Refusing to Back Down
Mary Szostak-Sitko and Taylor Lenze
Zofia Szostak had thick dark hair as a young woman and soft, feminine features. In a photo of her from October 17th, 1943, (age 19), she looks melancholically to the side, her hair swept up and pinned in waves around her head. This gentle expression and serene pose only show one side of a fierce, strong woman. Just two years after this photograph was taken, she escaped worn-torn Poland and in another five years, would leave Europe permanently, immigrating to the USA.
Zofia's life was intense and full of danger and drama. Resilient, hard working, determined, and courageous, she didn't run from danger but jumped in to fight.
Her life was never easy. Adopted at a young age and moving often throughout her childhood, she had to forge her own identity without the stability of family or stable home. While living in Bochnia, Zofia became a member of the Polish Scouting Organization (Związek Harcerstwo Polskiego), a sort of paramilitary organization, as her daughter describes it. There Zofia learned marksmanship at an army range in Podgwidzów. She trained for endurance too through arduous treks. In the summer of 1939, for example, as war was looming, Zofia took a month-long "wędrówka" (hike) to Boltuszowa.
Zofia became quickly accomplished in the organization and earned her scouting cross or "Krzyz"̇ before the war began. This memory is overshadowed however by the vivid recollections of September 1st, 1939, when at fifteen years old, she heard the sounds of planes overhead and felt the heat of her house burning to the ground. The family fled east.
Like most people living in Europe during the war, young Zofia lived an increasingly difficult life. Many of her close friends were killed (Danuta Polniakowski was executed at Tczew and Jasia probably died in the Warsaw Uprising).
Zofia wasn't someone to hide away and just try to survive the tragedy around her however. By 1942 (while still just a teenager) she joined the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK) of the Polish Underground. She was part of NOWK (Narodowe Oddziały Wojskowe Kobiet) for women. “This gave me a feeling of belonging somewhere and being able to do something worthwhile” she told her granddaughter Theresa.
Here her scouting background became important. She met fellow girl scouts, also now part of the AK. Her daughter explains how scouts were often used in the Underground to dig trenches and act as messengers. Zofia worked with her friends as a messenger, taking the name "Inga." However, true to her determined nature, Zofia went a step further: she completed a Red Cross course so that she could be a medic. Never stopping learning new skills and working to help the movement, she then began working as a stenographer, transcribing important radio transmissions so both soldiers and civilians would know the truth about what was happening in the war.
Interestingly, the new pseudonym she gave herself at this point in her life was male, revealing a fierce creation of her own identity, and a refusal to be boxed into a traditional passively feminine identity. Now she became "Jędrusz."
Zofia's success in the underground and pivotal part in her unit wasn't due just to her scouting training, though, but also her intelligence and sensitivity. As a young woman, educated, bright and desperate to learn, she balanced working in the Underground with attending classes at the illegal underground university, earning a teachers degree.
As if her life wasn't already full from all of this, personal life couldn't be put on hold, even as the public sphere and private were wracked by war and violence. Both of her adopted parents died in the winter of 1943-1944, and when the family turned her away her for not truly being a biological family member, she became again an orphan. Around this same time, Zofia learned that her biological father had died in Neuengamme, a Nazi camp in Hamburg.
After the war, the intensity of her life didn't subside. No longer actively fighting, she and her unit went into hiding from the new Russian occupiers. Moving often and constantly just a step ahead of arrest, deportation or execution, they barely escaped in November 1945, when in her daughter's words, "they received a warning and managed to escape – not taking any belongings, valuables and not bothering to even close the door to their homes. They knew that they would not be back."
Zofia's courage shone again in Krakow when she and her husband first secured documents for the members of their unit before themselves, even though they ultimately ran out of time for their own documents. Then again, at the boarder to Czechoslovakia, they waited for days as their whole unit crossed safely over before crossing themselves on December 2, 1945.
Finally, safe in the now divided Germany, Zofia applied to teach, possibly imagining a more settled life for however long they would stay. Such a life was not her destiny yet though; Zofia wasn't one to passively sit back and accept the conditions around her.
Late one night she heard noise and realized that there were men in the women's dorm. Not at all demure, she shouted for them to be quiet. The officer nearby responded "in a very graphic and colorful fashion," and took her documents, demanding she come the next day to his office. Zofia, however, took matters into her own hands and snuck out of camp to gather backup. As anticipated, the next day the officer did not want to talk over the situation with her but rather treated her with unprofessional anger, shouting profanities to her face. Zofia would not accept such treatment and the friends she had cleverly recruited stormed in, took her documents back and left with her to a different camp.
Authority was never something she allowed to dictate her life. When (soon after leaving her camp and moving to her husband's camp), they learned that part of their unit was in Italy, she fearlessly forged signatures on their travel documents so they could reunite with their old friends.
After Italy they moved to England and then the US, Zofia working different jobs to support them as they traveled. Not just in wartime but throughout her whole life, Zofia was that sort of woman: fearless, determined, clever and active. She refused to give up or back down and lived a full life in the US too, working, studying, and staying active in many different organizations. On March 24th, 2016, she passed away, surrounded by her children and fighting to say "I love you." She could finally rest.
Primary Source: The Doll in the Rubble by Mary Sitko
Text Source: https://www.mimemorial.com/obituaries/persons/S/Zofia
Photo Source: Mary Sitko’s files