Biography
Sophie Berkowitz (born Zofia Zajd) is the daughter of Chaim Dawid and Doba Zajd. She was born March 3, 1920 in Dzialoszyce, Poland, where her father owned a shoe store. Zofia had four siblings: Mietek, Regina, Rozia and Fela. In 1923 her family moved to Lodz, where they lived through the first six months of World War II. In March 1940 Zofia moved to Czestochowa to be with her fiance, Jakub Icik Berkowicz. The couple married in the ghetto one month later on April 7, 1940. Zofia was put to work in the Hasag labor camp in Czestochowa, where she remained until the end of the war. Zofia and her brother, Mietek, were the only survivors of their immediate family. After the war Zofia and Jakub went to find their niece Celina Berkowitz, the daughter of Jakub's brother Sigmund and his wife Cutka. Shortly before their death in the spring of 1943, Celina's parents placed her in hiding with a Polish Christian by the name of Genowefa Starczewska-Korczak. Genowefa took care of Celina, along with her own two daughters, until her husband was executed by the Germans. Afterwards she was forced to place the three girls in an orphanage in Czestochowa. Genowefa kept in close contact with the children, however, and brought them home every weekend. Celina became very attached to Genowefa, whom she affectionately called Aunt Genia, and was reluctant to leave the Starczewska-Korczak household when Zofia and Jakub found her after the war. Eventually, however, Celina agreed to go with her aunt and uncle, who then formally adopted her. The three made their way to Austria, where they lived in the Bad Gastein displaced persons camp and in Vienna, before immigrating 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.
