Some time before he died, my father had given me a scrap of paper that he kept in his dresser drawer. The scrap of paper contained names of people. These names were unfamiliar to me. Dad had gotten this paper, I believe, from his sister Alfreda, sometime between the time Albina (29 October, 1965) died and her own passing on 2 August, 1987. This paper represents the last thread of contact that our family in the United States has had with family who had remained in Poland. It indcates descedents who have survived two world wars and a Soviat occupation.

The names on the paper have addresses with them. Alfreda hadn't heard from these people since Albina died over forty years ago now at this writing. Surely almost all of them are no longer living. However, descendents might have peices of the story of our family.

Expanding the Story

For years, I held onto this precious note with names and adresses. I had passed them on to Chris Jend, and architect and my cousin, who was living in Warsaw for a while, before moving to New York. He attempted to look up the address of Maria Fraczkowska in Zielonka K/Warasawy only to find that the address had been replaced by a large (and "ugly") Soviet tenement. Obviously, these addresses would almost surely be useless after 45 years of no contact.

More recently, I took possession of some of the old Polish photographs. I discovered that if I carefully peeled them from the soft photo album paper to which they were glued, some of these photographs provided inscriptions, names of photography studios and dates. Some of the names corresponded with names on the scrap of paper that Alfreda gave to my Dad.

The following pages are about putting two and two together, the photographs and the information on the note in order to expand the story of my family. With some luck, some of the family or friend might find this information on the Internet and contact me. Others hopefully have old papers, letters, more photographs that they could copy and send to me. One way or another, the story can be developed. I am looking for that way.

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