Letter
https://www.cjhn.ca/link/cjhn45723
- Collection
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- textual record
- Physical Description
- Letter : Ht: 27,8 cm x W: 21,8 cm
- Date
- March 13, 1947
- Collection
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
- Description Level
- Item
- Material Type
- textual record
- Physical Description
- Letter : Ht: 27,8 cm x W: 21,8 cm
- Other Title Information
- Documentary Artifact
- Date
- March 13, 1947
- Physical Condition
- Good
- Language
- French
- Polish
- Notes
- yellowing paper containing an attestation from "Union des polonais anciens résistants en France." Printed in black with a red stamp from Paris on the bottom right corner of the front page. Date written at the top right corner of the front page under the header (March 3, 1947). Letter testifies that Lonia Kawnik served in the resistance and recognizes her courage and patriotism. Narrative: Lonia Furstenberg was born on 1914-04-28 in Belchatow (Poland) to Meier Furstenberg and Asha Biblow. She left Poland at the age of 16 to study medicine in Paris (quotas in Poland made it hard for her to pursue her studies). Lonia’s family was German speaking; she also spoke Polish and Yiddish. She had no family in France. She lived in Nancy and Reims before establishing herself in Paris. She learned French while working as a laboratory assistant. She then studied medicine and took classes in all the specialties, but for military medicine. Military medicine required students to lean how to jump out of an helicopter which her father would not give her permission to do. During the Second World War, she was a medicine student and worked in a clinic requisitioned by the German army. She passed as a non Jewish French citizen and had fake identity paper made to the name of Louise Triasse, supposedly born in Oran. Her resistance activities included caring for wounded resistant fighters, issuing fake disease certificated to young men so they could be exempt for the mandatory labour service (STO service du travail obligatoire) and issuing certificate of good health to prostitutes carrying venereal diseases who wanted to infect German soldiers. She became the first woman to own her own medical laboratory. Lonia was a Communist sympathizer, she was not religious and she eventually married a Gentile, a Polish RAF pilot named Zigmunt Kawnik (born in 1920). All the members of Lonia's family in Poland were deported and killed during the Holocaust.
- Accession No.
- 2011.50.08
- Name Access
- Allio, Nicole
- Places
- Paris, France, Europe
- Archival / Genealogical
- Archival Descriptions
- Repository
- Montreal Holocaust Museum
Images
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