1921-2006

For almost a decade, and almost every day, I have been calling my friend Celina, an 85 year old family friend whose unique friendship has come to mean a lot to me in ways I have never imagined. She passed away on Saturday evening, fortunately at home and surrounded by friends.

Celina had had an amazing life. She had grown up in Poland, in a wealthy but socially-minded aristocratic family, and had begun to study medicine. She was only 18 when World War II started, and like many people her age at that time, she helped nurse the sick and dying, and joined the Polish Resistance. In 1944, she was part of the Warsaw Uprising, a tragic but valiant attempt by the citizens of Warsaw to rise against the Germans who were occupying their city.

When she told me about it two years ago, after Norman Davies’ book Rising ’44: The Battle for Warsaw came out and stirred up old memories, she said that she still vividly remembered the secret meetings leading up to it, and then, the moment on August 1 when the city clock struck 5pm, and the city-wide rebellion began. For 63 days the Polish citizens rose up against the Germans, some using pitchforks before they were able to get their hands on guns. Celina remembered vividly fighting, “from building to building”, “room to room”, in a makeshift fighter unit that consisted of her and a dozen other teenage girls. She was the oldest, and by default, the leader, and she and only few of the girls survived. Hundreds of thousands of Poles lost their lives in those two months, and due to a decision by Churchill and Roosevelt to give Poland to Stalin, they received no outside support. After two months of fighting the Polish people surrendered, and most, including Celina, were sent to labour and concentration camps. (Many of those that who were “freed” ended up being executed by the Soviets).

Celina survived the concentration camp, and after recuperating in England, she was able to make it to the United States. Her parents and most of her friends died in the war.

In the US, Celina met the love of her life, a young Irish man named Frank Whitfield at Harvard, where he had just finished his Ph.D. They soon moved to the Bay Area, where he became the professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at UC Berkeley. Celina worked and taught at the anatomy lab at UCSF Medical School, and at one point, her boss offered her a seat in the 2nd year class, which she declined. They lived on little money, saved hard, and eventually built a beautiful house in the Berkeley hills. At that house, they entertained nightly. Nobel laureates, Pulitzer winners, and some of the greatest intellectuals of the times dined and drank and argued late into the night. They debated politics with Noam Chomsky and literature with Czeslaw Milosz, a friend Celina had known since they were both in Warsaw during the war, and who Frank worked with at UC Berkeley.

I met Celina only months before Frank died in 1996. His death was unexpected and she was devastated. For nearly a year she mourned him and withdrew from her entire life. Her circle of close friends embraced her and slowly pulled her back to life. When I went away to college, I began to talk with her on the phone everyday. She and I both needed the daily contact, and she kept me connected with my family as well. She was already pretty sick then, her 75 year-old body ravaged by war, starvation and concentration camps, but she was fiercely independent. She insisted on cooking whenever I visited, and I always had to fight her for the dishes.

I never thought she would live to see me start medical school…or finish my first year…and then my second, and yet, each day, she got herself out of bed, despite her pain, a failing heart and the mere struggle it took for her to breathe, and she fought to seize another day. Even last year, when she could barely walk, she would still get up every morning and call a sick friend of hers who was suffering from amnesia due to renal failure to remind him to take his medicine and go to his dialysis appointments. As we tried to take care of her, she was really also taking care of us, connecting us together and keeping all of us close.

Though she came to this country without any family, she left behind a huge one. We’re going to miss her a lot.