Can Anyone Translate This Polish Caption

Amarante

Thu, Mar 15 2018, 12:56 am

Thanks

It would make sense because the girls and my great great grandmother had stayed in Poland for a number of years after my great grandfather had come to America in the mid 1920's.

At that time it was very difficult to get a visa for Eastern European Jews and you had to prove financial ability so the father came first and then the rest of the family came when he was able to prove he could support them.

The middle name would have been her Polish name - she was known as Myrna but I think originally had been anglicized to Mindel but she changed it to the more glamorous Myrna - e.g. Myrna Loy homage. These were not Jews who had assimilated into Polish society so interesting they all had the Polish equivalent of "English" names. I looked up Fela and that is a female Polish name - meaning "lucky" and equivalent to Felicity or Felicia in English - I know her pet name was Fegele - when that meant bird instead of gay. Regina of course seems to be the same in English or Polish and I never heard her referred to as anything other than Regina - no Yiddish equivalent for that.

Interesting Polish would have been used for the inscription instead of Yiddish as I would assume that the photo was sent to the great grandfather while the family was apart and one would think that Yiddish instead of Polish would have been used for personal correspondence or memorabilia. I often think of what it was like to immigrate in a time when there were no phone calls - let alone skyping and photography was expensive and done to mark only the most formal occasions.

I know that the last letters exchanged between my branch of the family in America and those who had been left behind stopped fairly soon after the invasion of Poland. The last letter indicated that censorship had taken effect as it said that only the Bubbe was doing well - and the family in America knew the Bubbe had died some years before so they then knew that conditions in Poland for Jews were unspeakable and it was a living hell for the living.

Although the children came to this country as relatively old children - I think my great grandmother was about 11 or so, the children were all very literate graduates of college and spoke without accents. However, they spoke Yiddish amongst themselves and the sisters couldn't speak Polish. Of course they all hated Poland for the prejudice they endured while living there and the unspeakable horror inflicted on those left behind during the Holocaust so there was no nostalgia for the "old country" except for a very attenuated interest by my great grandmother in Polish arts and crafts.