A moving reunion between a Holocaust survivor and the Polish woman who risked her life to save her, took place at JFK Airport in New York last week.
Organized by the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, the meeting brought together Rozia Rothshild, who now lives in Tivon, Israel, with her rescuer, Wiktoria Sozanska from Wroclaw, Poland, for the first time in over 60 years.
Sozanska and her widowed mother and five siblings hid Rozia Rothshild (nee Seifert) and her brother, father and aunt in a bunker on their farm in Turka, Poland, from 1942-1944.
Wiktoria Sozanska and Rozia Rothshild meet in New York
“I cannot fully express how grateful I am to Wiktoria and her mother Anna. They opened their home and their hearts to me, risking their own lives in order to save me," said Rozia.
“Their bravery is what has allowed me to live and build a wonderful family of my own, with three children and four grandchildren. I am so thankful to them and the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous for making this extraordinary reunion possible.”
In the fall of 1942 the Jews of Turka (now Ukraine) and the surrounding villages were ordered by the Germans to move into the Samberg ghetto. The Seifert family was among this group of 5,000 Jews who lived in Turka.
While the able-bodied adults could hide in a bunker in the woods, children and the unhealthy were forced go to the ghetto and the families had to sell all their belongings beforehand.
When Wiktoria Jaworska came with her mother Anna, a widow with six children, to look at the furniture, her mother saw Rozia and her brother Lucien and wondered what would become of them. When she heard they were going to be sent to the ghetto with her father and aunt who were disabled she said, “We will take care of you. You will come with us.”
A Seifert family photo from 1955
In the middle of the next night, Wiktoria's brother Mikolaj came to the Siefert home in a hay cart and secreted Rozia, her brother Lucien, her father Mendel and aunt Fanya away, past patrolling Germans, and hid them in an underground bunker in her barn for two years. Each day Wiktoria and her family brought food to the Sieferts and carried away their waste. While the Jaworska family had very little, they shared what they had with Rozia and her family.
Kept silent in Gestapo interrogation
There were several close calls. Wiktoria had given her identity documents to a Jewish neighbor and was interrogated by the Gestapo for days, never betraying her neighbor or the Seiferts. Wiktoria was finally released by the Gestapo, when she convinced them that she had not given her identity papers to a Jewess.
In the summer of 1944, as the Soviet army was approaching Turka, the Germans came though the area confiscating animals, taking food, and searching for both deserters and hidden Jews. Wiktoria and her mother moved the Seiferts to the woods, where they lived for two weeks until the region was liberated.
Mendel, Fanya, Rozia and Lucien returned to Turka and found devastation.
After the war, Mendel married Fanya and the family moved to the United States. Rozia met an Israeli, they married and moved to Israel, She now goes by the name Shoshanna, which is Hebrew for “rose” – the same as her name in Polish. Wiktoria is in her 80s and lives in Wroclaw, Poland.
Great debt of gratitude
“In the many years we have worked with survivors and their rescuers, I remain awestruck by the heroism of the thousands of rescuers who risked their lives to save others. By holding true to their values, these individuals saved Jews from certain death,” said JFR Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl.
“We owe a great debt of gratitude to these men and women, and through our work, hope to improve their lives and preserve their stories,” he added.
The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous was created in 1986 to provide financial assistance to non-Jews who risked their lives and often the lives of their families to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Today the JFR supports more than 1,200 aged rescuers in 26 countries.
The Foundation preserves the legacy of the rescuers through its internationally lauded Holocaust education program for middle and high school teachers and Holocaust center personnel.