Appendix II · Enclosures 12 and 13 · pages 61 to 70 of the manuscript
Gizela's recollections
The author's sister wrote down her own version of this story. The volume carries it as twelve leaves in the appendix — and quotes from them at two points where the siblings' memories part company.
- Enclosure
- Enclosure 12 of the manuscript, pages 61 to 69
- Leaves
- twelve images, spread over nine manuscript pages
- Content
- Notes by Gizela Bomert, the sister born in 1940
- Quotations in the text
- twice: on the death of the twin sister and on the departure from Konopki
Two passages in which the author lets her speak
The second version
The author did not work his sister's leaves into the running text but set them at the margin — as a commentary. At two points he quotes her verbatim, and both times the subject is an event he himself knows only from what he was told.
On the death of the twin sister
The angel and the gruel
The second chapter carries the author's account of how the twins Gizela and Renata came into the world in 1940 and how Renata died in the winter. Beneath it he sets the recollection of his surviving sister — she tells the same event as her own rescue: the childminder's bath that was too cold, the double pneumonia, the father's dream, the gruel.
The author does not comment on the quotation. He sets it beside his own report, and the two versions differ not in the facts but in the eye that sees them.
On the departure from Konopki
„Wir würden sie verbrennen und ermorden“
they would burn and murder us.
In the third chapter the author relates how the mother, after a quarrel among the children, said: „Kinder, was wollen wir hier, wir ziehen weg.“ (Children, what are we to do here, we are moving away.) His sister remembers something else: that the grandmother said while milking that they had to go, because the whole village was in an uproar. Her version ends with a word of thanks to the grandmother.
The author notes that Aunt Julianna denied this in Danzig (Gdańsk), and that a four-and-a-half-year-old Gizela could hardly remember it so exactly — „oder vielleicht doch?“ (or perhaps after all?). Both versions stand side by side in this volume, and neither is declared the right one.
Both passages appear in full in the second and third chapters. Here they are only documented: anyone who has read the sister's notes sees that the author quotes verbatim and smooths nothing over. To the second chapter · To the third chapter
Enclosure 12 · pages 61 to 69
The twelve leaves in facsimile
The leaves are reproduced in the order of the manuscript. Three of the nine pages carry two images each; the numbering of this edition therefore follows the image files, not the manuscript pages.
No transcript. The twelve leaves are shown here as images, not as a transcription. The only text of the sister that this website reproduces verbatim is the two passages the author himself quotes — they stand in the chapters and are marked there as quotations.
Enclosure 13 · page 70
The recording “Ave Maria”
The last enclosure of the volume is neither a certificate nor a leaf but a sound recording — and it is not attached to the source. In its place the manuscript carries the author's explanation of when and for what purpose he made it. This website therefore reproduces the enclosure as what it is in the source: an explanation.
The author names no date for the recording, only his age: he was 74 years old. Given his date of birth in October 1933, the recording was thus made between October 2007 and October 2008. Counting from the year of the marriage, 1959, the couple's golden wedding fell in 2009 — the recording was accordingly made in advance.
Enclosure 13 of the manuscript, page 70
Erklärung: Die angehängte Aufnahme sollte während der goldenen Hochzeit von Bogdan und Teresa in der Dominikaner Kirche in Danzig abgespielt werden. Technische Schwierigkeiten ließen dies jedoch nicht zu. Die Aufnahme habe ich im Alter von 74 Jahren gemacht.
Explanation: the attached recording was to be played during the golden wedding of Bogdan and Teresa in the Dominican Church in Danzig (Gdańsk). Technical difficulties, however, did not allow it. I made the recording at the age of 74.
What is still missing here — and why
Anyone who sets the sister's notes beside this volume soon notices that the two do not tell the same story but hold two memories of the same one. The author knew this and left it so: he prints what surprises even him, and he names the points at which he is unsure.
This website follows him in that and adds nothing. The twelve leaves appear in full in the appendix; the evidence of which image number stands on which manuscript page, and the chronology with all the dates of the volume, are in the register.