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Va. Beach woman subject of Holocaust exhibit
By Steve Neill
Of The Catholic Virginian
Few among the living in Virginia ever have a full story of their life on exhibit at a prominent museum, but this is not the case for Mary Barraco who lives in Virginia Beach.
The story of Mary Sigillo Barraco and her confinement in Nazi prison camps during World War II is on display through photographs, letters and two videos in which she shares that story at the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond. It will be on display through Friday, April 21.
Mrs. Barraco, 82, a lifelong Catholic who attends Mass at the chapel at the Little Creek Naval Base, is an American who was born in Lawrence, Mass., Sept. 1, 1924. Her father, Fortunato, was the American-born son of Italian immigrants. Her mother, Leona, was born in Belgium and had come to the United States.
 Hard times hit the family during the Depression and her father’s business failed. Mr. Sigillo left Lawrence and went to Canada to find work. Mary, then seven, moved with her mother to Belgium where they first lived with her maternal grandparents.
World War II started and everything changed. Mary, who was engaged to be married, joined the underground to support the Allies in Holland, Belgium and France. She smuggled passports, ammunition and clothing to help those in Nazi prison camps. In one of the two videos which are part of the exhibit at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, Mrs. Barraco recounts the story of how the Gestapo entered her home by barging in the door at 5 a.m. as Nazi soldiers were looking for Jews who were hiding. But this is not how she got to be imprisoned.
One of the soldiers started reading letters her fiancé, Arthur, had written to her. “I said to him ‘What are you doing looking at love letters?’” Mrs. Barraco remembers saying. “He slapped me across the face and hit me so hard that I landed across the room,” she said. The soldier departed, satisfied that the household was not hiding any Jews.
 Mrs. Barraco was later captured along with Arthur after they escaped from Belgium into France where they were turned in by a French traitor who was paid the equivalent of $12. She was kept in a Nazi prison from July 1942 until she was released Christmas day, 1943. Both she and her fiancé were tortured and beaten. She was sterilized and was never able to bear children. Arthur was executed Oct. 21, 1943. His body was uncovered in a farmer’s field by American soldiers in 1945. Recalling her worst moment in the prison cell, Mrs. Barraco said, “I was so scared and scratched ‘adieu, Maman’ (French for ‘goodbye Mother’) on the wall.”
After the war Mary returned to Lawrence in Massachusetts. She met her future husband, Joseph Barraco, at a birthday party where they discovered a mutual interest in music and dancing. The two were married April 24, 1949 by a priest, Father Joseph Deberghe, whom Mary had met in the prison at Ghent.
The Barracos moved to Virginia in 1950. They adopted a six-week old infant in 1959 and named their daughter Rita. Mr. Barraco died in 1978. Since that time Mrs. Barraco has spoken to many groups about her ordeal in prison, but at age 82, she has been forced to slow down and now accepts few speaking engagements. “I try to tell the truth without bitterness,” she says. “I learned through the power of prayer and I was able to forgive. My thoughts are for all those who gave their lives, they sacrificed everything.”
Mrs. Barraco wants to “carry the torch” to defend freedom she feels was passed on to her by her murdered fiancé Arthur. Her four most important words: “Let us never forget.”
(The exhibit on the story of Mary Sigillo Barraco is at the Virginia Holocaust Museum, S. 20th and Cary Streets in the Shockoe Bottom area of Richmond through April 21. The museum is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.) 
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