Mother's Love

Rose Toms with the child she rescued, Elizabeth Lis.

Mother’s Day 2014

Generations. History has always interested me. The real people whose lives and often whose sacrifice directly affects the next generation. How quickly their stories are forgotten with the rapid passage of time, how great our debt.

On the left is a lady named Rose Toms. She was an orphan and knew no family life as a child. As a young woman she trained at Great Ormand Street Hospital. She set up babies home with a friend and cared for babies who were delicate or in need.

In war-torn London in 1943 a baby girl was born to a Polish refugee who had already lost her two young sons in a Siberian labour camp. She was determined to fight for her country's freedom and so took her newborn daughter to Rose Toms' home to be cared for. She never returned and Rose raised the baby alone. Elizabeth Lis is in the right of the photo, and was my mother.

Behind every picture lies a story.
Happy Mother’s day to all those women, past and present, who greatly influenced the lives of children they never bore, for the good. You have helped shape history.

I first posted this on Mother’s day 2014, weeks after my mum had died, and before I had traced her birth mother learning the story behind her sacrifice. It turned out Elizabeth was her mother’s only child, surrendered to another so that she could continue to fight in the Polish Army. My life has been shaped by these 3 women, directly and indirectly. Whose lives am I shaping?

“I didn’t just give her away, I risked my happiness for her life.”

— Janel Indingaro

Passport to the past

March 6th 2020

I received the most incredible gift on Wednesday this week from my lovely cousin Renata - my grandmother's wartime Passport which enabled her to flee occupied Europe. Looking at the stamps, different Visa's and border crossings I am finally able to work out some of her route. One particular Nazi stamp, giving her permission to cross the Reich, left me cold. How must she have felt, waiting at Arnoldstein on the Austrian border for a German soldier to give her permission to cross?

My grandmother, Helena Lis, lost many of her family during the Holocaust, including her brother Henryk, who never made it out. I feel a tremendous sense pride and admiration that this diminutive woman, who had never had to 'do for herself' as she explained to my mother, found the courage to face the terror and complete the journey, arriving in the UK in July 1940. Of course, the alternative, staying in Poland, would have almost certainly meant death.

Her story didn’t end there.. after joining the Polish Army under British command and giving up her only child to continue to fight, Helena suffered further devastating losses, never shaking the fear she experienced whilst in occupied Europe, which continued until her death, alone in a Nursing home, at the age of 98 in 2000. Following WW2 she became terrified of being 'found by the Russians' sadly living in fear of betrayal by her own Polish community. Who could she trust? The devastation of war continues long after it ceases.

Following her death, her passport and ID papers were sent to her beloved nephew James in the USA, and given to me by his daughters. ..I am now honoured custodian of this incredible piece of history, without which none of Helena's descendants may exist. Its hard to decribe how it feels to hold so much history in my hands..Thank you, Renata!

My grandmother’s wartime Passport which literally saved her life and enabled ours