Sztorchan family photograph collection

Bożena Irena Werbart was born on November 18, 1948 in Katowice, Poland to Józef Wieczorek and Stefania Szajndla Sztorchan Wieczorek (Stefa). Stefa (1919-2006) was born on July 25, 1919 in Sosnowiec, Poland. She was the youngest daughter of Abram and Golda Eugenia Rakoszynska Sztorchan and had an older brother Julian Joel, born on February 10, 1913 and an older sister, Lola Sztorchan Erlich, born in 1912. Abram Sztorchan was a typesetter and in 1938 he became a partner in a typesetting business. The family lived at 10 Dekerta Street in Sosnowiec.

After the German invasion of Poland, the anti-Jewish repressions started immediately. In the spring of 1943 the Jews of Sosnowiec and vicinity were forced into a ghetto in Srodula and Kamionka. In August 1943 Abram and Golda Sztorchan were forced to come to the main sports field (Umschlagplatz) in Sosnowiec, where the Jews destined for deportation to the death camp had to register and both were shot and killed. Lola Erlich, her husband Oskar, and his son Jerzyk Erlich were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Lola and Jerzyk Erlich were murdered on arrival and Oskar Erlich was selected as able-bodied prisoner, but he was distraught over the loss of his wife and son and committed suicide.

Stefa was deported to the labor camp Annaberg, and was later transferred to the Neustadt forced labor camp and from there to the Gruenberg forced labor camp. At the end of January 1945, with the Soviet Red Army closing in on the area, the young Jewish women prisoners were forced on a death march to the Gross Rosen concentration camp, arriving in early February. After a few days the starved and exhausted women were forced to walk again, but this time Stefa and her close friend Hela, decided not to continue the march, but stayed in the barn where they spent the night.

Stefa’s brother, Julian Joel Sztorchan was deported from Sosnowiec to the Bunzlau concentration camp, a sub-camp of Gross Rosen. In February 1945 he was forced on a death march to the Bergen Belsen concentration camp and in April 1945 he was forced again on a death march to Dora concentration camp, a subcamp of Buchenwald.

After the war Stefa returned to Poland where she met and later married Józef Wieczorek (d.2009), a Polish man, who during the Holocaust hid eight Jews in a coal mine in Niwka, in Sosnowiec. Their son, Andrzej, was born on September 18, 1946 and Bożena was born two years later. The Wieczorek family left Poland in 1969 and settled in Sweden. Andrzej Werbart lived in Sweden and had three children: Robert, David and Simon. Bożena Werbart had one daughter, Miriam, born in 1975, who has three children: Isabella, Ellie and Adam Josef.