My Uncle Icek and Aunt Ruth kept up a stream of letters and photographs of their two children, Pauline and Avi. Since they left themselves, they had believed that Poland was a hostile country to Jews, and the developments in Stalin's Soviet Unio did nothing to allay their fears.
Although we lived in a mediocre abode, we were quite comfortable. The Cytrynowskis seemed to think otherwise, and regularly kept on sending us tinned and other food, and toys for me. They thought we were in a certain amount of danger, and they wanted us to join them in Australia.
I had completed Grade 1 in a Polish/Jewish primary school in Lodz when my parents began moves to leave Poland. Decades later I learnt that the then Premier of Poland, Gomulka, made conditions for the remaining Jews in Poland difficult, but it seems he also allowed them to leave Poland. At the time all I knew was that suddenly all my friends and their families were leaving as well. Some were going to Australia, some to Israel and some to the United States.
The next year for me was a flurry of accompanying my parents on visits to consulates, agencies and embassies. Then there was an equivalent frenzy of packing and other preparation to leave.
As the preparations of this mass exodus of Jews progressed, some local Poles saw it as an opportunity to gain instant accommodation, so hard to come by in the Communist utopia. Once they heard a Jew was about to leave, they simply moved in - occupied the Jewish resident's place, sometimes weeks before the occupant would leave. My father's friends would tell us how so-and-so's home would be taken over by a Pole, and how they themselves prevented a similar invasion. The police - the Milicja - did not seem to want to do anything - certainly not to help a Jew. Fortunately our home was such a dump that nobody wanted to take it over to move into before we left.
Finally, in December 1957, before my 10th birthday, we left Poland for Australia. The Cytrynowskis wanted us with them as quickly as possible, and they paid for air fares rather than the more conventional method of transport by sea.