100-year-old ‘prayed for forgiveness for her killer’
Friends’ shock as widow who survived Nazi camp dies after being mugged on her way to church
LYING on her hospital death bed, Zofija Kaczan, a 100-year-old widow, prayed for the man who had mugged her as she walked to church.
Mrs Kaczan died on Wednesday, nine days after the attack that left her with a broken neck, prompting police to open a murder investigation.
Her final act of forgiveness, say friends and the priest who prayed with her at Royal Derby Hospital, was a typical act of kindness from the devout Catholic. She had grown up in Poland before the war, but was snatched from the street by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp to work. She was at one point sentenced to death, but somehow avoided execution.
“She prayed for forgiveness for her killer,” said Anya Skrytek, 80, a close friend who found Mrs Kaczan in the street after the mugging near to her home in Normanton, Derby, on May 28, and walked with her to nearby St Maksymilian Kolbe Church, where an ambulance was called.
Yesterday, as police confirmed they had arrested a 39-year-old man on suspicion of murder, flowers were tied to the railings of the church.
Inside, Father Sebastian Ludwin, who also prayed with Mrs Kaczan during her last days in hospital, was lighting candles in her memory and recalled the moment she was brought into the church after the attack, in which she was approached from behind and knocked over for her green leather handbag.
“She had black eyes, a lot of blood on her face and we bandaged her up and sat her in the last pew waiting for an ambulance,” he says. “The community has been left shocked at what has happened. She was a remarkable woman.”
Mrs Kaczan’s death on Wednesday morning came almost a month after she reached her centenary on May 9, which friends marked with a cake, flowers and a framed blessing from the Pope – despite living in England since 1948 she had never applied for British citizenship, so there was no message from the Queen.
She had grown up in the town of Brody, at that time part of Poland, but the Nazi occupation brought an end to her peaceful family life.
Her younger brother was killed before he had even reached his teens – executed on the street by Nazi soldiers. Mrs Kaczan, meanwhile, was snatched by soldiers and sent to a work detail in Germany.
Anna Zimand, a friend and retired prosecutor who attends the same church, said Mrs Kaczan was put to work in two factories making nails and porcelain and was housed in barracks in a concentration camp (possibly Dachau). She fled to England after the end of the war with her partner, Mikolaj, who had fought for the Polish resistance and reportedly saw action at the battle of Monte Cassino in Italy.
The couple spent time in a resettlement camp in Weston on Trent, Derbyshire, before moving to Derby. They married in 1953, but never had children.
Friends say Mrs Kaczan never returned to her native country and never saw her parents again.
Angelika Cybulska, a close friend who cared for Mrs Kaczan after her husband’s death in 2009 (aged 92) and spent the last few days with her in hospital, says such was the trauma of her war experiences that Mrs Kaczan rarely spoke about the past.
“She is happy now she is with all that she lost,” she told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
After settling in Derby, Mikolaj Kaczan worked at the Rolls-royce factory, while his wife worked for a clothing manufacturer.
Friends say the pair were inseparable and she was left “very depressed and lonely” following her husband’s death.
She would attend mass every day – always occupying the same seat four pews back from the end – and a luncheon club every Wednesday at the community centre next door.
Ms Cybulska said that despite reaching 100, her friend remained in very good health and they were planning a holiday to Scarborough in the coming months. Mrs Kaczan had a great love of the British seaside from previous visits with her husband.
“She was an amazing person and became a part of our family,” she says. “I’m shocked. We had so many plans.”
On May 2, the church hosted a birthday party for Mrs Kaczan with coffee, cake and Polish birthday songs.
According to Ms Zimand, there was a plan to host a special mass on May 13, but Mrs Kaczan refused, saying she had once been threatened by her Nazi captors that she would be executed on that date. “She was a stalwart of the community,” says Ms Zimand. “We are just in a state of disbelief that this could have happened and that after such a difficult life she met such a violent end.”
Outside Mrs Kaczan’s Victorian
‘We are in a state of disbelief that this could have happened and that after such a difficult life she met such a violent end’
terraced home yesterday, Stacia Fitzsimmons, her neighbour and close friend, had left a vase of white and red roses bearing the message: “We love you and will miss you so very much”.
According to Ms Fitzsimmons, a 55-year-old NHS worker who has lived next door to Mrs Kaczan for the past 28 years, Mrs Kaczan would often fetch her prescriptions, while in return she would cook meals for her friend and help wash her clothes.
Ms Fitzsimmons described her as “like a mother to me” and said they would meet for a chat every day.
“I went to see her at the hospital before she died,” she said. “I told her I loved her and gave her a photograph of her husband. I also told her I would keep an eye on her house for her. She gave me a kiss and said ‘God bless’. I knew she wasn’t coming back.”
In spite of her show of forgiveness on her deathbed, devastated friends of Mrs Kaczan say they are struggling to reach similarly into their hearts.
Anna Krepa, 83, another close friend, said: “The penalties are too soft in England and this is why there are people committing so much crime. It breaks my heart.
“If this man has committed murder, he should be hanged.”