The following are excerpts from Cecylia’s memoir.
How does an American family find themselves struggling to survive in the forced slave labor camps of Nazi Germany?
Little Cecylia’s grandmother came to the United States as a young woman for all of the reasons so many others came; in search of a better life. What we often don’t hear is that sometimes those same immigrants found it difficult to assimilate into the very different ‘American’ way of life.
Cecylia’s grandmother was one such immigrant. So, with her children -including Cecylia’s mother Maria, only twelve years old at the time- she crossed the Atlantic to return to her homeland and a lifestyle she could better manage.
So many memories. So many of them I’d like to forget.
Every now and then, I see clear images in my mind of the events we lived through: The bloodied face of an innocent man, disfigured by the butt of a German rifle leveled across his teeth. The despair in my Mother’s eyes as she picked herself off the ground, following a beating she received at the hands of the Nazi Labor Camp foreman. The countless bodies we passed, as we made our way across the German plains. The hate-filled eyes of Nazi children, who bullied me for the simple pleasure of it.
My name is Cecylia Therese Ziobro. Born into poverty and raised in Nazi Germany, I am a product of the Nazi Slave Labor Camps of World War II.
The War brought the unimaginable to our tiny village.
We waited, and the bombs kept falling. I held the tree trunk so tightly, thinking the tighter I held –the safer I’d be. From beneath the tree, as the adults were doing, I looked up through the leaves to the heavens to see if I could spot the planes flying past us. The first round of planes rushed past so quickly that they were mostly a blur. But I kept my eyes fixed on the sky.
“Can’t someone save us?!”, I thought. “If only a plane could come down, scoop us up and bring us to America.” But that was just a dream.
The next round of planes came much nearer to the ground. The roar of the engines sounded so close that I thought the planes themselves would clip the treetops. The fighters swept past us one by one; each one taking my breath away as it roared passed. I gritted my teeth, lowered my head, shut my eyes and prepared for a bomb to land.
Forced Laborers for the Nazi War Machine
The next morning just before 6am, Mama got up to report for work. I lay in bed. Instead of the light from the nearby window waking me, I arose to the sounds of adults speaking; Mama and a man. I listened closely, but still couldn’t make out what they were saying. The tone of the man’s voice, however, was unmistakable. It was firm and unfriendly. It concerned me. So, I tiptoed over to ladder that led to the ground floor from the attic where we slept.
From there I could see Mama standing face to face with the farm foreman. Without warning, he reared back and punched Mama directly in the mouth. With a back and forth motion, he continued to slap her. Mama screamed, as she covered her face with her hands to deflect the punishment. The initial expression on Mama’s face was one of disbelief. I hurried down the ladder, shrieking, “Mama, Mama!! What is he doing to you?!!!”
From the foot of the ladder, I now saw her lying on the ground, curled up in a ball with the foreman standing over her. As I approached, he stopped hitting Mama, but he maintained his steely-eyed focus on her. When Mama saw me, she collected herself and rose to her feet; appearing even more embarrassed by the idea that her daughter should have to see her in this condition. As she looked up, I saw blood flowing from her face. I screamed even louder and ran to her.