Handkerchief

The equilateral scarf ismade of a fragment of thin cotton fabric. The object was decorated by placing an ornamental openwork frame and lines dividing its interior into 9 fields. The open-work lines were made with the use of the geometrical technique (openwork embroidery). In one of the corner fields the initial 'T' was placed, made using the fillet embroidery technique.

The embroidered letter T most probably stands for Tonia Lechtman.In Marceli Łoziński's film Tonia i jej dzieci (Tonia and Her Children) (2011), Wera and Marcel Lechtman comment on the stills from a film made by the documentary filmmaker while still at university, in which Tonia and the women with whom she shared a cell reminisce about their stay in prison.

They also read out her mother's testimony from the trial. Even years later they find it hard to believe the absurdity of the accusations against her. Tonia Lechtman was a committed and active communist from a young age. Active in the Polish Communist Party, she devoted her life to propagating the idea of communism even as a teenager. Despite this, in 1949 she was accused of spying and collaborating with American intelligence. When she was sent to prison, the then 11-year-old Wera and 9-year-old Marcel were taken by a social worker to an orphanage in Wrocław. Wera recalls in the film that the woman left the children with a folder of documents in her hand at the door of the building and left, explaining that she was in a hurry to catch a train. When asked by the educator who opened the door who they were, Wera replied: I am Vera Lechtman and this is Marcel Lechtman. We are the children of communists. Years later, Wera Lechtman still remembered the woman's answer: They only send us the Jewish-Communists here again. That was the first time the girl had heard that term.

Marta Frączkiewicz