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Europe’s past matters today. My grandma’s survival story tells us why

Photographs of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum, Jerusalem.
Photographs of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum, Jerusalem. Photograph: David Silverman/Reuters

My grandmother was born in the Polish city of Równe. She died in Paris two weeks ago, a month before her 100th birthday. When I was growing up, I did not know much about her background. To me she was Grandma Lusia who lived in Germany and spoke Polish; my mum’s mum who called every evening and always wanted me to quickly pass the phone to my mother because it was so expensive to talk; Grandma who would come on surprise visits, driving her car all the way from Frankfurt to Stockholm, who arranged our summer and winter holidays, who always had a firm opinion about all sorts of things.

Only later did I understand why she and my grandfather lived in Germany, even though her language was Polish. And only recently did I realise that she was actually two years older than she’d always claimed.

My grandmother’s family came from Kiev, but fled westwards after the Russian revolution. When the second world war broke out, Lusia’s mother and her older sister were killed by the Nazis. Her brother had already been killed by the Communists in the Soviet Union. Lusia managed to survive in Warsaw during the war through a combination of immense luck and courage. “You can’t show fear,” she told me. She had two small dogs – something that was forbidden for “non-Aryans” during the Nazi occupation. She got a job at a factory and cycled through the capital to work every day, even on the day in 1944 when the Warsaw uprising broke out, which eventually led the Germans to burn down the entire city and expel the remaining population to transit camps.

My grandmother was one of those who were forced to march. She managed to slip away, and once again escaped the Holocaust. It was not the first time the assassins had come close to her.

After the war, my grandmother, together with my grandfather, tried to build a new life for themselves in Poland. Both worked as doctors, and they had two daughters. Communist Poland was politically repressive, but did allow some room for freedom in daily life. Grandmother loved to spend time in Warsaw’s cafes, where intellectuals often gathered. Cafes offered breathing space for discussions beyond the party’s control. Grandmother would joke that she was not a “theoretician”. People were drawn to her strong personality.

Peter Wolodarski’s grandmother Lusia Stauber in Warsaw, 1943
Peter Wolodarski’s grandmother Lusia Stauber in Warsaw, 1943. Photograph: Picasa/Rex

In March 1968, 50 years ago this month, demons were unleashed again. The communist regime, which struggled with growing popular dissatisfaction, decided to seek a scapegoat in the Jewish minority. A state-orchestrated antisemitic campaign was launched. Jews lost their jobs and positions. A climate of hatred was created from above. My grandparents realised they needed to pack their bags. Their time in Poland was over, even as assimilated Jews.

The family was split up. My mother ended up in a refugee settlement in Sweden, the country in which I would be born. My grandmother and grandfather were offered the chance to start working in Germany. It suited Grandfather especially well as he grew up in Lwów, Poland’s second largest city before the second world war, where there was a strong link to German culture. Before the first world war the city, then called Lemberg, was part of Austria-Hungary, a multicultural powerhouse in the heart of Europe. Assimilated Jews went to German schools, and spoke both Polish and German.

Today, Lwów is called Lviv and it’s in western Ukraine. Few European cities embody Europe’s 19th- and 20th-century history as Lwów does, with recurring border changes, war, occupation and liberation.

My grandmother’s story runs similarly parallel to Europe’s dark and bright periods. When she established herself in Germany after the 1968 hate wave in Poland, she became the Polish immigrant, not the Jewish refugee. As a doctor, she deliberately asked her patients – with a heavy Polish accent – if it was correct to say “Das Brot” or “Der Brot”. Patients had rarely met a doctor who pointed to her own shortcomings – a doctor was meant to be an authority. Grandmother quickly became popular by turning her linguistic hesitations and cultural oddness into strengths.

She was a Jew only among those who knew her well. My grandparents had seen and experienced too much to take any kind of risk. Europe’s 20th century had forced her to live with fake documents, so-called Aryan papers, during the war. Grandmother became two years younger in her passport, and a friend of hers reduced her own age by six years. After the war it was nice to feel younger in the eyes of other people – until retirement, that is, when you had to work longer!

Grandmother’s past 50 years in life were probably her happiest, even though the family was geographically separated. West Germany provided her with the security that the Polish communists had deprived her of. She was able to work as a doctor. She could buy a house. She could help her children and visit friends around the world who, like her, had been forced to flee Poland.

When my grandfather died 12 years ago, Grandmother moved to Paris, where my aunt lives. She was then 88 years old and we both drove her Audi on the autobahn. She complained that I drove too slowly. She spent 10 fine years in France, with friends, family and great-grandchildren who visited her many times.

My grandmother and I seldom discussed politics. But with her dramatic history, she is perhaps the person who has been the most instrumental in shaping my political outlook and the way I think about life. With her, and the other survivors of the Holocaust, the last witnesses to Europe’s darkest hours will soon disappear. This is a generation that was brutally forced to learn what is important in life. They directly saw how the institutions of society can serve both good and evil purposes.

When bombs were dropping on Warsaw, grandmother continued to cycle. That’s what she continued to do throughout her life.

• Peter Wolodarski is editor-in-chief of Dagens Nyheter, Sweden’s leading daily newspaper

A Swedish version of the article can be found here