After her
high school graduation Zofia enrolled at the
Warsaw School of Economics, where she studied
the cooperative movement. She was one of the protesting students against the
Numerus clausus form of segregation introduced by the
Sanacja government. She continued her studies in Sweden until the invasion of Poland, and came back to Siedlce as soon as the war began. She made contacts with the
Polish underground resistance movement and became associated with the
Bataliony Chłopskie partisans. , 1942 Also from Siedlce, On that day, Cypora gave birth to her baby girl Rachela (Rachel). In order to provide for the family, her husband Jakub joined the
Jewish Ghetto Police organized by the
Judenrat Council on the orders of the Nazi administration in the ghetto. His decision helped them survive the ghetto liquidation action, but only for several months.
Treblinka deportations The Siedlce Ghetto liquidation action began on Friday, 22 August 1942. Around 10,000
Polish Jews from three transit ghettos were rounded up at the town square. The next morning the men, women and children were marched to the
Umschlagplatz and sent to
Treblinka aboard awaiting
Holocaust trains. An additional 5,000 to 6,000 Jews were forced into the cemetery and sent away to their deaths the following day by train. Cypora with her one-year-old Rachela
(pictured) found refuge in the so-called 'small ghetto' (a.k.a. 'the little ghetto', or Drojek) thanks to Jakub, who organized their transfer, but the ultimate fate of the remaining Jewish prisoners could easily be guessed. Cypora joined a group of Jewish refugees at a house inside the
little ghetto. during the liquidation of the ghetto in
Siedlce beginning 23 August 1942 The Jews were forced to walk to nearby Gęsi Borek colony under the pretext of the reemerging threat of a typhus epidemic and waited there for the "relocation train", bound for Treblinka. Three days later, on 28 November, some 2,000 Jews were massacred by automatic gunfire along the railway tracks at Gęsi Borek. According to witnesses Cypora took a poison pill and died before the massacre, but her husband Jakub, was murdered in the process. The family changed Rachela's name to a Catholic-sounding name – Maria Józefa – so she could live with them openly. After two months Irena Zawadzka attempted to get a "legitimate" birth certificate for Rachela and arranged for the local Catholic convent to take her in. However, the little girl soon fell sick and was taken back home. Rachela remained with the Zawadzkis until 1943, even though the house was in close proximity to the
Gestapo office in Siedlce. They remained in Zakrzówek for six months. In the early winter of 1944 Zofia took Rachela to Sobieszyn, near
Puławy. The Soviet army liberated the area in July 1944. Zofia and Rachela stayed there until June 1945. They returned to Siedlce after the war ended. Rachela went back to live with the Zawadzkis for a time; meanwhile, Zofia Glazer wrote a letter to Szymon Jabłoń (Jablon) in Palestine with the intention of adopting her. Szymon Jablon was Cypora's older brother and Rachela's maternal uncle who survived the Holocaust. He requested that the 4-year-old Rachela be separated from the rescuers and transferred to a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw for the purpose of her reunification with him as soon as possible, but circumstances had changed. In the fall of 1945 Zofia Glazer took Rachela to Warsaw in tears and entrusted her to
a Jewish organization in charge of transferring Jewish children to
Mandate Palestine. Rachela was taken to France and put on a ship to Palestine with a group of Jewish orphans but the ship was turned back by the British. The children were returned to an orphanage in France. Irena Zawadzka went to visit Rachela (now Rachel) there in 1947 and found her disoriented and very sad, which made Zofia regret this for the rest of her life. Little Rachel reached Palestine after two years in late 1947, and lived with her uncle for just one year. She was placed in a boarding school and since 1953 lived in Kibbutz Ma'abarot. Rachel Zonszajn married in 1960. She stayed in close contact with Zofia Glazer and Irena Zawadzka in Poland. , 2007 Zofia Glazer first settled in Lublin in late 1945 and obtained a position with the state-run "Społem" organization
(pl). From there, she was transferred to
Łódź and taught cooperative movement at the
Higher School of Economics for two years. She got married and relocated to Warsaw. Zofia and Irena Zawadzka were invited by Szymon Jablon to come to Israel for a visit in 1966 when Rachel was 25; however, Rachel did not remember much from her own childhood. Rachel visited Poland for the first time in the 1980s. On 25 May 1988 Zofia Glazer along with Irena Zawadzka and her mother Mrs. Sabina Zawadzka were awarded titles of the
Righteous. Rachel died of brain cancer in 2002, leaving two sons behind. Zofia died on 20 November 2007 in Łódź, interviewed for the last time by Zuzanna Schnepf from the Shalom Foundation just before her death. She was outlived by her daughter. Irena Zawadzka died on 12 March 2012. ==Notes==