I lost my grandmother last month, I’d like to share a bit about her life. Her name was Janina Garbień, she was an incredible woman and a real unsung hero. She was 95.
She was born in 1925 in Wojutycze/Voyutychi, then Poland and now Ukraine. Her father was from Warsaw but worked in a vodka factory there since being held there as a POW by Austro-Hungarian forces in WWI. He moved his family back to Warsaw in the early 30s.
She grew up in the heart of Jewish Warsaw, on Krochmalna Street, immortalised by Isaac Bashevis Singer’s yiddish novels. Her family was one of few non-Jewish families in their building. She spoke of a very happy childhood.
War ravaged her youth, community & city. The Warsaw Ghetto wall ran through her courtyard.Her family hid a 9 year-old girl a stranger brought to their flat.She often spoke of her good friend Chaimek on the other side of the wall & how she threw him supplies. Until he disappeared
This photograph of her with her mother was one of a handful of precious items she packed in a bag that she took with her everywhere in case their house was destroyed. It was bombed on the fourth day of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and they lost everything. 
She was sent to a Nazi camp in Germany for taking part in the uprising. There she fell madly in love with an Italian. They were separated during the liberation, when she suffered a terrible injury after being shot in the thigh from a plane machine gun. US soldiers rescued her.
Separated from the Italian,she ended up marrying a Pole & going back to Poland. She had an unhappy marriage,my grandfather was abusive&she secretly learnt Italian for years. She became a dedicated nursery school teacher, working long shifts to make ends meet for her large family
After she became a widow in the early 80s, a stranger who heard her story miraculously found her Italian love from the Nazi camp. They were reunited after 36 years and still loved each other. She boarded a plane for the first time in her life, to Rome.
In 2016, she was reunited with the little girl her family hid during the war. It made her very happy. It turns out she was living in Paris and had written a children’s book about her stay with my grandmother’s family. This is them together in Warsaw after 75 years.
This is her name along with her mothers and two sisters in the Polish section of the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations in Yad Vashem (thanks @OrenKessler for sending)
Despite having no real education, she was a lifelong writer. She wrote two books in her late 80s & 90s. She discovered social media which gave her a window to the world when she could no longer leave her flat. Already in her 90s, she Facebook called me wherever I was
Growing up with her story made me want to tell other people’s stories for a living. Apart from that she was quite simply a beautiful person and knew everything about her 6 grandchildren, 9 great grandchildren and 2 great great grandchildren.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
