The Manchester Enterprise
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Local resident recalls Holocaust horrors
World War II survivor shares family's plight with Nazi Germany
By Alana West, Special Writer
PUBLISHED: March 20, 2008
Manchester resident and Holocaust survivor, Zofia Sibinski, always wears a large gold crucifix around her neck.
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It has to be a crucifix, with a visible Christ, so that when she clasps it tightly, she remembers that her own hands have never been nailed to a cross.
Though she suffered deprivations and cruelty during her years as a Polish prisoner in a World War II Nazi concentration camp, and again in the camps she lived in for six years following the war's end, Sibinski thanks God she is still alive and in the United States.
Sibinski spoke about her survival during a presentation hosted by the Manchester Historical Society March 13.
She said that not many people know that, along with Adolf Hitler's attempt to destroy the Jewish race, one of his original goals was to wipe out Poland.
"Six million Polish people also died," she said. "He (Hitler) had a special torture camp for the religious and well-educated."
Sibinski's parents were among those who fought against the Nazi oppression. Their home was one of several homes in the Polish Underground Network, a secret organization that hid Jews and other refugees from the Nazis until they could escape from Poland. The secret network was loosely connected to routes that led throughout Europe.
"No one knew the whole route," Sibinski said. "That way, anyone who was caught would only know their own portion of the route, and not be able to tell all of it."
Born in Wlocin, Poland, Sibinski was 3 years old when she and her parents and two older sisters were arrested one night in March 1940 by the Gestapo, and forced to march 84 miles to Lodz. Sibinski said the family was forced to board a train to a Nazi death camp, where they were herded into bathhouses. After hours of waiting, nothing came out of the spigots and the prisoners were removed.
"The soldiers were confused when the gas didn't turn on," she said.
Sibinski said her family learned later that cyanide had failed to be delivered to the camp, because British troops had bombed the railroad track.
Sibinski said she vividly recalls Nazi soldiers forcing her family and others in the camp to sleep on the frozen ground without tents for several nights.
"I was 3 years old at the time. I'm not going to tell you, 'I remember,'" she said. "This is my family's story."
Sibinski said after a few days, her family was taken to a nearby town and auctioned to local farmers for slave labor.
"We were sold like slaves," she said.
Fortunately, her family remained together. They were housed in the attic of a farmer's barn, and the ladder was removed until the family was called to work. As a child, Sibinski said she was not expected to do a lot of work. Instead, she became an observer, or a "spy" as she called herself.
"I figured if I learned German, things would ease up a little," she said.
Sibinski said she soon became friends with an older member of the farm, whose job it was to peel potatoes. Her mother said she climbed into his lap, and asked him, "How are you?" in German.
Soon after the friendship was forged, her whole family received a special meal every Sunday — two slices of bread with butter, along with soup. The family was also allowed to leave the attic the entire day.
When he wasn't locked in the attic, Sibinski said her father began searching out the local Underground network, and every night crawled out of a tiny window in the barn attic to meet with them in secret. However, before the family could escape, information was leaked to the Nazis that someone was delivering news to the Allied troops and all the male POWs were arrested, including her father.
Sibinski said the men were placed in an old factory, surrounded by dynamite. Fortunately for her father, the farmer who owned him had him returned to the farm. The next night, the factory was blown up, and all the prisoners were killed.
Life on the farm returned to normal. However, soon after, Sibinski developed a severe case of pneumonia that nearly killed her.
"They let my mother and my father stay with me, since they thought I was dying," she said. "Suddenly, a white bird flew by and tapped on the window, and then flew away. And I sat up and was well again. We learned later that was the day that my dad's mother died."
Liberation took place in the early spring of 1945, she said, when Canadian forces routed Nazi troops.
"I remember my parents were always on their knees, praying. And on this day, they were smiling," she said.
However, following the end of Nazi occupation, the family was forced to live six more years in a camp, waiting with others for sponsorship to move to another country.
Finally, a cousin the family never met, Mary LaDuke of Detroit, agreed to sponsor them. Her relative, a widower with no children, agreed to let the family stay with him, and her father was guaranteed work in another relative's store.
"It wasn't much, but it was something," she said.
Sibinski is proud that she now lives in America.
She and her family later returned to Poland, where they visited her uncle, the man who had betrayed them to the Nazis in 1940.
"My dad's brother sold us out," she said. "He wanted our property."
She said her uncle lived on the hill above their property, and wanted to expand his.
Sibinski said that her parents forgave her uncle, and also freely forgave those who had been cruel to them during the war. She said she had a little more trouble with forgiveness, but after talking to her uncle alone for a short time, decided to forgive him, as well.
"One time, a student (during a presentation) asked me if I could ever forgive them," she said. "What happens if we don't forgive? It breeds hatred. This is what will continue."
Alana West is a freelance reporter for The Manchester Enterprise. She can be reached at mmagwest@sbcglobal.net.
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