In 1942, Joasia was a Jewish infant in German-occupied Poland when she was smuggled out of a Warsaw ghetto in a backpack, and her life was miraculously spared.
The baby, who was born amid Adolf Hitler’s murderous campaign, survived due to the kindness of strangers and truly prodigious happenings — events her daughter, Karen Kirsten, regularly shares with audiences.
What’s perhaps most shocking about this story is that Joasia didn’t know anything about these events until she was 32 years old.
“She was born inside this area that was known as the Warsaw ghetto, where over 450,000 Jewish people were walled in during World War II,” Kirsten told CBN News. “And she only found this out when she was 32. She got a letter from a stranger who told her she had been born in the Warsaw ghetto and that she was smuggled out in a backpack.”
That’s not all. Joasia also learned from this individual that the only parents she had ever known weren’t actually her biological mother and father. According to the letter, her mom and dad were murdered when she was a baby, and she was “rescued by a notorious SS officer.”
It’s a truly remarkable account Kirsten details in her book, “Irena’s Gift: An Epic WWII Memoir of Sisters, Secrets, and Survival.”
These bits of information filled in the blanks for Joasia. But secrets often have a way of begetting secrets, and this was the case with Joasia, who concealed these details from Kirsten until she was 13 and the truth was finally unveiled.
“I discovered that the grandparents I adored weren’t actually my grandparents,” Kirsten said.
Over time, Kirsten came to embrace her mother’s story and is now a Holocaust educator, sharing what happened to help prevent other horrors like it.
As for her mom’s survival as a baby, Kirsten said, “It was miraculous.” This proclamation is undeniable, especially as the details are explored.
At one point during the chaos of the Holocaust, baby Joasia was hiding in an attic and somehow survived when others in the home perished.
“I will never know why there were other women killed who were hiding in that house and my mother was left behind,” she said. “The Nazis didn’t shoot her. … The woman who I thought was my grandmother was actually my mother’s aunt, and she … looked different from me; she didn’t have as dark hair, and she was able to blend in with the Polish, mostly blonde-haired population.”
Her aunt ended up taking in Joasia. Even then, though, the miracles didn’t cease. Her aunt and uncle were soon arrested by the Nazis, leaving Joasia in yet another vulnerable situation.
But Kirsten said “another miracle” unfolded.
“My mother was left behind when they were arrested, and, eventually, she ended up in a convent, and she was hidden by these amazing Catholic sisters,” she said. “And the sister who raised my mother, Sister Cornelia, hid my mother in her bedroom, and that’s where she spent the rest of the war.”
Eventually, Joasia’s aunt and uncle were released from the concentration camps and reunited with the little girl, raising her as their own and reportedly concealing what she had been through.
It wasn’t until the letter decades later that Joasia fully understood her own journey; everything started to make sense once the puzzle pieces came together.
“She was raised by these really damaged parents who were trying to wall in everything that had happened to them just to function,” she said of the aunt and uncle. “And they would shut down her nightmares. She used to have nightmares of men in uniform with guns and boots and hiding.”
Kirsten continued, “She remembered hiding in dark rooms and violent situations and they would just cut her memories off and tell her not to think about them.”
Years before finding out the truth, Joasia had become a Christian. As a teen, a friend invited her over and that family’s loving atmosphere drew her in. They, unlike her own adoptive parents, answered questions and provided a warm environment — one that drew Joasia into the faith.
“My mother accepted Jesus as her Savior,” Kirsten said, noting, though, that it was a long journey before faith and true forgiveness truly took root. “Her faith journey and her journey to forgiveness was long and complicated, because she wasn’t part of a church community, and she still … even after she was married and and raised us, she continued to feel displaced, and lonely, and unwanted.”
Eventually, Joasia had to come to a place of forgiveness for her aunt and uncle — the parents who had raised her. But the absolution didn’t end there.
“She even forgave her father for giving her away,” Kirsten said. “And she even forgave the Gestapo officer who shot her mother and killed her mother.”
Joasia’s faith left her “ministering” to others in need throughout the rest of her life.
“She spoke in churches around the world, and it was it was later in life, shortly after I started uncovering what had happened to her, that she actually joined a messianic congregation,” Kirsten said. “She felt like she had come back to her roots, but she really came back to her roots when I took her back to Poland to meet the sisters who had saved her.”
Kirsten, who tells these details and more in “Irena’s Gift: An Epic WWII Memoir of Sisters, Secrets, and Survival,” said the most powerful element of discovering and investigating details surrounding her mom’s story has been seeing the juxtaposition when it comes to the best and worst of human behavior.
“For me, what was important to highlight … were the heroes, the everyday people who risked their lives despite all the hate and indifference swirling around them to save my mother,” she said.
Find out more about the story in “Irena’s Gift: An Epic WWII Memoir of Sisters, Secrets, and Survival.”
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