Zofia Majewska, born in 1929

I had a “good look”

I was born in Warsaw. Until 1939, I lived with my parents, Henryk Kroszczor,and Rachel, née Krokiet, on the grounds of the Berson-Bauman Hospital in Warsaw, where my father was the administrative director. My mother worked as a gynecologist in a hospital in the Czyste district (on the street now named Kasprzak Street). I attended elementary school. After the outbreak of the war, as a Jewish girl, I was removed from the school, and from then on, I studied in private groups.

Until February 1942, I stayed in the Warsaw Ghetto,  moving along with the hospital. We  lived,  among  other  places,  on  Gęsia Street and eventually on Umschlagplatz. After the last “action” and several days of hiding in the attic, in February  1942,  I  crossed  over with a group of Jews headed for work outside the  confines  of  the ghetto to the Aryan side. There, I settled, together with my parents, under the name of Krystyna Stańczak, at the home of Maria and Wacław Piotrowski,at 3/5 Bagno Street. Wacław Piotrowski had been a gardener at the  Berson-Bauman  Hospital.  After  a  year,  as  a  result of denunciations, we had to leave their apartment, and I was placed by Żegota  in  Wawer,  at  Mrs.  Tomaszewska’s,  where  I  worked  as a housekeeper. As a matter of fact, this was a “burnt” home because earlier, Mrs. Tomaszewska  had  been  hiding  a  young  girl  saved  from a transport to Treblinka. Blackmailed, she was forced to move her to another place. My so-called “good looks” were the reason that I was placed precisely there. People looking after me reached the conclusion that nobody would suspect Mrs. Tomaszewska of such audacity as to take on a second Jewish child.

Wawer was a small suburban town near Warsaw and is now part of Warsaw.

Just before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, I returned to Warsaw to join my parents, and because I had a different name, passed as their niece. From there, we were deported along with others to a camp near Grudziądz. I returned to Warsaw in February 1945.

In June 1948, I passed the matriculation examination and began studies at the Main School of Commerce (SGH) which I finished in 1952. In November 1951, I married Józef Majewski and in 1952, I gave birth to a child. In 1953, I began work in the Central Office of Geodetics and Cartography where I worked until April 1957. I was laid off because of the reduction of staff and redirected for retraining as a medical laboratory assistant. I passed the qualifying examination on August 24, 1961.

Since then, I have been working, with a short break in the years 1967-68, in the health services, first in the Institute of Hematology, and since January 1, 1974 until the present, in the Diagnostic Laboratory Institute of the Postgraduate Medical Education Center.

Warsaw, October 7, 1991