For 50 years, her story was mostly untold, even to her own children and grandchildren.

But when Cecylia Ziobro Thibault heard the president of Iran in 2005 declaring that the Holocaust was a myth, she recalled, “My blood boiled in me.”

“That means World War II is a myth,” she said. “That means all those American soldiers who died in the war is a myth.”

And Thibault, a former Manchester resident now living in Florida, knows otherwise. She was there when those very same soldiers liberated the labor camps where she and her mother were slaves of the German army.

So she started telling her story to school groups. And she recently co-authored a book about those years, “Trapped in a Nightmare,” with her son, Robert H. Thibault.

Cecylia Thibault, who appears much younger than her 78 years, said she wants the younger generations to understand that history is not a myth. “I am speaking in memory of the millions of victims of the Holocaust, executed Polish officers, Polish priests and nuns, civilians that perished without a trace, and the thousands of American soldiers who gave up their young lives for this cause: to save millions,” she tells the students.

Life forever changed

Born Cecylia Ziobro, she had a happy childhood in Ropczyce, Poland, until she was 5 years old. On Sept. 1, 1939, Hitler's army invaded Poland. That day, she said, “my life changed forever.”

In the months that followed, they watched as her family's Jewish friends and neighbors were dragged from their homes and detained in ghettos outside town. Her mother and grandmother started to bring food to the detainees.

“If nothing else, we brought a bit of encouragement and the feeling that someone on the outside cared,” she writes in her book.

But one day, two German soldiers ordered them not to return. “Today, it's the Jews' turn,” one said. “If you disobey our orders, tomorrow it will be you.”

“It was the last time we saw the Jews of Ropczyce,” she writes.

In the fall of 1940, their German occupiers ordered all able-bodied Poles to Germany to work in labor camps in support of their war efforts. Cecylia's mother was sent to a large farm that was providing food for the soldiers. She brought her mother and 6-year-old Cecylia with her.

Every day, the little girl was left alone while her mother worked in the fields from 6 a.m. to nightfall. She had no toys to play with, just “sticks and stones and dirt.”

She sometimes found potatoes left in the field and recalls sneaking them to the French and Russian prisoners of war who passed by the farm each day on their way to work at a quarry.

Then, “when I turned 10, I was told I needed to work along with the adults.”

Cecylia was tasked with caring for the farm animals. These many years later, she touches a scar on her left cheek, the mark of a nasty bee sting she got while caring for the hives.

The Ziobros were devout Roman Catholics, and they tried to practice their faith at a church in the German town. But they were forced to wear the letter “P” on their clothes, and the priest asked them to leave, fearing soldiers would close down his church if they saw the Polish family there.

Still, she said, “we kept the faith. We lost our dignity and our freedom, but we never lost hope and our faith in God.”

Her mother was sickly and made a poor farmworker, so the Ziobros were sent to a factory that was making rifle butts. “That's the place we found out what war was really about,” Thibault said.

It was early 1945, and the Americans were bombing German factories, bridges and train stations. “We were hiding most of the time under the factory,” she recalled.

And always, there were the whispered promises from the adults: “The Americans are going to liberate us.”

One day, the workers awoke to quiet; the bombing had stopped and the German soldiers were gone. They watched as a single American soldier approached their hiding place. “We didn't know — is he going to shoot us or free us?”

Raising their hands, they cried out, “Polski!” “Russki!” We are Polish! We are Russian!

“That American soldier looked like an angel from heaven to me,” Thibault writes in her book. “I could not take my eyes off him. Until that point in my life I had never seen anyone so clean and handsome or so brave.”

She remembers a long line of American tanks, the soldiers throwing candy to the children. “The grown-ups were kneeling down, kissing the soldiers' boots for liberating us.”

After the war, her family lived in camps for “displaced persons” until 1948. That's when they came to America, on a boat “packed with immigrants.”

Arriving in New York harbor, they had to wait a day to disembark. “There were so many boats ahead of us,” Thibault said.

Why couldn't they go home to Poland? “Poland was under communism,” she replied. “Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to give it to Russia.”

Four years after they came to America, immigration officials summoned then 18-year-old Cecylia. Why did she keep sending in her papers every year? they asked.

“Aren't I supposed to?” she replied.

“No. You're an American.”

Thibault's mother had been born here after her parents emigrated to this country. The family had returned to Poland when her mother was 12, but having an American-born mother meant that Cecylia was also a U.S. citizen.

After high school, she went to work as a bookkeeper for a Polish-language newspaper in Manhattan and later for MGM. At a fancy ball, she met Robert F. Thibault, an entertainer who was performing at the event.

Robert Thibault remembers singing every song to the lovely young woman he saw dancing with different partners. “She was the most beautiful thing on the floor,” he recalled.

They married in 1961. Their daughter was born three years later, their son two years after that.

In 1967, the family moved to Manchester, where the elder Robert Thibault was born and raised. Cecylia went to work for the city auditor's office a few years later, and remained for 20 years.

They retired to Florida, but return often to visit their daughter and her family, who live in Londonderry.

These days, she watches the rise of neo-Nazi groups and worries that the unthinkable could happen again. “I'm scared for our children and our grandchildren,” she said. “I don't want history to repeat itself.”

So she tells her story.

When she speaks to school groups, Thibault tells the students, “Much is given to you, and much is required of you.

“Be the best you can be, to keep America great and free ... You are our future. You are our treasure. So be great in everything you do. God bless you, and God bless America and every American soldier everywhere.”

swickham@unionleader.com