You know that saying, “I lived to tell the tale”?
Holocaust survivor Sonia Warshawski, who was dragged out of her hiding place under some floorboards in her attic in the Międzyrzec ghetto at age 13, forced to shovel the remains of her people for use as fertilizer at Bergen-Belsen and shot in the chest even as the camp was liberated, has in recent years come to believe that is exactly why she lived.
It’s why at 91 she still works six days a week in the Overland Park shop where she’s as much a life coach as a tailor, and still speaks everywhere she’s invited, often hearing about deep wounds after talking about hers.
After the local premiere of the documentary “Big Sonia” — she’s 4 feet, 8 inches tall — at the Kansas City Film Festival, a man in the audience stood up and said he remembered seeing newsreels from the time Sonia was being shipped off from her home in Poland in a cattle car. “The problem is,” the man said, genocide is “still going on today.”