I'm a published children's middle-grade author. My next project, a young
adult novel, will be set in Warsaw in 1942, during the Holocaust. My two main characters (boys, age 14 and 6) will escape from the Warsaw ghetto and be hidden in a Polish convent. Here's where I've run into trouble.

Although I finally found pictures of the outside of two convents in Warsaw during World War II, I've been unable to find pictures or even a DESCRIPTION of the inside of a Polish convent in or near at that time, although I know there were many of them in the city proper. I need to have some sense of how a fairly typical convent in Poland was laid out: if it had indoor or outdoor "plumbing"; a common room where nuns or children might "visit" or relax; were there different dining rooms for the nuns and children; the size of the chapel; the floors (wood, tile, other?), inside water or outside well; woodstove or gas; oil lamps or electricity, etc. so that when those two Jewish boys enter this completely alien world (to them), I will be accurate in portraying their new home.

The other problem I've run into is that I've been unable to find a good map of the City of Warsaw circa 1940. I need to know where the streets are vs. where the woods are in relation to the Vistula River; where the convents are, if possible (I have their general locations, but no street addresses), where the train station was in relation to the large and small ghetto, etc.

I have two people who have volunteered to translate from the Polish if the information is in Polish.

I'd appreciate any information about the daily life and interior of a Warsaw convent in the World War II period.

Since July, 1998, I've done extensive research: read dozens of books,
contacted the Washington Holocaust Museum, the Polish Embassy, not to mention many Catholic Sisters, convents, and Catholic net sites in this country, as well as Jewish and Polish sites, yet have been unable to find the above information. I hope you can help.

Thanks very much for listening and for your time.

Sincerely,
Patricia H. Aust
203 South Road
Marlborough, CT 06447
860-295-9002
EPAUST@aol.com