It’s hard to believe that it has already been a year since the passing of my dear mother, Halina Wasilewicz (Chaya Ita bas Yaakov), on 2 Shevat 5777 (or January 29, 2017).

Now that I no longer say Kaddish for her, after 11 months of reciting it daily, I feel that it is my obligation to write a few words about my mother l’zecher nishmat Chaya Ita bat Yaakov.

My mother was born in Czestochowa, Poland, on April 9, 1946. Both of her parents were Holocaust survivors and both of them lost their spouses and children during the war. Yankel Wasilewicz, my mother’s father, survived the big ghetto, the small ghetto and later the Hasag-Pelcery labor camp in Czestochowa. His wife, daughters and a grandchild who was born during the war were sent to Treblinka. My mother’s mother, Brandla Cwajghaftig, survived the Litzmannstadt (Lodz) Ghetto where her husband and their little daughter died of starvation. In 1944 she was taken, on one of the last transports from the Lodz Ghetto before its liquidation, to Czestochowa Hasag-Pelcery labor camp, where she worked until the Red Army liberated them on January 17, 1945.

Yankel and Brandla knew each other a little bit from seeing each other in the labor camp. After the liberation, the Jews left HASAG and walked to the city looking for other Jewish people and a place to sleep. When Brandla entered the building in which all the Jews were living she saw there was no room. Everybody was sleeping on top of each other. She kept walking from room to room trying to find an empty space, but since there was no empty space for her to sleep, she went downstairs, sat on the stairs and started to cry. In that second Yankel entered the building. He recognized Brandla from HASAG and asked her why she was crying. She told him that she has no room to sleep. He told her that she should not worry because he had a room where she could sleep. He took care of her and a year later they had a daughter, my mother.

They stayed in Poland because Yankel believed that since his family was from Czestochowa, if someone from his family survived the war then the first place they would look for each other would be in Czestochowa. And if he was not there, how would they ever find each other? So they stayed and lived in Czestochowa together with others in similar situations and tried to live a normal life.

When my mother started school she went immediately to second grade, skipping first grade since she already knew how to read.

There was no Jewish school in Czestochowa. She went to a school that didn’t teach any religion, but there were a lot of Jewish kids in that school since most of the Jewish kids in Czestochowa went there.

A few times a year, schools would organize official ceremonies during which they would honor a few students from each class and present them with a book with a dedication. My mother was always one of those honored students.

As a child, after school my mother would meet with her Jewish friends at the garden of the Jewish Center in Czestochowa. The “Garden,” as they called it, was the place where the Holocaust survivors would go to meet with their friends, speak Yiddish and read Yiddish books. There the children would play with their friends, learn about Jewish holidays, Jewish history, etc.

Later, at the beginning of the 1960s, the Youth Club was opened and my mother would go there as well. This Youth Club was part of the Central Committee of Jews in Poland, an organization that was created right after the war in order to help the Holocaust survivors physically and mentally. In 1950, the Central Committee of Jews in Poland combined with another Jewish organization—the Jewish Cultural Society—creating the Social and Cultural Association of the Jews in Poland, with the main office in Warsaw and branches all over Poland. Czestochowa housed one of these branches.

My mother’s parents, even though both came from religious families before the war, didn’t speak much about religion to my mother. She only knew a little bit from what she saw at home and from stories told by her mother. The Social and Cultural Association of the Jews therefore was the source of Jewish education for my mother and many other Polish Jews.

My mother spent wonderful years with her friends in that Youth Club. They were all like a family and loved each other like brothers and sisters. They also loved their teachers, whom they referred to as “uncle” and “aunt.”

In 1963, at the age of 17, my mother went to the University in Warsaw, called The Main School of Planning and Statistics. She liked math, languages and to travel to different countries, so she decided to study international trade. While in Warsaw she found the Social and Cultural Association of Jews Youth Club and would go there after school. All Jewish teenagers would hang out there.

In 1966 she went to study in Katowice. Her father would no longer leave his home and was not well. She was in Katowice during the famous “March of 1968”—the biggest Jewish exodus of the Polish Jews. Every time she came home to visit she would be informed about someone she knew leaving Poland. It was a very sad time. All my mother’s friends were leaving Poland.

In 1972 her father died. My mother was only 25 years old.

In 1974 there were plans to close the branch of the organization in Czestochowa since it was getting smaller (only 100 Jews left in the city). A lady from Warsaw came and addressed this plan with the members of the Czestochowa branch. The older people were not happy and said they still wanted to hear that something Jewish was being done in their city. The lady said there was no money, but asked if there was anyone who wanted to volunteer to work as the secretary in order for that branch of the organization to continue.

My mother volunteered and continued there for 17 years, first as the secretary, and beginning in 1989 as the head of the Czestochowa branch of the Social and Cultural Association of the Jews. Because of her devotion, the Czestochowa branch of the organization existed until the last days of her life.

After my mother passed away, someone said, “Her biggest passion was keeping and sharing the Jewish culture in her city. Her hard work allowed all of the remaining Jews in Czestochowa for many years to participate in the meetings with Jewish artists, writers, actors. She taught the next generations about the Jewish holidays and Jewish traditions. She also gladly shared her knowledge with the young students from all different schools in Czestochowa. We will all miss her stories and sincere smile.”

During my mother’s funeral, Rabbi Stambler, the head of Chabad in Poland, said my mother was a symbol of a real Jew. He also called my mother a real “Yiddishe mameh.” And that’s who she was. Not only for me but for the whole Jewish community in Czestochowa.

Rabbi Stambler then said that our first Yiddishe mameh was Sarah. After she passed away, her son Yitzchak was very sad. But he got his strength after meeting Rivkah and getting married. He said there was no doubt that when my mother entered heaven she would pray and ask Hashem to send me my wife so that I could start a family.

And that’s exactly what happened. A few months later I met a wonderful girl and we are now married.

I still don’t know how my mother was able to do all these things. From where did she get so much strength to raise a child on her own as a single mother, and at the same time be the head of the Jewish community for 43 years?

My mother was buried in the Jewish Cemetery in Warsaw. More than 100 people attended the levaya. There were friends of my mother who came from different cities in Poland, rabbis and directors of all kinds of different Jewish organizations in Poland, members of the Jewish communities in Poland and students from different schools in Czestochowa who knew my mother.

There were also representatives of the branches of the Social and Cultural Association of Jews, including the director of the association, Artur Hoffman, who spoke at the hesped and said: “When Halina became the head of the Czestochowa branch of the Social and Cultural Association of the Jews, as the leader of the Jewish community she worked during the most difficult years for the Jews in Poland. During and after the biggest exodus of the Jews from Poland in March of 1968, only a few people were ready to work on their Jewish identity, live openly and be Jewish, which was not an easy thing to do. And so, during those most difficult years for the Jews, the ‘70s and ‘80s, Halina ran the Jewish community. Always cheerful, always with a smile. Welcomed everyone very warmly, always with a tea, always with warm words, always with a smile on her face.”

Leslaw Piszewski, president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Poland and the vice president of the Jewish community in Warsaw, said, “Halina, in my eyes, was a witness and, so to say, a representative of the continuation of the Jewish life in Poland. She was born in Czestochowa, lived there her whole life, and in 1968, when Jews were being chased out by the government, she stayed. She stayed as one of a few guardians in order to prove that there is no power that can destroy the continuation of Jewish life in Poland. She became the secretary and later the head of the Czestochowa branch of the Social and Cultural Association of the Jews. She served as the head of the Jewish community since then until the last days of her life. She did that because that’s what her heart told her to do. She was an example of a selfless community activist.”

At the end of the hesped, the chief rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, who conducted the levaya, said, “Please take a look around. The only person that I know that can bring all of us together is Halina. Because of her love, because of her heart and because of her Yiddishkeit—a Yiddishe mameh—we are all here to say goodbye and we will never forget Halina.”

I wouldn’t be here if my mother hadn’t allowed me to leave home to come to America to study in a yeshiva for 14 years. It wasn’t easy to let her only child, the only son, leave. But she allowed me to come to America so I could study Torah in a yeshiva, to study what it means to be a Jew. She allowed me to leave knowing that she would be by herself at home and she would only see me once a year, during the summer, for a few weeks.

Someone told me that what my mother did can be compared to the akeida of Yitzchak. Avraham was told to take his only child, his only son that he loved, and bring him as a sacrifice for Hashem. A test that was not an easy one. Nevertheless, he did as Hashem commanded. Similarly, my mother sacrificed her life to do what was right by sending me to a yeshiva, far away from home. But, again, she did it because she knew it was the right thing to do.

The former director of the Lauder Foundation in Poland, Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, said that he traveled around the world and met a lot of different people. He met Chabad shluchim who work in all kinds of different places where it’s very difficult to keep the Yiddishkeit alive. He said that he is still not sure if he ever met a person who reached the level of the mesiras nefesh for Yiddishkeit that my mother reached.

She sacrificed her life, doing all she could to make sure I would grow up knowing I am a Jew, and not only knowing I am a Jew but also knowing what it means to be a Jew. For that I will always be thankful to my mother and I will do all I can to make her proud. May her neshama have an aliyah.

By Jakub Wasilewicz

 Yaakov welcomes your questions and comments. He can be reached at [email protected].