I have attached a photo taken on Oct 19, 2012 of Chris, myself and Stasio, in Suwalki at the home of Basia who I believe was a professor or historian.
Alex Friedlander
Do a google search on “path of the righteous gentile” and you will come to a plethora of information regarding the seven Noachide laws. After October 2007, whenever I hear the term “righteous gentile,” I no longer think of the seven Noachide laws. Instead, immediately I see in my mind’s eye the face of my friend, Krzysztof Malczewski.
My uncle Akiva Mitzmacher and I met Chris while digging for roots in Poland in the fall of 2007. Before our arrival, we had given him notice of our objectives, places and people we wanted to see and meet. We only had four days, and with the exception of sleep, all of our time was spent driving through Poland. When our plane landed in Warsaw, Chris was waiting for us. Little did I know that that next four days with him and my uncle would change my life in ways with which I am still identifying. It is impossible for me to articulate in a few short paragraphs my experience in Poland with Chris and how it has affected me. The knowledge from the research he did, along with happenstance we stumbled on, was for me the closest thing to being in Poland with my grandparents.
My grandparents, Rachel Weisbrot and Wolf Mitzmacher, came from Klimontow, a small village adjacent to the town of Sandomiercz. Before October 22 1942, Jews in Klimontow outnumbered Poles by 7:1. Klimontow has been judenfrei ever since. Chris arranged for us to meet with a member of the town’s local government who granted us access to the Shul, and gave us a very detailed history of the town. Chris developed such a rapport with this man, that he invited us to his home for lunch and some drinks. We accepted, and discovered that he recently purchased his home from a woman who was a relative from my grandmothers’ side, a “Weisbrot.” She chose to live out her life with the man who saved her and married him. She passed away six weeks prior to our arrival.
In addition to scouting, researching, and learning as much as he could about my ancestors, Chris made arrangements with a certified guide during our visit to Auschwitz, as required by the museum. She was phenomenal! We experienced some local antisemitism, which Chris handled very professionally, and I even noticed on an occasion or two that he was affected emotionally, when hearing about stories from my grandparents past or researching events. We ate at local eateries along the road on our four day journey and during that short time, I feel I got to know Chris on personal level. I asked him why he would undertake such an arduous task of doing what he does. His response: “because it’s the right thing to do.” This world needs more Krysztof Malczewskis! Yasher Koach Chris. May you grow from strength to strength!
Your friend, Jack Fried
Chris made our trip, the journey of a lifetime.
With his knowledge of the country, the history, the people and most importantly, the archives, Chris was able to schmooze his way to securing us many more records than anyone could have expected.
Thanks to Chris, we discovered branches on our trees that we did not even know existed.
Thanks to Chris we visited many areas of our ancestry that we could not ever have imagined.
Thanks to Chris our family history will live on for our children and theirs. His strength in finding the right person on the street, and asking the right questions make him one of a kind.
Brian, Gail, Deana and I will be forever indebted to Chris and his unfailing support and knowledge.
He showed us in one week what anyone else would take months to do, and always with a smile.
Congratulation's Chris on this momentous and well deserved recognition of your outstanding assistance to the descendants of Poland and its heritage.
Mel FishmanThe Fishbein-Weinberg family is delighted to pay tribute to Krzysztof “Chris” Malczewski for his quarter-century of exemplary service to JRI-Poland and its righteous mission of preserving the family history of the Jews of Poland. Mere accolades cannot begin to capture the significance of his work in bringing new genealogical records to light, or in the peace he has brought to those longing to know the fate of their relatives in the Holocaust.
In 2002, our family was honored to have Chris as our tour guide as sixteen of our relatives traversed the length and breadth of Northeastern Poland in search of its lost roots. At the epicenter of our journey was Augustow, the picturesque lakeside town that for nearly six decades held a special, if not infamous, place in the hearts of those who once called it home. It was here, in 1941, that the innocence of youth met the dark reality of Nazi terror and the complicity of Polish neighbors once thought to be friends.
When the war ended, over twenty family members bearing the surnames Szumski, Powembrowski, Rynkowski, Waksman, Mirofski, Smagliar, Berensztein and Rechtman were dead. Augustow and Auschwitz had become their killing fields. The horrific fate of these beloved souls was joined by other relatives murdered elsewhere in Poland.
It takes a man of exceptional compassion, insight and character to embrace such a painful past and to bring succor to those scarred from a lifetime of grieving. But Chris is just such a person. With a gentle spirit and a fierce dedication to memory, he helped our family erect a monument to our lost relatives in a corner of the razed Augustow Jewish cemetery. He led us to the homes from which they fled, the site where they were interned and the locations where they were mercilessly slaughtered, never shying away from the incontrovertible facts that others would deny. For Chris is a man of honesty, integrity and unflagging menschlichkeit – an example to which all good men and women should aspire.
Today, Augustow is Judenrein. The sounds and smells that signaled the coming of Shabbat for over 300 years are gone forever. It is doubtful that the demons that haunt Poland seventy-three years after the end of WWII can ever be expiated. But if there is any hope for understanding between Jews and Poles, it will only come through the work of people like Krzysztof Malczewski, whose faithfulness to the historical truths of the Holocaust, open heart and sincerity speak to a higher humanity.
(continues)
The Fishbein-Weinberg family salutes Chris and JRI-Poland on this happy occasion. May G-d bless Chris and all those whose lives he has touched. And may JRI-Poland and Chris continue to go from strength-to-strength in all of their future endeavors.
With deepest respect and fondness, Julie W. and Rand H. Fishbein
The following individuals participated in our 2002 family roots trip to Poland and remain grateful to Krzysztof for his guidance and friendship: Lawrence and Barbara Weinberg (CA); Eitan Fishbein (MD), Aliza Fishbein (MD), Israel z"l and Tamar Renan (CA), Marvin z"l and Jeanne Waksman (CA), James Weinberg (CA), Ari Weinberg (OR), Eliezer Rosin z"l (Israel), Uri Rosin (Israel), Ilana and Adam Sinclair (Israel)
BECAUSE OF CHRIS…
Chris changed my visit from what would have been a fact-finding mission to an astonishingly 3-dimensional experience of learning, feeling, healing, growing Chris’ sensitivity to the emotional experience of these journeys helped bring me inside the lives of my relatives and the communities they lived in.
Chris had a superpower ability to drive us into a village he’d never been to before and find key people who could shed light on the experiences my relatives had before and during the war. In the tiny shtetl of Uniejow, he stopped a woman riding a bicycle. Within a couple of hours we were at her house where she and her sister poured out emotions about their Jewish friends and neighbors who were taken away, or whose houses were burned with them inside. Then they told us of having to babysit, shine shoes, clean houses of Nazis who moved in to some of those houses, and of the midnight abduction of one of these sisters to a German munitions factory-with the family having no idea where she was, whether she was alive until the end of the war.
They couldn’t stop crying and touching me. Chris told us that I was the first Jew they’d seen since their Jewish friends and neighbors were taken. I was the representative, the conduit through which they could channel their love and their loss.
They insisted on taking me to the River Varta, where they were sure my dad had swum as a youth. Then they fed me apples from trees they were sure he’d eaten from, too. Later, they led us to a home with an 87 year old woman and her son, who identified photos for a young history teacher Tomasz Wojcik, whom Chris found. Tomasz had a CD of photos, but had no idea who the people in them were. The sisters, the mother and son sat with Chris identifying each photo. (I wrote in English and later emailed the information to Tomasz.) After returning to the U.S., I showed these photos to my dad’s cousin-one of three surviving relatives- who identified one of them as her teacher!)
While we were at the apartment, the matriarch told her son to get the woman in the upstairs apartment whose father had hidden a Jew. She came down, told us that story and showed us the hiding place. These interchanges changed my entire understanding of the Polish Christian and Polish Jewish experiences. I’d landed in Warsaw just a few days earlier, acutely aware of my family’s anguish and losses. Now, I was a fuller human being, and aware that my story was incomplete. I now understood something of the Christian Pole experience-and was a better human being as a result.
Chris had an ability to help us walk into the sites of terrible experiences and then back off the three or four steps to allow us to metabolize the experience. Outside Lodz, he brought us to the field where people from the Lodz Ghetto were buried, but graves not marked. He got the information we needed from the cemetery caretaker to find my teenage Aunt Lucia, who died of starvation giving her bread ration to her mother.
I came away because of Chris, feeling like I knew better relatives I’d never known and with more empathy for their Christian neighbors and the plight of Poland in its position between warring factions I left the U.S. an American Jew, unrelated to my Polish connection despite both my parents being Polish. Because of Chris, one week later, I returned to the US, a Polish Jew.
I left the U.S. with near daily intrusions of the Holocaust; I came back and was shocked by how infrequent these intrusions were. I’m convinced that in great part because of the experiences Chris created, the vicarious PTSD I experienced was nearly cured. And, I expected to land in Poland, start crying and not stop until the plane was in the air heading back to the U.S. Instead, we laughed a lot, cried a lot, learned a lot, got documents that only Chris could maneuver from uptight officials
We also discussed ADHD, unknown to Chris in 2002, but contrary to public opinion, in his view an asset in today’s world. In fact, he told us he thought people with high focus actually were the ones with a disability— which he quickly and aptly dubbed Mind Absorbing Disorder (MAD).
Szyfra BirkePerhaps, I am one of the latest travelers to have benefited from Chris’s expertise. He picked me up at my hotel in Warsaw on June 6, 2018. There we visited the State Archive where he masterfully negotiated with the bureaucracy while helping me fill out the Polish forms that might allow me to access family information. I signed a Power of Attorney to Chris so that the archival information, when uncovered, could be sent to him. We also visited the Pracownie Naukowe Archive where I was able to find my Great uncle’s Lodz work permit. Visiting the Synagogue located in the midst of the current Lodz Jewish Community Center was interesting.
In Lodz, we met Hubert who was to be our “extra” guide through the Lodz Ghetto. I learned from Hubert that both my great uncle and his mother had been transported to Lodz from Vienna on Transports 2 and 3 respectively. In the Ghetto, Hubert showed us the only building that has remained on Rembrandtstrasse, presumably across the street from where my great uncle had lived (all new housing now). I learned from Hubert that my uncle died in the ghetto, one of 10 individuals who had died of various diseases on that day. Next, we went to the Jewish cemetery. Hubert assured me that the exact burial site could not be ascertained because at the time of his death, grave stones were unavailable so burials in fields IX and X were unmarked.
We finished our visit at the railroad station where, presumably, my great uncle’s mother was deported to Chelmno Kulmhof in 1943 at the age of 72. I was disappointed that we were unable to find any records of this woman in any of our searches except to see her name listed on the transport arrivals from Vienna. Perhaps, because of her age, she did not remain in Lodz but was directly transported for extermination.
All-in-all, it was a very informative, memorable and moving day. Thank you, Chris. You are doing important work.
Sincerely
Thomas Anders South Dartmouth MA 02748
