Joanna Sobolewska's tale - "Rescued from Nazi death camp in 1923"....1-9-2-3

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Poor old Jewess Sobolewska, now 89 years old (which means she was born in 1920), claims she was rescued from a Nazi death camp when she was 3 years old. Only problem is that would have been in the year 1923.

Ashbury College hosts holocaust survivor

By Scott Nowoselski
Ottawa Citizen
November 4, 2009

Holocaust survivor Joanna Sobolewska. at the Ashbury College Chapel. Two Polish holocaust survivors and a man who helped to protect some members of the Jewish community during the Nazi occupation spoke to approx 100 students this morning. The Polish Ambassador to Canada and the Polish Sec of State also attended.

OTTAWA — At age three, Joanna Sobolewska was saved from a Nazi death camp by Polish foster parents who agreed to adopt her.

Along with her freedom, she received a new name and Catholic identity. But in escaping imminent death, she also lost a great portion of her life.

Unaware of her Jewish heritage until she was 18, Sobolewska, now 89, still feels the shock of learning who she actually was.

“These discoveries had a huge impact on my later life,” she said through a translator to a group of 90 students at Ashbury College. “I’ve had a dual identity all this time. I’ve been torn between my true identity and the identity I’ve lived with all my life.”

Sobolewska was one of two holocaust survivors who spoke Wednesday about their experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Along with a man who helped protect Polish Jews from Nazi capture, the three are in town to commemorate Holocaust Education Week. Also in attendance at the presentation were Polish secretary of state Ewa Junczyk-Ziomecka and Poland’s ambassador to Canada Piotr Ogrodzinski.

Although she has tried to track them down, Sobolewska said that she is still unsure of what happened to her biological parents. That, she said, will be a question that lingers with her, and those like her, forever.

“These people are on a voyage of discovery every day,” she said. “They have their families and normal lives, but they keep on searching for their roots.”

Fellow survivor Truda Rosenberg described a daring escape from a Nazi death camp where she jumped off a “ghetto train.”

She too acknowledged the problem of identity, noting that she lived under three different aliases while trying to evade Nazi capture.

“Life was a constant anxiety to remember what your name was,” Rosenberg said. “To remember if you were woken up in the middle of the night what your father’s name was, what your mother’s name was, (life was) a constant fear that you would not remember.”

The two survivors were joined by Marian Golebiowski, a Righteous Gentile who helped Polish Jews escape Nazi capture; risking death if caught.

“I was lucky to have saved two Jewish families, and I’m very proud of that fact,” he said through a translator. “...But I want to be sure you, as young people who are happy to be free, do not have to live through the sorts of experiences that we lived through.”

Adam Lebel was one of the students in the audience for the presentation, and said that hearing the delegation talk added new depth to his understanding of the Holocaust.

“Having a slight background in the subject is one thing, but to see these people is another,” the grade 10 student said. “To hear these stories and see these people, it’s incredible.”

“You see the tension and feel the power of their words.”

© Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen

Article: "Ashbury College hosts holocaust survivor"

Joanna Sobolewska's tale - "Rescued from Nazi death camp in 1923"....1-9-2-3

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