Bianca Perlmutter papers

Bianca Pearlmutter (later Lerner, 1929-2013) was born in Warsaw, Poland to Arnold Perlmutter, an affluent entrepreneur, and Stefania Perlmutter (née Kranz), a paediatrician. In 1940 they were forced into the Warsaw ghetto. Prior to the war Bianca and her family were close with their neighbors, Stanislav (d. 1953) and Maria (d. 1969) Popowski and their daughter Hanna, Bianca’s best friend, who were not Jewish. In April 1943, Stefania went to tend to a sick child in the ghetto and was taken to Treblinka and later Auschwitz where she was killed. After Stefania’s disappearance, Arnold and Stanislav made arrangements to get Bianca out of the ghetto. During his time in the ghetto Arnold was a director of the Umschlagplatz, a transfer point in and out of the ghetto. He bribed a guard at the station he was working at to let Bianca through. She lived with the Popowski family for several months. Stanislav grew increasingly worried about Bianca’s safety because others in the neighborhood knew who she was. He obtained false documents and sent Bianca to the Hoza Street Catholic Convent under the name Janina Marzec. Arnold arranged for his own escape days before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and went into hiding with the help of the Maklakiewicz family. The Popowski family would visit Bianca and remained in contact with Arnold while he was in hiding. During the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Bianca left the convent and joined the underground as a runner delivering messages. Arnold also participated in the uprising and was wounded. Although he did survive, the nurse found out he was Jewish and he was shot. Bianca was captured and taken to Bergen-Belsen until liberation in 1945. After liberation she was sent to the Niederlangen DP camp. From the camp she wrote letters to her uncle Dick in England. She did not know his address so she wrote to the main cities in England hoping he could help sponsor her visa. In the fall of 1945 Bianca moved to England to live with her uncle for about a year. She married Louis Lerner and they immigrated to Brooklyn, New York. They had two children, Susan and Arnold. Bianca and the Popowski family stayed in contact after the war and Stanisław and Maria were named Righteous Among the Nations in 1989. The Bianca Perlmutter papers include two journals, a postcard, and a national registration identification card relating to Bianca Perlmutter wartime experiences in Poland and her postwar life in England. The journals, written by Bianca from 1945-1946, include entries and poems recounting her experiences in the Warsaw ghetto, hiding in a convent, in a DP camp in Niederlangen, and her postwar life in England. The collection also includes a postcard from Stanislav Popowski, a non-Jewish neighbor who saved Bianca by hiding her in a convent.