Bronze Krzyz Zaslugi [Cross of Merit] awarded to a Polish midwife for postwar service

Anna Toronczyk and her twin sister, Roza, were born on January 15, 1901, in Poland. She had a brother, Mel. Both Anna and her sister were nurse/midwives. She may have married a Polish soldier, Mordechai Blinbaum in 1932. In September 1939, after Germany occupied Łódź, Anna was forcibly relocated to the ghetto with the other Jews of the town. She worked as a nurse/midwife in the ghetto hospital. She decided to escape to Soviet territory in the east. Before she left, she told her sister, Roza, that she should assume Anna's position at the hospital, as no one would notice because they looked so much alike. She was in the Soviet Union, until 1946-47. For the last year, she was held in a gulag. Anna was relocated to a displaced person's camp in Germany, and then she returned to Łódź to be with her sister, Roza Herszenberg, and her family. She immigrated to the United States with Roza and her family around 1966. Roza died, age 74, in 1975. Anna died, age 77, in 1978.

Salomea Herszenberg was born in May 17, 1926, in Łódź, Poland, to Calel and Roza Toronczyk. Her father delivered textiles to factories in Łódź. Her mother was a nurse/midwife, .as was her twin sister Anna;Roza also had a brother Mel. A few months after Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, her family was imprisoned inside the ghetto with the other Jews of the town. Both parents continued to work the same jobs. Roza took over Anna's job at the ghetto hospital when Anna escaped to Russian territory in the east. Salomea attended the ghetto high school, where the headmistress, Stella Rein, maintained the normal curriculum and provided a daily bowl of soup for students. Salomea was often very hungry, but a rule of the ghetto was that you did not talk about hunger. Her paternal grandmother, Cerka Herszenberg, died of starvation in 1941. In the fall of 1942, her friend, Stella Szafir, told Salomea that her family had been taken by the Gestapo; a few days later, Stella turned herself in and was taken to Chelmno killing center. In the spring of 1944, the Germans decided to destroy the ghetto. The residents were told that they were being transferred to work camps, though most were being shipped to Auschwitz death camp. Salomea’s mother decided that the family must hide and avoid the deportations. Roza's brother, Mel, had been assigned to the group of about 600 residents that the Germans kept behind to clean the ghetto and sort the remaining belongings. He was part of the work detail that cleaned stables, and he was able to get Roza and her family jobs in his group. They stayed in the ghetto until the liberation of the city by the Soviet Army in January 1945. After liberation, Salomea enrolled in medical school and received her degree in 1952. In 1957, she and her husband, Mendel Kape, whom she had married in 1951, left Poland for Israel where their son was born. In 1966, the family emigrated to New York. Salomea's parents and aunt Anna joined them in New York in 1966. Her father died in 1972/3 and her mother passed away in 1975.

The medal with ribbon, box, and certificate were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2005 by Dr. Salomea Kape, the niece of Anna Toronczyk.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Salomea Kape