At times, the scenes in these railway stations were horrific to
behold: Starving mothers, sick children, entire families were
camped out on filthy cement floors, waiting for the next
available train, sometimes for days on end. In the city of Lódz,
a group of women, members of the pre-war Women's League--an
energetic, liberal-minded, charitable and patriotic organization
founded in 1913--decided they had to do something about it. They
regrouped and reorganized the league, in order to help the
impoverished travelers. In Lódz, and across the country, Women's
League members set up "women and children's shelters" at train
stations and staffed them with volunteers, doctors, and nurses.
They began supplying travelers with hot food, medicine, and
blankets. Their motives, in 1945, were the same as the
organization's motives would have been in 1935: charity and
patriotism. Janina Suska, a former Women's League member from
Lódz who is now in her eighties, told me in a recent interview
that she remembers these early effo