Biography
Ewa Frenkel Przemyslawski (born Ewa Chawa Rozenblum) was the oldest daughter of Elimelech Majlech and Miriam Laja Rozenblum. She was born on July 15, 1920 in Dzialoszyce, Poland where her father owned a small shop. In 1926, the family moved to Lodz, and Ewa became active in the Communist party. On November 1939 Ewa left Lodz together with three girlfriends. The girls traveled to Warsaw by train and then to Zareby Koscielne, where they met their Lodz party comrades. They hired a boat and sailed to Bialystok which was already full of Jewish refugees. Ewa lived and slept in a single room together with 17 friends. In December 1939 Ewa and her boyfriend Israel Frenkel traveled by train to Magnitogorsk in the Ural Mountains. There Ewa was assigned to a job carrying glass plates, and Israel worked in construction. The couple married in November 1940, and soon afterwards Ewa got pregnant. It was evident that the couple needed to leave the freezing cold Magnitogorsk. In December 1940 Ewa and Israel traveled to Chelabinsk and from there to Poltava in the Ukraine where Israel worked as a meat cutter. Their daughter Nadia was born on February 2, 1941 in Poltava. A few months later the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, and Israel was drafted into the Soviet Army. In August 1941 Ewa and her baby daughter Nadia left Poltava and traveled to Nizhniy Tagil, where the conditions were very difficult. Ewa moved south to Orsk, on the northern border of Kazakhstan, where she joined her friends. In January 1942 Israel Frenkel was dismissed from the Red Army because he was born in Poland, and he reunited with his wife and daughter. However, Israel never gave up the idea of fighting against the Germans and finally, in April 1943, he enlisted with the Kosciuszko Division of the Polish Army in the USSR. On October 13, 1943 Israel's unit, part of the Polish division under the command of general Berling, participated in the battle of Lenino in Byelorussia. Israel Frenkel and 3,000 other soldiers from the Polish division were killed in action during this decisive battle. Ewa and her daughter Nadia returned to Poland in May 1946. Ewa returned to Lodz only to discover that all her family had perished. In 1947 Ewa met Leon Zysman, a survivor of the Lodz ghetto. They were unable to marry though, because Ewa had no proof that her first husband, Israel Frenkel was dead and that Leon's first wife and daughter did not survive Auschwitz. Their daughter Marysia was born in January 1949 and six months later, in July 1949 Leon died of heart failure - a direct result of his imprisonment in the concentration camps. Ewa was again alone, this time with two children. After Leon's death, Ewa worked in Jewish kindergartens in Lodz and later she was the principal of a high school which prepared kindergarten teachers. In 1954 Ewa and her two daughters moved to Warsaw, where Ewa graduated with a PhD in Education. The following year Ewa met Abram Przemyslawski and they married in March 1959. Abram immigrated to Israel the same year, and Ewa and her two daughters joined him there in December 1959.
