Eleven hand-written pages in Sophie’s own English, from 1960. The single most evocative document in the family record — and the cornerstone source for the Polish-side narrative on this site. Sophie’s biographical statement, dated June 22, 1960, filed with the Joint Medical Authority. It tells the story of her Warsaw childhood, her parents (a Warsaw obstetrician killed at Majdanek, a devout Catholic mother), her older sister lost to meningitis before Sophie was born, her wartime years in France, and her first meeting with Constantine in Rome.
The statement has one striking structural feature: across all eleven pages, Sophie never names her own parents, sister, or grandparents. She describes them with affection and precision but never speaks the names aloud on the page. Recovering those names — partly accomplished through the 1953 FBI FOIA file — remains the largest open question on her line.