What I most want to do right now is get on a plane and come and weep on your shoulder, but having just been taken on by this laboratory it would be the height of stupidity to give up the job. I am only too aware of how many foolish mistakes I have made, but alas I am one of those women who have to say what is on their mind and wreck everything, rather than keeping stumm and sitting out a crisis.
Another utterly amazing piece of news which I forgot because of all this stress. I don’t want to write about it and am sending you a photocopy of my mother’s letter. The letter had enclosures, a certificate of admission, exactly as if into the Communist Party, and a certificate of baptism. If I were in a normal state of mind I would react to this news much more sharply, but at present I can only shrug and say, “God Almighty, is this a joke?”
With love,
Your idiotic Ewa
29. January 1990, Haifa
C
ORRESPONDENCE FROM
R
ITA
K
OWACZ TO
E
WA
M
ANUKYAN
(Photocopies sent by Ewa Manukyan to Esther Gantman)
Dear Ewa
The moment has come for me to inform you about the most important event in my life. Last Christmas after thinking about it at great length and undertaking the necessary preparation I was baptized. This will come as a surprise to you of course but for me it has been prepared by the whole course of my life. It is not something random but predictable and I am happy that I have not died before I could be christened. There were so many times I might have died during the war in prison in the camp and even in recent years after all my heart attacks and strokes. This whole year past I have been urging Father John and Agnessa to hurry up. I was afraid of dying too soon but they just smiled and said that now I did not need to worry either about my life or about my death. Complete calm has come down upon me. In our Church the Anglican Church there is not a whiff of that exaltation which so repelled me in Catholicism, the exaltation which I always found unacceptable for myself and unacceptable in you.
Now the only thing I want is for you to meet my wonderful friends and pass on to you the precious things I have received at the end of my life.
You know that I knew Christ since I was a child. In Poland there was nowhere he was absent from he is everywhere. In Israel which has rejected him it is very difficult to believe you can meet him but I have been fortunate. Thanks to Agnessa the doors of the only Christianity acceptable to me have opened.
Dear Ewa I know much has been wrong in our relations and that I have wronged you. I need to explain to you why everything happened as it did in order to help you sort yourself out.
I think the best thing would be for you to come here for Easter. We could celebrate this first Easter in my life together as a sign of our complete reconciliation.
Now when all I do is read the Bible and the New Testament all the time I could help you to find the right path in life.
I have a very convenient folding wheelchair which can fit in a car and together we can go to the Easter service. I want to be with Christ until the end of my life and we will finally be able to say to each other “The Lord is among us!”
Your mother
Margarita
30. 1990, Haifa
R
ITA
K
OWACZ’S DECLARATION
My declaration
I, Rita Kowacz (Dwojre Brin), was born into a Jewish family. Since I was four I have believed in God. I do not know how I came to have knowledge of Jesus. Before 1939 school lessons began with a prayer and I also prayed although I was not christened. The works of famous writers and poets were full of Jesus. Although I never studied the catechism I knew a lot about Jesus. When I was young Renan’s The Life of Jesus made a great impression on me. Polish Catholicism alarmed me by its aggressiveness and repelled me by its anti-Semitism. My path to Christ was not through miracles. What attracted me was the profound dignity of the Anglican Church as I saw it from being together with my Anglican friends, and the day came when I felt Jesus within me. I believe in him because he is the Truth. In my life I have many times erred in respect of what is the truth and took social justice to be the truth, the equality of all people, and other things which have let me down badly. Now I know that Christ is the Only Truth and that He was crucified for that. I believe that Christ is the Father and Lord.
Why do I want to be christened? Because the moment has come and the Lord has come through people, Agnessa Widow, John Chapman, Marion Selley and many others and I have realized that the love of Jesus binds people to each other with a special love. There is also a further reason why I want to be Christian. I am old and want to surrender myself entirely to His will.
I have thought a great deal about my sins. My greatest sin which has always tormented me is that I did not perform my duty to the full when I found myself under the occupation. Later, in Czarna Puszcza, I did not take part in partisan operations because I was in the last months of pregnancy, then I gave birth and had a six-year-old son on my hands. When I managed to send my children to Russia and joined the army some of my friends reproached me for not remaining with the children, but I do not consider that a sin because fighting Fascism seemed to me then to be my main mission. Subsequently when I found myself in the Soviet camp I collaborated with organs of the NKVD and some of the people I knew also condemned me for that.
Here too I do not feel I sinned because everything I did I did not out of self-interest but for the good of the cause. I sinned in that I did not respect my parents but to tell you the truth they were petty traders concerned only about having enough to eat here on earth and really did not deserve respect. I was unkind to them but they too were unkind to me. I think I wronged them somewhat.
Other than that I am not aware of any sins.
Rita Kowacz
CERTIFICATE OF BAPTISM
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
Matthew, 28:19
This is to certify that Margarita Kowacz was baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost on the thirteenth day of January in the Year of our Lord 1990.
Vicar (signature): Father D. Chapman
31. 1990, Haifa
F
ROM A LETTER FROM
R
ITA
K
OWACZ TO
A
GNESSA
W
IDOW IN
J
ERUSALEM
I thank you for the beautiful Bible you have given me. Unfortunately it is too heavy for my hands. The table is too narrow and when I put it down it is difficult to read. It is easier for me to hold a thin book.