Sophie Zajd Berkowitz photograph collection

Zofia Zajd (later Sophie Berkowitz, 1920- ) was born on March 3, 1920 in Dzialoszyce, Poland to Chaim Dawid and Doba Zajd. Her father owned a shoe store. She had four siblings: Mietek Zajd, Regina Zajd, Rozia Zajd, and Fela Zajd. In 1923, the family moved to Łódź, Poland. In March 1940, Zofia moved to Czestochowa, Poland to join her fiancé, Jakub Icik Berkowitz. They married in the ghetto on April 7, 1940. Zofia Berkowitz was sent to the Hasag labor camp in Czestochowa, where she remained until the end of the war. Zofia and her brother Mietek Zajd were the only survivors of their immediate family. After the ward, Zofia and Jakub Berkowitz went to find their niece, Celina Berkowitz (born Cecia), the daughter of Jakub’s brother Sigmund and his wife Cutka Berkowitz. Shortly before their death in the spring 1943, Celina’s parents placed her in hiding with Genowefa Starczewska-Korczak, a Polish Christian. She cared for Celina along with her own two young girls, until her husband was executed by the Germans. After his death, she was forced to place the three girls in an orphanage in Czestochowa. However, Genowefa kept close contact with the children and brought them home on the weekends. When Zofia and Jakub Berkowitz came to collect their niece, Celina was reluctant to leave. Eventually she left and the Berkowitzs formally adopted their niece. They lived in the Bad Gastein displaced persons camp in Austria, and then in Vienna, before the family immigrated to the United States in 1948. The Berkowitz family kept in touch with Genowefa after the war and were instrumental in gaining her recognition by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1986.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Sophie Berkowitz

Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

The Estate of Sophie Zajd Berkowitz donated the Sophie Zajd Berkowitz photograph collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2006.