The building work is nearing an end at the Melody Lofts, a three-storey redbrick factory that has gained two additional floors and is now flanked by two modern neighbouring buildings. Hoardings outside promise stylish new homes for people who value” space, style and history”.
We are in the city of Lodz in central Poland, where, a century ago, this was the buzzing textile and stocking factory owned by the Rozenfeld family.
They were one of countless Jewish families that helped make Lodz, 120km southwest of Warsaw, into Poland’s third-largest city and an industrial powerhouse to rival Manchester.
The Rozenfelds are long gone: those not murdered by the Nazis were scared away by anti-Jewish feeling in postwar Poland. Monika Rozenfeld was born here in 1939 and – thanks to her mother Kryszia’s luck, bravery and ingenuity – survived the Holocaust in the Warsaw Ghetto. Mother and daughter lost most of their family and started again in London.
Edyta and Monika, Oliver's grandmother and mother, in their hometown of Lodz in 1946. Photograph: Oliver Sears family collection
In 1990, after the Iron Curtain fell, Monika travelled back to Lodz to see what was left of the family inheritance with her son Oliver.
Some 35 years later Sears
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