When the Germans began the liquidation of the Siedlce ghetto, Irena Zawadzka received a visit from her school friend Cypora Zonszajn, who was cradling in her arms Rachela, her one-year-old daughter. “One night, in August of ‘42, I heard tapping on the window,” Irena recounts. “We weren’t expecting Cypa, but my Mom and I knew that this had to be her; we were so horrified by what was happening in the ghetto.”
The decision to take in the baby was spontaneous. “We didn’t think about it. Someone we cared about had turned to us, so we had to help. We just had to figure out how.” Cypora returned to the ghetto, to her husband and parents. Soon, all of them perished. The Zawadzka women did not take pains to conceal Rachelka’s history. “None of the guests we had were people we were afraid of,” says Irena. “Family members and friends – they all knew about Rachela. You didn’t think about fear, you thought about normal life.”
In the summer of 1943 the situation became more dangerous, so a school friend of Irena and Cypora’s, Zofia Olszakowska (now Glazer) took Rachela to Zakrzówek in the Lublin region.
After the war, the girl’s uncle from Israel took her in. Later, Rachela returned to Poland every year to visit Irena an Zofia.
