(Wednesday, November 7, 2012)

The photos placed in  part 55 were taken on the last day of my talking to Fira. You will not find this part in the book as its story ends at the moment of Fira’s wedding  on Wednesday, August 23, 1939. As soon as we had finished her story about the Jewish world of the interwar Poznan and Poland, we decided to take a few photographs of Fira Melamedzon-Salanska. She put an elegant dress on, went out into her balcony and let us take photos of her. I was standing on the balcony and taking the pictures, while Przemek Prasnowski was filming her from the street. Both Przemek and me are amateurs. Nevertheless, we managed to make the last photo-video session in Fira’s life. She was 97 then and she still had her wide, kind smile and the expressive eyes we know from her pre-war photographs.

Przemek’s video is the last recording of Fira’s memories, placed on this page. Apart from the photographs, we publish here some poems of Irit Amiel and Ewa Lipska, which Fira wrote down and stuck into her albums as they accurately expressed her feelings. Also, we place here her note, made on a single sheet of paper around 2000, containing Fira’s reflection on her flat.