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Zyta Suś

Zyta was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1934. After the death of her mother, she was placed in an orphanage. Because of her “Aryan” appearance, she was abducted from there and sent to a “re-education centre” and, after that, to the “Reich School for Volksdeutsche” in Achern. There, Sus was strictly forbidden to speak her native Polish. Once, Zyta tore down a poster of Hitler from a wall in the school. As a punishment, she was locked in the basement and starved. Later on, she was adopted by a loving foster family in Salzburg, Austria.

Zyta Sus
Zyta Sus

After the war, the Polish government returned around 30,000 abducted children to Poland. Zyta Sus was one of them and, having been “kidnapped” again, she was placed in an orphanage. Back in Poland, at the age of 12, she was insulted again, this time as a “stupid German” because the only language she could speak at that time was, of course, German. Even her new adoptive family treated her badly until she perfected her Polish accent again.

Looking back, Sus concluded that living with her Salzburg foster family was “the best time of her life”, which is why a team of journalists from Deutsche Welle and the Polish news platform Interia.pl tried to help her trace her Austrian “relatives”. Since German institutions changed children’s names, the search was not successful.