ELŻBIETA FICOWSKA - SURVIVOR

Elżbieta Ficowska is the most famous survivor rescued by Irena Sendler during the WW II. Elżbieta (sometimes called Bieta) Ficowska is one of 2500 children who Irena Sendler took out from the Warsaw Ghetto. She was born in 1942 in the ghetto. The rescue action took place when Elżbieta was a baby. A man who cooperated with ŻEGOTA did the transport of children to the other side of the ghetto wall, put a small, sleeping Elżbieta into a box hidden in bricks in a track. The Jewish (biological), mother of Elżbieta gave a child to Irena and add a small silver spoon with a written name of this baby and the date of her birthday on the bottom side.
That spoon was some kind of ID and the only document about the child. This spoon makes her story unusual and nowadays is a kind of symbol connected with this sad event. That time Elzbieta’s mother said goodbye to her daughter for ever.
The Polish television made a documentary about Elżbieta’s life story, called “A spoon of life”.
Now Elzbieta is a chairperson in the association of “Children of the Holocaust”.
She has never met her biological mother again, but she always says that she has got 3mothers : Jewish one, Irena Sendler who rescued her and the Polish one-Stanisława Bussoldowa- who took care of her outside the ghetto.
Elżbieta Ficowska has been still searching the information about her Jewish parents and her Jewish roots.