I know from my grandpa George’s memoir that the family lived at 24 Krucza Street in Warsaw. He writes of it twice in his memoir. This is his most vivid description of the apartment:
I have brought my sister through machine gunfire about ten city blocks from the exams to our home on Krucza 24 where we lived at this time. We had an apartment of six rooms on the third floor. Uncounted paintings and sculpture adorned the walls. Our upright piano, black ebony, in the living room. Red mahogany furniture. And ever present art. My father, Moshe, was an artist, a known painter.
I also have an envelope showing the building number as the return address for a letter my great-grandfather wrote to Otto Schneid.
And for a long time I’ve been told the portrait of my great-grandmother, Perla, was painted inside the shop the family ran in the building.
And I know from Google maps street view what the building at the address looks like today.
But I’ve never seen what the building looked like before the war, before it was destroyed, and hauled away as rubble. Today I got an email from a man who pointed out a website that appears to be displaying the photographs of a building that was 24 Krucza Street, the same building where my great-grandparents lived. These are those photos, taken before 1939, and labeled on the website as coming from a private collection. Even more incredible, the man who emailed me says his great-grandparents lived at 25 Krucza Street, the building across the street.
