In the footsteps of Helena Bohle-Szacka

HELENA BOHLE-SZACKA

"Helena is a bridge where things meet that could not meet anywhere else". This is how the Polish painter Henryk Waniek described Helena Bohle.
Born in 1928 in Bialystok to a German-Jewish-Polish family, Bohle-Szacka was an artist, fashion designer, curator, social activist, concentration camp prisoner and icon of West Berlin emigration.

4 Bukowa Street

Helena's great-grandparents, August Bokge and Joanna née Rohrih, had lived in Bialystok since the mid-1850s. August was recorded as a resident of the Antoniuk Factory in 1852, when he was 23 years old. August's parents were Germanised Flemish Catholics. His children, including Helena's grandmother, converted to the Protestant faith. The migration of the Bokge family was probably linked to the search for work in the dynamically developing textile industry. August found a job in Herman Commichau's factory, which was located on the site of the Antoniuk State Mill. He soon became the head of the factory, and the company itself soon became a giant of the Bialystok textile industry. It mainly produced quilts, silk, velvet and pleats. August Bokge worked as a factory director for three decades. The long-term position in the largest factory in Bialystok was the main source of the family's prosperity. Helena's great-grandfather's investments focused on real estate in Pocztowa Street, now Jurowiecka Street.

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Pocztowa Steet ( now Jurowiecka Street)

In 1896, Helena's grandparents, Reinhold Bohle and Klara Helena, née Bokge, moved from the Grodno region to Bialystok and moved into a house that Klara had inherited. At the beginning of the 20th century, they became the sole owners of the property accumulated by August Bokge. In 1910 its value was estimated at 24,500 roubles, making it one of the most expensive properties on Pocztowa Street. Reinhold Bohle quickly climbed the career ladder. In 1900 he was elected councillor and two years later he became the first member of the City Council, which was the equivalent of a deputy mayor. A photograph taken in Sołowiejczyk's studio dates from this period. Reinhold died of a heart attack in 1907, aged only 49. Aleksander Bohle, Helena's father, was 8 years old at the time. After her husband's death, Klara Helena became the head of the family and took over all of her husband's businesses.

Wasilkowska Street

The Evangelical cemetery where Klara Helena Bohle (Helena's grandmother) was buried. She died on December 6, 1927 from typhus, shortly after settling her property issues. Aleksander Piotr (Helena's father) and his brother Teodor Jan Otton received two halves of the tenement house at ul. Jurowiecka 17

Area of today's Jurowiecka Street

In the area of today's Jurowiecka Street lived the family of Helena Bohle Szacka (46 Jurowiecka St. from the Białka side, a house and a bathhouse 26). They had a telephone in the house, which was rare at that time. The telephone book from 1938 contains the following entry: 20 50, Bole Aleksander, 46 Jurowiecka Street
Helena was born in 1928. In addition to the wooden house, the property included an old orchard and an overgrown pond. Helena liked to hide there with a book and a piece of bread. Her childhood was happy.
This is how she recalled it years later in an interview conducted by Ewa Czerwiakowska in 2005:
"My childhood (...) well, it was actually good. I had loving parents and an older sister. I was very shy.
My best moments were in that orchard, in that old house where my father's family lived, and later the whole family.

There was an attic. [It was a real treasure trove!
There were old letters, souvenirs, silver pendants, books, a huge number of books
It was there that I first encountered art books. [...]
It was all very exciting for me.
And letters, letters that weren't always meant for a child, right?
Love letters, very beautiful letters.
[…] The most important one was Franciszka. There are no more like her today. She was a village girl who came to live with my grandmother at the age of 17 and stayed with the Bohl family for the rest of her life. She seemed old to me, although she probably wasn't. She had a slightly hooked nose and grey hair. She slept in the kitchen, in a chest called Schlafbank (the sleeper). During the day it was closed and inside there was a mattress and bedding. Franciszka would sit on this chest, I would sit beside her on a stool with a huge cat called Maciek, and she would tell me family stories that were not always suitable for a child's ears, but they fascinated me. I loved her very much. Yes, that was my childhood until the war broke out.
Helena's mother, Maria Fania Tobolska, came from a Jewish family. The house was neither Jewish nor Evangelical. Helena, like her father, was assigned to an Evangelical parish. Helena herself said of herself: "I am such a funny half-breed. My father came from a German family, my grandmother from a Flemish family, my mother from a Jewish family. There were only a few odd elements from Evangelical customs that were unknown in Polish homes. At Easter, for example, Dad would hide eggs in nests in the garden and we would have to look for them. And if it was a Jewish holiday, Dad would say: "Listen, Maryla, it's a Jewish holiday, you have to make matzo dumplings!" That was probably the only Jewish accent. I was not brought up religiously. Formally, I was an evangelical because I had to accept my father's religion, but growing up in Poland, I adopted the customs of Polish Catholicism as an adult, like Christmas Eve and other holidays. All this creates an atmosphere, it is like the smell of the air that fills a person. In my own way I am a believer, although I do not belong to any church".

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1 Nadrzeczna street (near the Branicki Palace)

Ice rink, 1930s (photo of Helena with her sister Irka and other children skating)

1 Mickiewicza Street (now the Faculty of Law, University of Bialystok)

Anna Jabłonowska State Grammar School and High School in Bialystok. Irena, Helenka's half-sister from her mother's first marriage, attended this school. Maria Fania Tobolska came to Bialystok with her newly married husband, Józef Aronson. She met Aleksander Bohle shortly before Irena's birth in 1924. Adopted by Aleksander, Irka was given the double surname Aronson-Bole. "My parents didn't want me to know that Irena wasn't my real sister. But my old Franciszka told me. And I never let on that I knew. When we were older, I'm sure Irka knew I knew, but it was never an issue. I loved her very much, but we fought a lot.

The ghetto area in Bialystok

Mother Fanny and sister Irena. After the Germans entered Bialystok in 1941. In Nazi terminology, Helena became a "first degree resident", a half-Jew baptised in the Evangelical rite. This status gave her temporary protection. In theory, a mixed marriage to a German also gave her mother some protection.
The Bialystok Ghetto was established on 26 July 1941. It involved a house in Jurowiecka Street. Mother and Irena remained in the ghetto, while Helena and her father moved to a new flat. Initially, the father arranged fictitious employment for his wife and adopted daughter, and they could come to the new apartment during the day and return to the ghetto at night. On 3 August 1941, a decree came into force prohibiting people from leaving the ghetto, which in practice meant its complete closure. From then on, Maria Bohle and Irena Aronson-Bole hid outside the ghetto. Initially, Aleksander Bohle found them a hiding place in the countryside. The next hiding places were in Bialystok.

Helena's sister, of Semitic beauty, was shot by the Gestapo. We do not know the exact date or the circumstances. It was probably in 1941 or 1942.
After this event, Alexander decided that if they were to die, they would all die together, and he prepared a special hiding place for his wife behind a wardrobe in the new apartment, where she hid until the end of the war.

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21 Kopernika Street

In 1941-1944, during the Nazi occupation, the prison was under the control of the German Security Police. Those suspected of hostile activities against the Reich were detained there. Until April 1944, Helena officially lived with her father, who used German documents to collaborate with the Polish underground and help Jews in hiding. The reason for Helena's arrest was not fully known. Perhaps it was another stage in the elimination of the "mixed race". From prison she sent secret messages to her father, and after a month she was sent to Ravensbrück, and that was the end of her Bialystok story.

Railway station

"I found the right train, (...) I finally arrived in Bialystok. I went to the house where we had lived until recently. Everything was in ruins. (...) I stood in front of the ruins of our house and didn't know what to do. My mother later worried that they hadn't left a note for me. Many people did. I decided to go to a friend who lived with her mother. The house was intact, so I rang. They immediately ran to open the gate, shouting: "Don't worry, your parents are alive, they're in Lodz!" They fed me, then I went to another friend's house, where they also fed me. My uncle picked me up from there and I got another meal. Everything was about food now. My uncle sent a telegram to my parents.

After the war her parents lived in Lodz and Helena joined them. She graduated from the University of Fine Arts in Łódź. In the 1950s, she cooperated with "Dziennik Łódzki" and the monthly magazines "Moda", "Modne krawiectwo" and "Uroda", mainly working on magazine graphics. In 1957 she became the artistic director of the Telimena fashion house. In the 1960s, she worked in Warsaw at the Moda Polska fashion house, then as the artistic director of the Leda fashion house. In 1968, after the anti-Semitic campaign that followed the March events, she emigrated to West Berlin with her third husband, Wiktor Szacki. In Germany, she worked as a fashion designer and lecturer at Berlin's Lette School, and ran a gallery in Berlin's KIK. Her prints were shown at over 40 exhibitions in Berlin, Warsaw, Paris, Prague, Copenhagen, Vienna and London. She visited Białystok in the 1990s and took part in the International Open Air Painting in Białowieża in 1991, organised by the Białystok branch of ZPAP.

Photographs from the collection of the Sleńdziński Gallery