Mania Broniatowska

Mania Broniatowska was born in 1902 in Czestochowa, Poland. As a child, she was sent to I Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace im. Juliusza Slowackiego -- the local Catholic Polish high school for girls -- since the accreditation of the Jewish high school was not recognized by the Polish colleges. Because of her brown hair, Mania was neglected by the nuns, who preferred to focus on her Aryan-featured younger sister, Róśka. Upon graduation, she traveled with Róśka to Leipzing, where they studied at the Leipzig Handelshochschule. Although she finished the courses required for a “kaufmännisches Diplom” in 1925 she failed her final exams. Nonetheless she went back for a doctorate (Dr.rer.merc.) in 1934, working all the time through the economic crisis to support herself. After she was accused and arrested for “Rassenschande” and submitted to humiliating controls she left Germany in 1937. She first moved to Paris, where she visited with her brothers Albert (Abram) and Andre (Chaim) at the rue de Charonne 97, then to Switzerland, pretending her sister, Róśka, was very ill (actually she was pregnant with her second child). Róśka's husband, Hans A. Peter used his contacts as a journalist to get Mania to Switzerland. During this time she was closely observed by the Swiss foreign police while she stayed in Winterthur, and, in 1940, Zurich with her sister. She finally moved to Geneva in 1946 where she worked at the Jewish Refugees Help office and the United Nations' Bureau International de Travail. She died in 1954 during surgery for a fibromyoma.