Matylda Engelman was born in Bielsko, Poland, matriculated in Warsaw and completed medical cosmetician's courses in Warsaw and Paris.
When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Mrs Broner, as she was known then, was alone with a small child. Her husband, Marek, had only just migrated to Palestine to set up a new house for his family but, not having heard from his wife for six years, he believed Matylda and his child to be dead. He remarried and started a new family. This was a bitter blow to Matylda, who spent the years from 1942 to 1945 on the run, always in fear of being caught by the Gestapo. She was able to hide her Jewish background by using false papers which described her as Catholic and Polish.
After obtaining a divorce in Poland, Matylda Broner arrived in Australia in 1948. She worked in a shirt factory in Melbourne and it was not until 1965 that she went to the Council of Adult Education to learn English and then attend short-story classes. She won first prize for a short story in a Society of Women Writers competition. During the 1970s Matylda was finally able to fulfil the promise she made to herself in 1942, which was to write down what she had experienced during World War II in the Warsaw ghetto. The result of that promise was two autobiographical books, Journey Without End and The End of the Journey.
Matylda Engelman has lived in Melbourne with her third husband, Ignacy. She worked until her retirement as a medical cosmetician.
