Janina Szereszewska collection

Janina Rejzin née Szereszewska (b. 1922) was born and brought up in Warsaw. In 1940, when the Nazis occupied the city, she and her family were forced to move to the ghetto, where they lived until 1943. In January of that year Janina managed to obtain a forged birth certificate via her sister, Annemarie, who had already managed to flee the ghetto, in the name of a former school friend, the non-Jewish Pole, Jedwiga Tokarska. This enabled her to obtain further false documentation and live in the aryan sector, albeit in constant fear of being found out. Her father, Stanislas Szereszewski, stayed in the ghetto where he was a member of the Judenrat and was murdered. Her mother and sisters were sent to slave labour camps. Janina lived out the remainder of the war years with a farmer's family. After the liberation she moved back to Warsaw then emigrated to Rome where she obtained clerical work with the American JOINT. It was here that she met her future husband, a Polish Jew who was brought up in Lithuania. They moved to Great Britain in 1947 where she was reunited with her mother and sisters.

Donated 18.7.2023

Donor: Ruth Webb