Sketches from Krochmalna Street: “The Charity Lady”

Czesława Endelmanowa (pen name Czesław Halicz; married name Endelmanowa-Rosenblattowa) was born in then-Russian Poland near Łódź in the town of Piotrków and published her first stories in the Polish-language weekly Izraelita in 1901, the same year she graduated from the Łódź gymnasium and left for Warsaw. In 1905, she moved to Brussels, where she married her second husband and completed a doctorate in the social sciences. Endelmanowa-Rosenblattowa’s stories for children and young adults highlighted the issues of poverty and inequality, the powerlessness of women, the indifference of the wealthy, and pedophilia, among other injustices in Polish and Jewish life. A prolific writer, translator, and editor, she wrote primarily under the pseudonym Czesław Halicz. Largely silent after 1914, in 1934 she published Ludzie, którzy jeszcze żyją (People Who Are Still Alive). Endelmanowa-Rosenblattowa is believed to have died or been killed during the war.