The bag

The rectangular bag is made of natural linen. On one side of the bag was decorated with cross-stitch embroidery. The composition is symmetrical. It consists of three rhomboidal figures - a larger one in the centre and two smaller ones at the top and bottom. The embroidery was made with thread in two colours: navy blue and red. Along the edge (approx. 1.5 cm from the edge) there is a visible border in dark blue made with Zakopane embroidery. The edges are trimmed with a thin, navy blue cord.From Toni Lechtman's letter to her parents of 31 December 1956 (in the collection), containing a short commentary on the textiles sent to them, a large breadbag is mentioned (for three years I had my daily ration in it); one can guess that this is the object.

What were the bags made of? Most probably from the fabrics of the prisoners' own clothes, from their pillowcases, from the potato sacks they peeled in the prison kitchen and from the threads they pulled out of them. Perhaps also from some materials received from behind the walls, but the latter is rather less likely, since the female prisoners spent all the years of their stay in Rakowiecka Street wearing the same clothes in which they had been arrested. In an interview by Teresa Torańska (Wera wyjeżdża z Mrągowa (Wera Leaves Mrągowo), Duży Format (The Big Format), added to Gazeta Wyborcza of 3 March 2008) Wera Lechtman sketched suggestively her mother's situation at the moment of release: Do you know what she looked like? Can you imagine what a woman who hasn't washed her head properly for over five years might look like? I'm not talking about her teeth, but a regular bath, her clothes. Can you imagine what the clothes she had on since her arrest must have looked like? It was in tatters. Two guards took her to a department store in Aleje Jerozolimskie to pick out new ones.

The material from which the sack was made (raw hemp or pine canvas) suggests that a fragment of a potato or vegetable sack was used to make it.

Przemysław Kaniecki, Marta Frączkiewicz