KANSAS CITY, Mo. — News started to spread that Sonia Warshawski’s tailoring shop in Overland Park would be closing. Everyone wanted to know how ‘Big Sonia’ — as she has become known to so many — was doing. She is doing just fine.
The Holocaust survivor sat down with KSHB 41 News Anchor Lindsay Shively again to share what she has witnessed globally and what her future now holds.
Warshawski still hears from people all over the world, telling her they're forever impacted by her story and thanking her. She showed piles of notes and thank you cards in her home.
“That kept me going in life,” Warshawski said. “This is probably the message to keep on doing it.”
Between the documentary “Big Sonia” to speaking to groups and customers at her tailoring shop, the Holocaust survivor has spent years telling others the truth about the atrocities she faced.
Now at 97, she is looking to what’s next after her shop closed last month. John’s Tailoring and Alterations was named after her late husband John, who was also a Holocaust survivor. It’s closing after decades in business. Her family said the first shop opened in the 1950s, and that John had a clothing and alterations store at a few different locations in downtown Kansas City.
Warshawski said they also had a shop in the Metcalf South Shopping Center for almost 40 years, and spent the last several years in a building near 95th Street and Nall Avenue. With building renovations, Warshawski will not relocate again.
“It was very difficult to finally, emotionally to get ready,” she said. “I had to start saying to myself, 'Everything has to come to an end sometimes.' So again, I start getting a little more, you know, stronger.”
Warshawski is getting stronger, and remains so thankful for her crowds of loyal customers and friends.
“I think they all loved us, you know," said Warshawski. "And I am very also particular in things, and we had a very good reputation.”
She’s also so thankful for her faithful employees.
“Its like family. We’re like family,” she said.
It was always more than a tailoring shop. It was a place where she would so often give her love and kindness while sharing the truth of the horrific history she survived with so many, including us.
“I never refused because this is my life, this is my responsibility you know," she said. "I do it for those who couldn’t make it.”
Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Sonia lost so many members of her family, including her mother.
In 2020, she told us about what happened to her mother.
“The women were going to the gas chamber, and in the row I recognized my mom holding together with another lady from my hometown," Warshawski said. "This was the last time I saw my mom.”
Last year, the Holocaust survivor lent her mother’s scarf to the Auschwitz exhibit at Union Station. Now, it is back home with her.
“Whenever I look at it, every night I talk to her,” Warshawski said.
And when she thinks about the future, she wants to keep telling her story.
“I still would like to be useful,” she said.
Warshawski often passes out bookmarks with her picture, a part of her story and one of her poems she originally wrote in Polish.
When asked how many of them she has given away, “Oh my gosh, thousands,” she said. “I still have untranslated poems.”
Now, she would love to translate those poems and continue spreading her message of love.
“How many times smart students would stop and ask, ‘Sonia, how can you talk about love, (after) what you went through?’ So I have to answer, I say to them, ‘Listen, I shall never forget, I shall never forgive, but I will never hate.'”
Warshawski survived three concentration camps. You can hear more detailed accounts of what she went through in our previous stories with her. Her story is a part of history we cannot forget.
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