On August 9, 2020 Zofia Maksymowicz of Brooklyn, NY passed away from complications due to Parkinson's disease.

Zofia was born near Kalisz, Poland on March 23, 1924 to Kazimierz and Anna Burzynski.  She had two brothers, Stefan and Szczepan, and two sisters, Michalina and Janina.  Zofia survived the German invasion of Poland in 1939.  In February 1943, during the German occupation of Poland, she was taken to Germany as a forced laborer.  As she left Poland from the Winiary train station Zofia saw her mother in the distance and heard her shouting her name.  She never saw her mother again.  Both of her brothers died during WWII as the result of forced labor.  Her sister Michalina had died before the war began, and her sister Janina was the only immediate member of her family who survived the war.

Zofia was taken to northwestern Germany and put to heavy labor on a farm.   She saw allied planes in the skies on their way to bombing runs over Germany and, with the sounds of sirens in the background, she waited for liberation.  Zofia remained at the farm until she was freed by the Western allies at the end of the war in 1945.  She was sent to a displaced persons camp in Germany, in the British sector of occupation.  It was at this camp that Zofia met her future husband Zenon Maksymowicz.

Zenon (1911 – 1999) was drafted into the Polish Army in 1932, and was serving as a career NCO in the Polish horse artillery (13th Horse Artillery Regiment, Kresowa Cavalry Brigade) when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939.  Zenon was wounded in action at the beginning of the Polish 1939 Campaign, and was captured by the Germans at the end of the final battle in October 1939, by which time he had joined Polish General Kleeberg's Independent Operational Group Polesie.  Zenon spent the rest of the war as a POW in Germany, with some of his imprisonment spent in a penal unit.  When Zenon was liberated in 1945 by the Western Allies, he was assigned to the same displaced persons camp as Zofia.  They were married in November 1947 by Fr. Jacek Tylzanowski, the Chief Chaplain of the Immigration and Embarcation Center in Bremen. Father Tylzanowski, who had survived arrest by the Gestapo and both Auschwitz and Dachau, was particularly kind to both Zofia and Zenon, who had no family with them on their wedding day.

Zofia and Zenon emigrated to Sao Paolo, Brazil in 1948, where Zofia worked as a maid and Zenon worked as a mechanic.  In 1960 they arrived in New York City, where they had neither family nor acquaintances.  Zofia obtained a cosmetologist's license and found work as a hairdresser, while Zenon worked for the Container Transport International in lower Manhattan.  Having previously adapted themselves to the language and culture of Brazil, they now started to learn English and adjust to life in America.  Zofia in particular made a successful transition.  She loved all that Manhattan had to offer, from the Lower East Side to Zabar's on the Upper West Side.  She liked to dress stylishly and loved to shop for bargains.  Learning to speak English in addition to her native Polish, she also drew on her German and Portuguese as required to express herself richly and uniquely.  She especially enjoyed encountering German and Brazilian tourists at Rockefeller Center or St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Although Zofia's early life was filled with loss, hardship, and displacement, she never lost her optimism, positive outlook, and robust sense of humor.  She was sustained by her Catholic faith, and was a regular parishioner at St. Anselm's Church in Brooklyn well into her late 80s, when her Parkinson's made mobility difficult.  Regularly travelling from her home in Bay Ridge to the Manhattan she loved, Zofia was the consummate New Yorker, always alert, unflappable, savvy, streetwise, observant, and irreverent.  Fiercely independent, she mastered the NYC subway system and made her way up and down steep station stairways until the last several years of her life.  Zofia loved ballroom dancing, especially the tango and cha-cha.  She loved the Dominican food in Washington Heights and the food court at Rockefeller Center.  She loved encountering celebrities on the streets of NYC and was proud to have seen in person Jackie Mason, Muhammad Ali, Al Pacino, Ed Koch, and many others.

During the last years of his life, Zofia's beloved husband Zenon suffered increasingly from poor health.   Zofia cared for him with unfailing devotion until he passed away in 1999 after almost 52 years of marriage.

Zofia is survived by her only child John and her daughter-in-law Catherine of Reston, VA, as well as the family of her sister Janina in Poland.  In her final years she was cared for with great devotion and compassion by two highly skilled and loving home aides, to whom John and Cathy express their sincerest thanks and gratitude.

Zofia will be interred by the side of her husband Zenon in the veteran's section of the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown, PA.