It’s a small sheet of thin aged paper. The faded typed words are in Polish. The notation on the upper right is “Krakow, dnia 9.VII.1945”. The words acknowledge my grandmother’s ownership of property in Krakow, Poland.
The paper was among papers that I found in my mother’s files when I was cleaning out her apartment. It was among papers that I kept — even without knowing their meaning at the time.
I didn’t know how, or why, the paper had come from Krakow or why my father and mother had kept it among their papers.
My daughter is applying for Polish citizenship under a Polish law that allows citizenship to descendants of Polish citizens who were displaced and lost their citizenship in World War Two. Poland is in the European Union and Polish citizenship allows one to obtain EU citizenship. Perhaps that is the motivation among American descendants of Holocaust survivors. I believe it is also symbolic of recapturing an identity that was taken from my parents. I respect what my daughter is doing.
In the process of applying for Polish citizenship, the citizenship of my father must be proven. That aged paper from 1945 evidencing property ownership seems crucial.
And so, I put the paper in a FedEx envelope addressed to the lawyer assisting in my daughter’s application for its return to Krakow after 79 years.