Reconstructing a life through letters

Surrounded by nearly 1,000 handwritten letters in an attic, History Professor Anna Müller got a front-row seat to what it was like to live throughout the historic turmoil of the 20th century.

The letters — written by a Polish Jewish woman named Tonia Lechtman — documented wars, prisons and the efforts to rebuild Poland through the eyes of someone who experienced all of these things. The letters included the ways Lechtman’s life was connected to anti-British actions in Palestine during the 1930s, as well as the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi occupation of France, Auschwitz, the Cold War and more.

“Tonia just tried to live day to day, just like you and me. She was an ordinary person. But the world around her was not ordinary. It was collapsing. Even through adversity, she made decisions influenced by kindness and care,” says Müller, recalling that Lechtman, who lived from 1918 to 1996, helped reconnect war orphans with surviving family members

After nearly a decade working with Lechtman’s children, reading the letters from the attic and tracing the government paper trail Lechtman left behind, Müller documented Lechtman’s life in her most recent book, “An Ordinary Life? The Journeys of Tonia Lechtman.” In it, Müller follows Lechtman’s life through multiple countries — Poland, Palestine, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland and Israel — during some of the most pivotal and cataclysmal decades of the 20th century.

“In most of those places, she lived on the margins of society,” Müller says. “She wanted a better world than the one she saw around her. She wanted to create a safe space for her small children. She wanted to do what she could to help others. I think many of us can identify with that.”

However, Lechtman’s efforts came at a personal cost. “Tonia’s decisions, along with her identity, got her followed by governments, imprisoned and tortured,” says Müller, who shares that Lechtman identified as a Jewish woman, feminist, communist, refugee and migrant. “Tonia lived into her 70s and later reflected on if the struggle was worth it. She never said it wasn't.”

Born in Lodz, Poland, Lechtman moved to Palestine with her parents in the 1930s as a teen because of rising antisemitism in Poland. In Palestine, when Lechtman was aged about 19, she advocated for Palestinians, who were displaced due to immigration waves — and she was imprisoned and later exiled by the British, who controlled the land at the time.

With a man she met and married in Palestine, Lechtman relocated to France in 1937. Her husband then left to join the Spanish Civil War, leaving her with two young children. After the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940, Lechtman was sent to Nexon, a French internment camp near Limoges. She was rounded up for transport to Auschwitz in 1942. But a June 15, 1942 memorandum from SS Captain Theodor Dannecker said children under 16 should be excluded from the Final Solution. And Lechtman had two. “From my research, there isn't a more direct answer on why Tonia eluded Auschwitz, but we know she was excluded from being sent there,” Müller says.

Lechtman’s husband, Sioma, was sent to Auschwitz after fighting on the losing side during the Spanish Civil War. He died there. After Lechtman’s release from the Nexon internment camp, she fled to Switzerland as a refugee in 1942 and returned to her homeland of Poland in 1946 to help rebuild the country. 

Once back in Poland, Lechtman was impacted by the Cold War, Müller says. Suspicious of American influences, the Soviet-controlled Polish government imprisoned Lechtman from 1949 to 1954 because of the American ties she made through her humanitarian work. For example, Lechtman helped set up a hospital in southern Poland with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Aid.

“Even when she made it back to her homeland, dictatorships continued to deprive her of freedom. While in that prison, she was severely beaten, lost all of her teeth and, after prison, she was subjected to electroshock therapy for mental health treatment,” Müller says. “In a letter Tonia wrote after she got out, she said that she didn’t regret the choices that she made.” She stayed in Poland to support her country following her release until 1971, when Lechtman moved to Israel to be closer to her grandchildren and daughter, Vera, who relocated there as an adult. During that time, Poland was experiencing another wave of antisemitism.

“It’s incredible what Tonia lived through,” Müller says. “Even after she was released from prison, she maintained this calm, positive outlook and talked about helping people in her letters. She kept saying that it was going to be OK.”

Müller, who is from Poland, learned about Lechtman in 2010 while doing research about women in Polish prisons. One of the former female prisoners Müller spoke with for that research work mentioned Lechtman and Müller wanted to learn more about her.  

Müller knew that Lechtman had died, but she reached out to Lechtman’s children. During a conversation with Lechtman’s daughter Vera, Müller learned there were letters in Vera’s attic written by her mother that spanned more than 50 years. The first one was written when she was a child, around age 8, while vacationing in Poland. Letters continued throughout her life, on average of three or four a month. They were from prisons, the Swiss refugee camp, the French internment camp and more. 

Müller says the source material drew her into the project. But getting to know Lechtman through the letters — which were written in Polish, French, German and Hebrew — encouraged her to write the book. 

“We often hear interesting family stories during historic times that were passed down, but we often don’t have documentation to back them up,” Müller says. “Famous people are written about more because their lives are documented in the news or very often they write their histories themselves. Ordinary people usually don’t have that, even when things are extraordinary. However, in this case, because all these letters were saved, I was able to connect the dots and reconstruct her story.”

Now Lechtman’s life, which was once remembered through family stories and letters in an attic, is out there for the world to read.

Interested in learning more about Müller’s book or having her speak at an event regarding her research? Contact Müller here.

Story by Sarah Tuxbury