She works with devotion, deeply convinced of the significance and utility of her activities. The results make her happy, and her awareness of the multitude of duties on the horizon boosts her energy and immunity.
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Miss B. directs instructors of people’s and self-supportive kitchens. She is in her forties. Several years before the war she took her degree in hygiene and nutrition [. . .] in Palestine, where she also specialized in that field. She worked with devotion as it was her calling but yearned to put her knowledge into practice on a broad, social scale.
Miss B.’s specialisation was rare in Poland and for a long time after her return to Warsaw she could not find a position for positive, practical activity. She only sporadically gave lectures on topics connected with dietary hygiene.
It was the war that finally enabled her to reach the heights of her true calling.
Her instincts as a social activist did not let Miss B. limit herself to the role of passive participant during the bombardments. She volunteered with the OPL and became [77] a paramedic, but there was no need for her help, as her tenement had not been hit. Just a week later the Germans besieged Warsaw and radio megaphones called Varsovians to defend their city. Miss B. grabbed a shovel and volunteered to dig street trenches for the barricade to be erected on the corner of Wspólna and Marszałkowska streets. She worked several hours in a row for two days, in the company of women and men whom she did not know.
Shortly after the armistice, on the initiative of doctor M., a psychologist, Miss B. gave five lectures on wartime diets to Jewish and Polish schoolteachers in Żeromski’s house in Żoliborz.
It was at the end of September and the beginning of October.
Several days later Miss B.’s friend paid her a visit and asked her to help with the organisation of people’s kitchens. Miss B. took keen interest in that matter. Driven not by the financial necessity but by her zeal as a social activist and the voice of her calling, she contacted the then-director Mrs R. and proposed that they cooperate to improve meals served in the kitchens. As it turned out she came just in time, as the technical organisation and
