Holocaust Historical Society

Could you please introduce yourself and state your date of birth?

I was born on January 12, 1942, and my name is Zuzanna Helena Stefaniak, née Główka.

Where were you born? 

My whole life, I thought it was Warsaw, but when I found out that my parents were not my biological parents, it turned out I was born in Chęciny.

Please tell us when and under what circumstances you learned that the people who raised you were not your biological parents.

My parents loved me very much. I really felt it, and I was happy with them. In the early sixties, my father decided to divorce my mother. During the divorce proceedings, I sided with my mother, so my father disowned me and filed for the disavowal of paternity. It was then that my mother told me that I was not their biological daughter, that they had taken me from an orphanage.

How old were you then?

I was almost an adult, after finishing high school (matura).

How did you take it? Was it a shock to you?

 I was shaken. I basically could have refused the disavowal of paternity, just as my mother did, but when the hearing came, I stood on my honour and told my father: "You don't want me, fine." And that's when my father ceased to be my father. My mother told me that I was in the Fr. Baudouin Orphanage (Dom Boduena), on Nowogrodzka Street, and my parents took me from there on May 15, 1943, on my mother's nameday, whose name was Zofia. I was a year and five months old then.

Then I went through various hardships with them. We lived in Ochota when the Warsaw Uprising broke out, and we were quickly expelled from there. We ended up at Zieleniak, where soldiers from the Kamiński Brigade wanted to cut off my father's finger to steal his wedding ring. Miraculously, he managed to take it off.

The Kamiński Brigade — during the Warsaw Uprising, a formation commanded by Bronislav Kamiński, the Russian People's Liberation Army (RONA), also known as the Kamiński Brigade, fought on the German side. This collaborationist unit was composed mainly of Russians, Belarusians, and other inhabitants of the occupied territories of the USSR. In August 1944, Kamiński's units participated in the pacification of the Ochota district. They were notorious for their exceptional brutality towards the civilian population (rapes, murders, looting).

Then, like all Varsovians, we were driven to the camp in Pruszków. My father managed to get out of the camp because my aunts, who lived in Pruszków, came in white coats, with stretchers, and carried my father out as a patient. They did not manage to get my mother and me out the same way. We were put on a transport for forced labour in Germany. In Brandenburg, my mother worked in an ammunition factory on a lathe, making missiles. I—a two-year-old girl—stayed with women who worked on a different shift.

During World War II, Brandenburg was an important centre for arms production. The aviation and automotive industries (e.g., Arado and Opel factories) utilized huge numbers of forced labourers—about 11,000 people of various nationalities. Projectiles were produced primarily in the Magdeburger Werkzeugmaschinenfabrik (MAWAG) and the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) plants, which had branches there. Forced labourers were quartered in barracks next to the production plants—in labour camps.

Then the Soviet Army liberated us—the camp gates were opened (my mother told me that the soldiers raped young women), the barracks were set on fire, and to escape the fire, my mother threw me out of the window to a friend below and jumped out herself. We returned to Warsaw on foot. Our house was burned down during the Uprising, so we went to Pruszków, to my aunts, where my father was hiding.

Were they your father's sisters or your mother's?

My mother's sisters. And then we had a normal life. As I said, they loved me.

Did you have any documents, a birth certificate, anything?

 Immediately after taking me from the orphanage, in 1943, my father went to the Church of St. James the Apostle near Narutowicz Square, in Ochota, and reported that a child had been born to him. I was registered, and given the name Zuzanna. And that was enough; children could be registered that way back then. From then on, my name was Zuzanna Helena Główka, and I was raised in the Catholic religion. I went to school, and I graduated from university. The hearing for the disavowal of paternity took place in the early sixties. I was practically an adult then. After the hearing, I went to the registry office and wrote down the information about me contained in the protocol.

Where did your middle name—Helena—come from?

I arrived at the orphanage at the age of 11 months, and in my diaper was a note: "Helenka baptized." Hence my middle name. My parents kept it, and that's why my name is Zuzanna Helena.

Polish children were kept in the Baudouin Home. What made you think you might be a Jewish child?

I knew I was from the orphanage, but nothing more, and it bothered me greatly. Once, during a conversation with a close friend, I couldn't take it anymore and told her my story. At that time, and I am a historian, I was creating a family tree on MyHeritage for the family I was raised in. The friend I told all this to advised me: "Get a DNA test," and she paid for it.

MyHeritage — a commercial online genealogy service that allows users to create a family tree, search historical databases, and take DNA tests that determine ethnic origin and find biological relatives based on shared markers.

When did this happen?

Three years ago, in 2022.

So you lived your whole life without the awareness that you might be Jewish?

Yes. Although I suspected it, because who abandons their tiny child? Probably only when it needs to be saved. The date, the end of 1942, already after the Great Action, when the ghetto was almost non-existent, was also symptomatic, right?

The DNA test showed that I am 100% Jewish, and that allowed me to think about where to look for my roots. I met Inka Sobolewska socially, and she guided me, gave me phone numbers, and advised me who to call and where to go. At the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH), Ms. Agnieszka Reszka found the most important document for me in the archive based on my name and date of birth. Sent from Argentina by a Jewish organization at the end of 1947, it contained my whole story—Helenka, born on January 12, 1942, in Chęciny, was left with Ms. Paciorek, in an apartment on Stalowa Street in Warsaw.

Did the letter contain your parents' names?

 I will quote a fragment: "Sara Moszenberg, Roman by marriage, requests the search for a child, Helena, born on January 12, 1942, in Chęciny." I received another piece of information from the book of survivors from Lublin that my mother had survived. The details matched: parents' names, surname. There was even a place of residence address, but the date of this record was missing. I later discovered it was 1945.

My file was preserved in the archives of Children's Home No. 15, Fr. Baudouin Home, and in it, there was information on how I got to the orphanage. I learned that my biological family had entrusted me to the care of a young Polish woman. It was recorded that on December 21, 1942, a woman with a small, approximately one-year-old girl stopped for the night at the home of a stranger she met on the train. During the occupation, it was forbidden to be outside after curfew. The stranger—Rozalia Paciorek—lived in Praga near the station at Szwedzka Street 35 flat 34. The next day, the woman left the house under some pretext, leaving the child with Rozalia Paciorek, and did not return.

Because Ms. Paciorek had her own children, she took me to the police station. From there, I was taken with a policeman to the Fr. Baudouin Orphanage. I was registered there under number 859/1942 and given the surname Celewska Helena.

Were you able to find the woman from Stalowa Street who took you to the Baudouin Home? In the early sixties, after the disavowal of paternity hearing, my husband and I went to that address. I did not speak with Ms. Paciorek, only with her daughter. The daughter remembered me because various people had inquired about me later. Now I know who it was. Certainly my mother, and in 1948, my father's brother, who was in the military at the time.

Were the people who were looking for you informed about your whereabouts?

 They were informed that I was at the Baudouin institution. The letter from Argentina was dated in December 1947, and in forty-eight, my parents changed their address. A lady from Baudouin came to us then, and my father got terribly upset—they had become attached to me and didn't want to give me back. He persuaded (and perhaps even paid money) them to convey to my true mother that I had died. A note was made in the children's home records that the child had died, and my mother learned that I was no longer alive. When I discovered this, I felt enormous pain.

Please tell me how and where you searched for members of your Jewish family?

Mainly on the Internet. Through portals with family trees. I reviewed a lot of different documents, and digitized books. I learned that my mother, Sara Moszenberg, was born in Małogoszcz in 1918, and her parents were Dawid Moszenberg and Chana née Cele. On May 20, 1939, she married the accountant Leon Roman, born on September 18, 1914, son of Abram and Leja née Biber. The wedding took place in Małogoszcz.

Then my parents went to Piotrkow, where the war caught them. They both ended up in the Ghetto, then they found themselves in Checiny, and I was born there. In September and December 1942, the Jews of Checiny were deported to Treblinka and murdered there. My mother somehow avoided the deportation and entrusted me to someone's care.

From October 1942, she was imprisoned in Majdanek and in May 1944, she escaped from the camp and walked to Warsaw. There she hid in a cellar at her friend's, who was a cook at the Przemienienia Panskiego Hospital. After the liberation, she learned that her husband died in 1943, and she was also unable to find me.

Did you find out about your mother's later fate?

In Lublin, she married Mojżesz Brüh (January 7, 1945).

 In April, they fled Poland through Czechoslovakia, Romania, Hungary, and Austria, to Italy. Until December 31, 1946, they wandered in UNRRA camps in Florence and Rome. On October 4, 1945, my mother gave birth to my half-brother. Soon after, her husband abandoned her, and she emigrated with her son to Rio. They lived there for a year, and in 1947, they moved to Buenos Aires. After divorcing, her husband took her son and raised him himself. He died in 1954, leaving the care of the nine-year-old boy to his brother.

Does that mean your mother lost two children?

Yes, first me, then my brother. She was lonely until the end of her life, living in Buenos Aires, then in Rio de Janeiro. She obtained Brazilian citizenship through naturalization. She died on February 27, 1987, in São Paulo.

I wanted to ask about your half-brother...

He was called Enrico, perhaps because he was born in Italy. Then he moved to Israel and changed his name to Zvi. His surname is his father's—Brüh.

Did your brother not have contact with his mother?

No, it's very sad. He only learned many things from me. A lot was hidden from him.

Did you find any information about the family of your father, who died in Treblinka?

I had the opportunity to listen to an interview given in 1997 by my father's younger brother, Felek Roman. My brother also had to hide, so he changed his surname multiple times, and under the last one, my daughter found an interview with him conducted for the Steven Spielberg Foundation. Thanks to this, I learned about the family's fate. My father was imprisoned in the Chęciny ghetto, and then he escaped. He hid in Warsaw, on the Aryan side, with his brother. They both had false documents with Polish names. In 1943, both were arrested by the Gestapo and imprisoned in Pawiak. Working in the workshops belonging to the prison, they dug a tunnel at night, scattering sand in the basement. After five months, they managed to reach a sewer—seventeen prisoners escaped then. In the sewers, the escapees split up, and the brothers went towards Śródmieście (City Centre). The sewers were from Lindley's time, only 80 cm high, so they walked on their knees. They came out of the sewers on July 30, 1944. The next day, the Uprising broke out, and the prisoners were no longer sought. Later, the brothers hid outside Warsaw.

So, your father survived the war.

He survived the war. In the years 1945-57, he lived in Poland, in Wrocław. He got married there because he had no news of my mother and me. His second wife had a daughter who was sheltered by a Polish couple. After the war, the girl was found and retrieved. Her daughter lives in Australia, and I am in contact with her. In 1957, my father left for Germany to his younger brother—they decided to go to Australia. They emigrated in 1958. There, he changed his surname again, which is why finding him was so difficult.

So if it hadn't been for the false note in the Baudouin Home about your death, you would probably have had both parents? You were the common link that could have reconnected them.

 A sketch of the ŻIH's response to my mother's letter, written in pencil, has been preserved: "We hereby inform you that Citizen Moszenberg personally investigated the matter in Warsaw and knows that (and here something is crossed out; probably a surname) the child was taken from the Baudouin Institution by some military man (because that military man really did inquire there). We will try to continue this matter, and if we manage to establish anything, we will write to you." Perhaps they later wrote that I was listed as deceased in the Baudouin Home documents. But there is no proof of this.

I also want to add that my father's parents—Abram and Laja Roman—and his 14-year-old sister, Rita, were murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. I know nothing about my mother's family apart from my grandparents' names.

Is there anything you would like to add at the end of our conversation?

 I would like to thank a few people. My friend, Elżbieta Nejman, who inspired me and also made it possible for me to take the DNA test. Everything started with that. Inka Sobolewska, who kindly directed me to people and institutions that could help with the search. The head of the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute, Agnieszka Reszka, who found the most important document for me with the name of my mother who was looking for me after the war. Further heartfelt thanks go to Maria Kolankiewicz, who obtained my personal file, previously inaccessible, from the Fr. Gabriel Baudouin Orphanage and sent me scans. I found the description of my story there. I also contacted various archives and institutions, and everywhere I found a willingness to help and kindness. Thank you to Bady Wharton from Ireland, who deals with genealogy. And most of all, to Professor Michael Tobiasz, a genealogist from Great Britain, co-founder of Jewish Record Indexing in Poland. He found a photograph of my mother and my half-brother for me. And most importantly, he found my brother in Israel and my father's family in Australia. Throughout my search for family, my closest ones were with me—helping, translating various texts. My daughter Justyna, son Bartosz, and granddaughters, Kasia and Ela, offered me help and support.

Thank you very much.

Warsaw, June 11, 2025. 

Interview conducted and edited by Anna Kołacińska-Gałązka