Helena Konopka, formerly Lis, formerly Kozdon, nee (Malie) Rothenberg.

Introduction

Although I grew up knowing that my grandmother had left my newborn mother in a baby’s home in Devon in 1943, I knew very little about her life-or even her real name.

I first tried to trace my grandparents in 1999, but without success. It wasn’t until 2013 that my curiosity was reignited, when my daughter began a school project on World War II. I knew Mum had a fascinating story, and I offered to speak to Faith’s class. In preparation, I asked my mum about her memories of her own mother - Helena. I knew they had met briefly in the 1960s, but little else.

The conversation opened a door; Mum told me she had met Helena just once or twice, in a café in London around 1965/6. She described her as a small woman with a deeply lined face - something she attributed to the hardship and deprivation Helena had suffered during the war. Her first thought had been, "I hope I don’t look like that when I’m older!" Despite the brief encounter, she told me, "I liked her very much."

Helena had shared fragments of her past: that she came from a wealthy family and had been trained to be a good hostess, run a household, and do fine embroidery. She spoke of a nephew who had been nearly beaten to death by the Gestapo at the age of 15, but had survived and gone to America. She mentioned a sister, believed to be in Canada, and a brother who had been executed during the war.

My mother also learned crucial details about her own birth. Helena had hidden the pregnancy from her husband, my mother’s father, Major Stanisław Lis. At the time, Helena was serving in the Polish Army, possibly in Special Operations. As the birth drew near, she became increasingly anxious and learned from a friend about a baby’s home in Devon run by Nurse Rose Toms. After falsifying her name on her daughter’s birth certificate, she took the newborn, aged just ten days old, to Rose, promising to return after the war. But when the time came, Helena said, she couldn’t find her, but claimed she had never stopped looking.

Following the war, Helena had divorced Stanisław and remarried a man believed to have been General Anders’ wartime bodyguard, though she never shared his name. She lived in Ealing, but didn’t provide an address or phone number. They had planned to meet again, but my mother got the date wrong, and they never saw each other again. Mum told me how much she regretted that.

Shortly after this conversation, my mother became terminally ill, and although I had told my mum I would find her family for her, I couldn’t focus on a search. However, a few weeks after she passed away, I knew I needed to find out the truth. Armed with this newfound information, I resumed my search in earnest in 2014.

What followed was an incredible journey. My research eventually led me to Helena’s immediate family in Ohio, USA, where they had settled after the war. DNA evidence also confirmed a link to Helena’s paternal Rothenberg line, finally breaking through a long-standing brick wall that had stopped me from tracing the family beyond Helena’s father, Pinkas (also known as Pawel), due to missing records.

To my astonishment, I later discovered that Helena had died at the age of 98 in a British nursing home in 2000. When I checked the location, I realised she had been living just a 15-minute drive from my house for several years.

The following details of Helena’s life have since been painstakingly reconstructed through a combination of sources: my mother Elizabeth’s written notes and oral testimony, international archival records, family photographs, and shared memories from her great-nieces, Sandy and Renata Russocki. My first breakthrough came through Military records belonging to her second husband, my grandfather, Stanisław Lis, where he gave his wife’s name as Helena Lis (Kozdon, nee Rotenberg)

Jennie Milne July 2025

Helena was born on May 8, 1902, in the town of Stryj, located in eastern Galicia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. She was the second daughter of her parents, and, like her older sister Róża (later known as Irena) and younger brother Henryk, her birth was recorded in the Jewish community registry of Stryj under entry #141. The family residence was listed as house number 36 (or possibly 3b) in Stryj. Her naming ceremony was held two days later, on May 10, at house number 96/97, also in the town.

The birth record gives her name as Malie. Her father is listed as Pinkas Rothenberg, a manager of a sawmill in the hamlet of Kłodno, part of the Żółkiew administrative district - a rural area known for forestry and timber production. Her mother, Feiga Dwora Probst, was also from Stryj, the daughter of Gerschon and Frimet Probst, members of a longstanding Jewish family in the region.

The birth was officially witnessed by Israel Juda Nussenblatt, and the attending midwife was Ester Drucker, both residents of Stryj. (Ester Drucker appears in multiple family birth records, suggesting she served many Jewish households in the area.)

A crucial annotation was added nine years later, on March 28, 1911, when Pinkas Rothenberg formally acknowledged paternity with a written statement: “I admit being the father of this child and I allow to be registered as its father.”

An additional section refers to a marriage certificate issued in Żmigród on April 8, 1903, authenticated by Reichman, the official in charge of Jewish records there. A witness named Szydor Batrach is also mentioned, though the handwriting is difficult to decipher.

Malie - by then using the name Helena - converted to Catholicism in 1926 in Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) in order to marry her 1st husband, Gustaw Kożdoń. The marriage was short-lived, but her conversion may have proved key to her survival in later years under the Nazi Regime.

Baptism and Identity Transformation: Helena Theresa Maria Anna Rotenberg
Lwów, 15 October 1926

On 15 October 1926, in the Archdiocese of Lwów, Helena Rotenberg, born on 8 May 1910 in Stryj, was baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, taking the names Theresa Maria Anna. This moment marked a significant turning point in Helena’s life, both spiritually and socially, and would later shape her wartime and postwar trajectory under her adopted Catholic identity.

The baptismal record provides crucial genealogical information that had long remained elusive due to the multiple name changes and cultural shifts experienced by Jewish families in interwar Poland. Helena’s father is recorded as Paulus Rotenberg, son of Zenenis and Rosilia. Her mother, Franciszka Probst, is listed as the daughter of Georg and Felicja.

Close analysis of this record, along with DNA evidence and archival research, revealed that these Polish/Latinized names were adaptations of their original Jewish names:

“Zenenis and Rosilia” were in fact Zindel (also known as Juda) Rothenberg and his wife Rosa (Ryfke), a Jewish couple from Drohobycz, Galicia.

“Georg and Felicja” correspond to Gerschon (Gerszon) and Frimet (Frania) Probst, Helena’s maternal grandparents from Stryj, where Gerschon worked as a cattle trader.

This document proved to be the key that unlocked the Rothenberg lineage, connecting Helena to a broader Galician Jewish family. In particular, it allowed researchers to link Helena’s father Pinkas (also known as Paweł or Paul) Rothenberg to his brother Leiser (Leo) Rothenberg, whose descendants emigrated to the United States. This vital connection was corroborated through DNA matches, which confirmed a second-cousin relationship between Helena’s granddaughter and Leo Rothenberg’s grandson.

Helena’s transformation from Malie Rotenberg - a Jewish girl born in Stryj - to Helena Theresa Maria Anna Rotenberg, a Catholic woman living in Lwów, reflects both a personal act of reinvention and a hidden heritage.

Record of Religious Conversion: Helena Rotenberg
Lwów, 18 October 1926

A formal certificate issued by the Registrar's Office in Lwów on 18 October 1926 confirms the religious conversion of Helena Rotenberg, born on 8 May 1910 (Helena took years off her true age - a practice she continued throughout her life) in Stryj County, to Paweł (Paul) Rotenberg and Franciszka (Frania) Probst. Her birth was recorded in the Jewish birth register of Stryj. At the time of this declaration, Helena is noted as unmarried and residing at 10 Teatynska Street, Lwów.

On this date, Helena formally renounced the Jewish faith, an act that would have had profound personal, social, and possibly legal implications in the Second Polish Republic. This declaration was officially entered into the County records on 20 January 1927, solidifying her new status within the civic and religious registers. The address, 10 Teatynska Street, was located in a densely populated northeastern district of Lwów, just outside the historic city center. This document represents a pivotal moment in Helena’s life, marking a transition from her Jewish heritage into the Catholic world.

The document was located in the Lwów Jewish community, in a book named "People who converted during 1921-1935" 

Marriage of Helena Teresa Maria Anna Rotenberg and Gustaw Kożdoń

In October 1926, Helena converted from Judaism to Roman Catholicism. Her baptism took place on 15 October 1926 in the Archdiocese of Lwów, where she received the names Teresa Maria Anna. Three days later, on 18 October, she officially renounced the Jewish faith at the Lwów Registrar’s Office, and this change was recorded in the civil register.

Shortly afterward, Helena married Gustaw Kożdoń, an Evangelical Christian born in Orłowa (now in the Czech Republic). The marriage took place at St. Andrew’s Church, in Bernardine Square, Lwów, with several ecclesiastical dispensations issued to permit the union across denominations. At the time of marriage, Helena said she was 20 years old, (she was 24) had no listed profession, and was residing in Lwów. Her parents were listed as Paweł Rotenberg, an industrialist, and Franciszka Probst, who was already deceased by this time (as indicated by a "+" mark next to her name).

Gustaw is recorded as an Agronomus, a professional role related to agricultural or trade standards. His family had roots in Oderberg (Bohumín) and were living in Lwów. One of the witnesses was Major Leonard Lepszy, a former air force observer and decorated officer, and the other was Captain Kazimierz Szymański of the 14th Jazłowiec Lancers.

The original marriage record, located in the Lviv State Archive, contains a handwritten annotation added in 1929:

“They are not together since 1929. [The groom] is a godless person. He makes a laugh out of religion. They have no children.”

This note suggests that the marriage had broken down and likely formed the basis for a later annulment, which was the only way to dissolve a Catholic marriage in interwar Poland. Civil divorce was not legally available, and annulment required Church authority, often involving moral or doctrinal grounds.

Later documents suggest that Helena’s marriage was officially annulled. She remarried twice: first to Stanisław Lis, and later to Baron Jan Konopka (recorded as a “divorced wife” on her marriage certificate). There is no indication of legal impediment, further supporting the likelihood that the first marriage was annulled.

Gustaw Kożdoń died in 1979 and is buried in the Evangelical cemetery in Ustroń alongside his second wife, Jadwiga, and his mother, Anna Kożdoń (née Broda). His baptism certificate confirms Anna’s origin in Ustroń.

The marriage document and its annotations were central in reconstructing Helena’s life. They confirmed the date of her conversion, her father’s name and occupation, and that her mother was deceased by 1926. The record also helped clarify that she and Gustaw separated by 1929, and that she likely received Church permission to remarry.

In 1933, Helena married her second husband, Stanisław Lis, a Polish army officer and government official based in Warsaw. With the outbreak of the Second World War and the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Stanisław was called up from the reserves and fought in the September Campaign. After being taken as a prisoner of war, he eventually escaped and undertook a harrowing journey through occupied Europe, finally arriving in the United Kingdom in 1941 and reuniting with Helena sometime after.

Helena is believed to have escaped alongside members of the Polish government-in-exile. A recently rediscovered passport reveals fragments of the treacherous route she took through Fascist- and Nazi-controlled territories. By 1940, she had successfully reached Britain, where she joined the Polish Army under British Command and was stationed in Scotland as part of the Polish Women’s Auxiliary Service. That November, she was seconded to London, where she gave birth to her only child, Elizabeth Lis. Determined to remain in service and fearful that motherhood would force her discharge, Helena concealed the pregnancy from her superiors.

Roughly ten days after Elizabeth’s birth, Helena undertook a remarkable and desperate journey—traveling over 230 miles to Hope Cove in Devon to place her newborn daughter in a wartime baby home. There, she promised the staff that she would support her baby and return for her after the war. Days later, records show she had resumed her military duties in Scotland, where she rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant.

After the war, however, Helena was unable to locate her daughter. For over two decades, they remained separated - until 1964, when Elizabeth succeeded in tracing her birth mother. Their reunion was brief but deeply significant. During their time together, Helena shared fragments of her hidden past, including the devastating account of her brother’s murder by the Gestapo and the survival of her young nephew, who had endured a brutal beating by German forces.

Subsequent research confirmed some of these details. Helena’s brother, Henryk Rothenberg, was born in Stryj in 1912, and his birth was also recorded in the town’s Jewish registry. Although his life was cut short during the Holocaust, no further documentation of his fate or the circumstances of his murder has yet been found.

Helena and Elizabeth remained in touch for a short time, but in 1966, following a tragic misunderstanding, Elizabeth failed to meet her birth mother at a prearranged location and they lost contact. They were never to see each other again. The silence that followed marked the final chapter of a lifelong separation shaped by war, secrecy, and survival.

Over the course of her life, Helena married three times and changed her name multiple times, a reflection of the upheaval, reinvention, and survival that defined her journey. As the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family in Stryj, she rose to the upper echelons of Polish society in the interwar period. But by her own account, when the Soviets invaded eastern Poland in 1939, "they took everything." The trauma of dispossession and the constant fear of being discovered by either the Russians or the Nazis haunted her for the rest of her life.

Following the Second World War, Helena married for a third time - this time to Baron Jan Konopka, adjutant to General Władysław Anders, commander of the Polish Armed Forces in the West. It was a union based on deep affection, and Helena shaved eleven years off her age to match Jan’s. After his premature death in 1968, Helena lived alone in the United Kingdom. She remained in contact with her sister Irena (Róża Rothenberg), who had emigrated to the United States, and with Irena’s son, James Russocki, Helena’s nephew.

James visited Helena in London on several occasions, bringing his daughters with him. His memoirs provide valuable insight into Helena’s early life in Poland, and they support much of the research into the Rothenberg-Probst family history. Helena and James shared a profound bond—one rooted in their shared past, cultural heritage, and the enduring scars of war and loss. Yet, tragically, it is believed that James never knew of his cousin Elizabeth, Helena’s only child, who had been placed in a wartime baby home and later lost contact.

In her final years, Helena lived in a Polish care home in Lincolnshire - astonishingly, just a fifteen-minute drive from the home of her granddaughter, Jennie Milne. Despite this extraordinary proximity, the two never met. Helena died in October 2000 at the remarkable age of 98, having concealed her true age for most of her life. Her death certificate lists her birth year as 1913 and her maiden name as Solomirecka - a name she had adopted decades earlier. Under those details, it would have been virtually impossible to trace her original identity as Malie Rothenberg.

To this day, discoveries about Helena’s life continue to emerge. Among the most poignant is the recent recovery of her battered wartime passport, which documents part of her flight from Nazi-occupied Europe. But perhaps the most moving revelation came with the discovery of a photograph - a portrait of Elizabeth, taken in the 1960s, found among Helena’s possessions after her death. It is a quiet, powerful testament that despite everything, Helena never forgot her daughter.

For further information please contact Jennie Milne : jenniemilne67@gmail.com