Polish Righteous Among the Nations - Part 4

 From Wikipedia with citations from Yad Vashem

PART 1: ADAMOWICZ - GUT

PART 2: IWANSKI - KREPEC

PART 3: LATOSZYNSKI - RUDNICKI

PART 4: SENDLER - ZAGORSKI - See Below

 Irena Sendler, helped rescue at least 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. 

“Irena Stanisława Sendler (née Krzyżanowska), also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, nom de guerre Jolanta (15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008),[1] was a Polish humanitarian, social worker, and nurse who served in the Polish Underground Resistance during World War II in German-occupied Warsaw. From October 1943 she was head of the children's section of Żegota,[2] the Polish Council to Aid Jews (Polish: Rada Pomocy Żydom).[3]

“In the 1930s, Sendler conducted her social work as one of the activists connected to the Free Polish University. From 1935 to October 1943, she worked for the Department of Social Welfare and Public Health of the City of Warsaw. During the war she pursued conspiratorial activities, such as rescuing Jews, primarily as part of the network of workers and volunteers from that department, mostly women. Sendler participated, with dozens of others, in smuggling Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then providing them with false identity documents and shelter with willing Polish families or in orphanages and other care facilities, including Catholic nun convents, saving those children from the Holocaust.[4][5]

“The German occupiers suspected Sendler's involvement in the Polish Underground and in October 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo, but she managed to hide the list of the names and locations of the rescued Jewish children, preventing this information from falling into the hands of the Gestapo. Withstanding torture and imprisonment, Sendler never revealed anything about her work or the location of the saved children. She was sentenced to death but narrowly escaped on the day of her scheduled execution, after Żegota bribed German officials to obtain her release.

“In post-war communist Poland, Sendler continued her social activism but also pursued a government career. In 1965, she was recognised by the State of Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.[6] Among the many decorations Sendler received were the Gold Cross of Merit granted her in 1946 for the saving of Jews and the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, awarded late in Sendler's life for her wartime humanitarian efforts. [a]

“Sendler was born on 15 February 1910 in Warsaw,[7] to Stanisław Henryk Krzyżanowski, a physician, and his wife, Janina Karolina (née Grzybowska).[8] She was baptized Irena Stanisława on 2 February 1917 in Otwock.[9] She grew up in Otwock, a town about 15 miles (24 km) southeast of Warsaw, where there was a Jewish community.[10] Her father, a humanitarian who treated the very poor, including Jews, free of charge,[11] died in February 1917 from typhus contracted from his patients.[12] After his death, the Jewish community offered financial help for the widow and her daughter, though Janina Krzyżanowska declined their assistance.[8][13]

“From 1927, Sendler studied law for two years and then Polish literature at the University of Warsaw, interrupting her studies for several years from 1932 to 1937.[8][14] She opposed the ghetto benches system practiced in the 1930s at many Polish institutions of higher learning (from 1937 at the University of Warsaw) and defaced the "non-Jewish" identification on her grade card.[15][16][17] She reported having suffered from academic disciplinary measures because of her activities and reputation as a communist and philo-Semite. By the outbreak of World War II she submitted her magister degree thesis, but had not taken the final exams.[17] Sendler joined the Union of Polish Democratic Youth (Związek Polskiej Młodzieży Demokratycznej) in 1928; during the war she became a member of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS).[17][18][19] She was repeatedly refused employment in the Warsaw school system because of negative recommendations issued by the university, which ascribed radically leftist views to her.[14]

“Sendler became associated with social and educational units of the Free Polish University (Wolna Wszechnica Polska), where she met and was influenced by activists from the illegal Communist Party of Poland. At Wszechnica Sendler belonged to a group of social workers led by Professor Helena Radlińska; a dozen or more women from that circle would later engage in rescuing Jews. From her social work on-site interviews Sendler recalled many cases of extreme poverty that she encountered among the Jewish population of Warsaw.[16][20]

“Sendler was employed in a legal counseling and social help clinic, the Section for Mother and Child Assistance at the Citizen Committee for Helping the Unemployed. She published two pieces in 1934, both concerned with the situation of children born out of wedlock and their mothers. She worked mostly in the field, crisscrossing Warsaw's impoverished neighborhoods, and her clients were helpless, socially disadvantaged women.[21] In 1935, the government abolished the section. Many of its members became employees of the City of Warsaw, including Sendler in the Department of Social Welfare and Public Health.[22]

Sendler married Mieczysław Sendler in 1931.[8] He was mobilized for war, captured as a soldier in September 1939 and remained in a German prisoner of war camp until 1945; they divorced in 1947.[23][24] She then married Stefan Zgrzembski (born Adam Celnikier), a Jewish friend and wartime companion, by whom she had three children, Janina, Andrzej (who died in infancy), and Adam (who died of heart failure in 1999). In 1957 Zgrzembski left the family; he died in 1961 and Irena remarried her first husband, Mieczysław Sendler.[25] Ten years later they divorced again.[26]

During World War II

“Soon after the German invasion, on 1 November 1939, the German occupation authorities ordered Jews removed from the staff of the municipal Social Welfare Department where Sendler worked and barred the department from providing any assistance to Warsaw's Jewish citizens. Sendler with her colleagues and activists from the department's PPS cell became involved in helping the wounded and sick Polish soldiers. On Sendler's initiative the cell began generating false medical documents, needed by the soldiers and poor families to obtain aid. Her PPS comrades unaware, Sendler extended such assistance also to her Jewish charges, who were now officially served only by the Jewish community institutions.[18] With Jadwiga Piotrowska, Jadwiga Sałek-Deneko and Irena Schultz, Sendler also created other false references and pursued ingenious schemes in order to help Jewish families and children excluded from their department's social welfare protection.[8][18]

“Around four hundred thousand Jews were crowded into a small portion of the city designated as the Warsaw Ghetto and the Nazis sealed the area in November 1940.[27] As employees of the Social Welfare Department,[28] Sendler and Schultz gained access to special permits for entering the ghetto to check for signs of typhus, a disease the Germans feared would spread beyond the ghetto.[29][30][27] Under the pretext of conducting sanitary inspections, they brought medications and cleanliness items and sneaked clothing, food, and other necessities into the ghetto. For Sendler, one initial motivation for the expanding ghetto aid operation were her friends, acquaintances and former colleagues who ended up on the Jewish side of the wall, beginning with Adam Celnikier (he managed to leave the ghetto at the time of its liquidation).[27] Sendler and other social workers would eventually help the Jews who escaped or arrange for smuggling out babies and small children from the ghetto using various means available.[31] Transferring Jews out of the ghetto and facilitating their survival elsewhere became an urgent priority in the summer of 1942, at the time of the Great Action.[32]

“This work was done at huge risk, as—since October 1941—giving any kind of assistance to Jews in German-occupied Poland was punishable by death, not just for the person who was providing the help but also for their entire family or household.[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40]

“Sendler joined the Polish Socialists, a left-wing branch of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS). The Polish Socialists evolved into the Polish Socialist Workers' Party (RPPS), which cooperated with the communist Polish Workers' Party (PPR). Sendler was known there by her conspiratorial pseudonym Klara and among her duties were searching for places to stay, issuing fake documents and being a liaison, guiding activists to clandestine meetings. In the RPPS there were Poles she knew, involved in saving Jews, as well as Jews that she had helped. Sendler participated in the secret life of the ghetto. She described a commemoration event there, on the anniversary of the October Revolution but in the spirit of the Polish leftist tradition; it included artistic performances by children.[19] While in the ghetto, she wore a Star of David as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish people.[30]

“The Jewish ghetto was a functioning community and to many Jews seemed the safest available place for themselves and their children. In addition, survival on the outside was plausible only for people with access to financial resources. This calculation lost its validity in July 1942, when the Germans proceeded with the liquidation of the ghetto in Warsaw, to be followed by the extermination of its residents. Sendler and her associates—as related by Jonas Turkow—could take a small number of children, and a certain number could be accepted and supported by Christian institutions, but a larger-scale action was prevented by the lack of funds. Initial funds for transfer and maintenance of ghetto children were provided by members of the Jewish community, still in existence, in cooperation with women from the Welfare Department. Sendler and others, in accordance with their mission, wanted to help the neediest children (such as orphans) first. Turkow, who contacted Wanda Wyrobek and Sendler to take out of the ghetto and arrange care for his daughter Margarita, wanted to prioritize children of the most "deserving" (accomplished) people.[41]

“During the Great Action, Sendler kept entering or trying to enter the ghetto. She made desperate attempts to save her friends, but among her former Welfare Department associates unable or unwilling to leave the ghetto were Ewa Rechtman and Ala Gołąb-Grynberg. According to Jadwiga Piotrowska, who saved numerous Jewish children,[42] during the Great Action people from the Welfare Department operated individually (had no organization or leader). Other accounts suggest that women from that group concentrated on making arrangements for Jews who had already left the ghetto, and that Sendler in particular took care of adults and adolescents.[41]

“Żegota (the Council to Aid Jews) was an underground organization that originated on 27 September 1942 as the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews, led by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a resistance fighter and writer.[16][43][44] By that time, most Polish Jews were no longer alive. Żegota, established on 4 December 1942, was a new form of the committee, expanded by the participation of Jewish parties and chaired by Julian Grobelny.[44] It was financed by the founder of the Provisional Committee, the Government Delegation for Poland, a Polish Underground State institution representing the Polish government-in-exile.[44] Working for Żegota from January 1943, Sendler functioned as a coordinator of the Welfare Department network. They distributed money grants that became available from Żegota. Regular payments, however insufficient for the needs, enhanced their ability to assist the hiding Jews.[45] In 1963, Sendler specifically listed 29 people she worked with within the Żegota operation, adding that 15 more perished during the war.[46] In regard to the action of saving Jewish children, according to a 1975 opinion written by Sendler's former Welfare Department co-workers, she was the most active and organizationally gifted of participants.[41]

“During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, a network of emergency shelters was created by Sendler's group: private residencies where Jews could be temporarily housed, while Żegota worked on producing documents and finding longer-term locations for them. Many Jewish children went through the homes of Izabella Kuczkowska, Zofia Wędrychowska, and other social workers.[47] Helena Rybak and Jadwiga Koszutska were activists from the communist underground.[48]

“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory.”
— Irena Sendler

“In August 1943, Żegota set up its children's section, directed by Aleksandra Dargiel, a manager in the Central Welfare Council (RGO). Dargiel, overwhelmed by her RGO duties, resigned in September and proposed Sendler to be her replacement. Sendler, then known by her nom de guerre Jolanta, took over the section from October 1943.[49]

“Permanently, Jewish children were placed by Sendler's network with Polish families (25%), in Warsaw orphanage of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary led by Mother Provincial Matylda Getter, Roman Catholic convents such as the Sister Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Turkowice (sisters Aniela Polechajłło and Antonina Manaszczuk) or the Felician Sisters, in Boduen Home charity facilities for children, and other orphanages (75%).[50][51] A nun convent offered the best opportunity for a Jewish child to survive and be taken care of. To accomplish the transfers and placement of children, Sendler worked closely with other volunteers.[43][50] The children were often given Christian names and taught Christian prayers in case they were tested.[52] Sendler wanted to preserve the children's Jewish identities, so she kept careful documentation listing their Christian names, given names, and current locations.[52][b]

“According to American historian Debórah Dwork, Sendler was the inspiration and the prime mover for the whole network that saved Jewish children.[53] She and her co-workers buried lists of the hidden children in jars in order to keep track of their original and new identities. The aim was to return the children to their original families, if still alive after the war.[15]

“On 18 October 1943, Sendler was arrested by the Gestapo.[16][54] As they ransacked her house, Sendler tossed the lists of children to her friend Janina Grabowska, who hid the list in her loose clothing.[52][54] Should the Gestapo access this information, all children would be compromised, but Grabowska was never searched. The Gestapo took Sendler to their headquarters and beat her brutally.[54] Despite this, she refused to betray any of her comrades or the children they rescued. She was placed in the Pawiak prison, where she was subjected to further interrogations and beatings,[54] and from there on 13 November taken to another location, to be executed by firing squad.[54] According to biographer Anna Mieszkowska and Sendler, these events took place on 20 January.[55] Her life was saved, however, because the German guards escorting her were bribed, and she was released on the way to the execution.[16][30][54] Sendler was freed due to the efforts of Maria Palester, a fellow Welfare Department activist, who obtained the necessary funds from Żegota chief Julian Grobelny; she used her contacts and a teenage daughter to transfer the bribe money.[54] On 30 November, Warsaw's mayor Julian Kulski asked the German authorities for permission to re-employ Sendler in the Welfare Department with back-pay for the period of her imprisonment. Permission was granted on 14 April 1944, but Sendler found it prudent to remain in hiding, as Klara Dąbrowska, a nurse.[56] Already in mid-December 1943, she resumed her duties as manager of the children's section of Żegota.[57]

“During the Warsaw Uprising, Sendler worked as a nurse in a field hospital, where a number of Jews were hidden among other patients. She was wounded by a German deserter she encountered while searching for food.[8][58] She continued to work as a nurse until the Germans left Warsaw, retreating before the advancing Soviet troops.[8]

After World War II

“Sendler's hospital, now at Okęcie, previously supported by Żegota, ran out of resources. She hitchhiked in military trucks to Lublin, to obtain funding from the communist government established there, and then helped Maria Palester to reorganize the hospital as the Warsaw's Children Home. Sendler also resumed other social work activities and quickly advanced within the new structures, in December 1945 becoming head of the Department of Social Welfare in Warsaw's municipal government. She ran her department according to concepts, radical at the time, that she had learned from Helena Radlińska at the Free University.[59]

“Sendler and her co-workers gathered all of the records with the names and locations of the hidden Jewish children and gave them to their Żegota colleague Adolf Berman and his staff at the Central Committee of Polish Jews.[60][61] Almost all of the children's parents had been killed at the Treblinka death camp or had gone missing.[30][8] Berman and Sendler both felt that the Jewish children should be reunited with "their nation", but argued vehemently about specific aims and methods; most children were taken out of Poland.[61]

“In the Polish People's Republic, Sendler received at least six decorations, including the Gold Cross of Merit (Złoty Krzyż Zasługi) for the wartime saving of Jews in 1946, another Gold Cross of Merit in 1956, and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1963.[61] Materials dealing with her activities during the war were published,[26][66] but Sendler became a well-known public personality only after being "rediscovered" by the group from an American high school in 2000 (at the age of ninety).[68] She was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations and received her award at the embassy of Israel in Warsaw in 1965, together with Irena Schultz.[30][69] In 1983 she traveled to Israel, invited by Yad Vashem Institute for the tree-planting ceremony.[8][70][71][69][b]

“Sendler never told her children of the Jewish origin of their father; Janina Zgrzembska found out as an adult. It wouldn't make any difference, she said: the way they were brought up, race or origin didn't matter.[76]

“In 1980, Sendler joined the Solidarity movement.[8] She lived in Warsaw for the remainder of her life. She died on 12 May 2008, aged 98, and is buried in Warsaw's Powązki Cemetery.[31][77][78]

“In 1965, Sendler was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations. [a] In 1983 she was present when a tree was planted in her honor at the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations.[79]

“In 1991, Sendler was made an honorary citizen of Israel.[80] On 12 June 1996, she was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.[81][82] She received a higher version of this award, the Commander's Cross with Star, on 7 November 2001.[83]

“Sendler's achievements were largely unknown in North America until 1999, when students at a high school in Uniontown, Kansas, led by their teacher Norman Conard, produced a play based on their research into her life story, which they called Life in a Jar. The play was a surprising success, staged over 200 times in the United States and abroad, and it significantly contributed to publicizing Sendler's story.[84] In March 2002, Temple B'nai Jehudah of Kansas City presented Sendler, Conard, and the students who produced the play with its annual award "for contributions made to saving the world" (Tikkun olam award). The play was adapted for television as The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (2009), directed by John Kent Harrison, in which Sendler was portrayed by actress Anna Paquin.[85][86]

“In 2003, Pope John Paul II sent Sendler a personal letter praising her wartime efforts.[87][88] On 10 November 2003, she received the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration,[89] and the Polish-American award, the Jan Karski Award "For Courage and Heart", given by the American Center of Polish Culture in Washington, D.C. [90]

“In 2006, Polish NGOs Centrum Edukacji Obywatelskiej and Stowarzyszenie Dzieci Holocaustu, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland, and the Life in a Jar Foundation established the Irena Sendler's Award "For Repairing the World" (pl:Nagroda imienia Ireny Sendlerowej "Za naprawianie świata"), awarded to Polish and American teachers.[91][92] The Life in a Jar Foundation is a foundation dedicated to promoting the attitude and message of Irena Sendler.[92]

“On 14 March 2007, Sendler was honoured by the Senate of Poland,[93] and a year later, on 30 July, by the United States Congress. On 11 April 2007, she received the Order of the Smile; at that time, she was the oldest recipient of the award.[94][95] In 2007 she became an honorary citizen of the cities of Warsaw and Tarczyn.[96]

“In April 2009 Sendler was posthumously granted the Humanitarian of the Year award from The Sister Rose Thering Endowment,[97] and in May 2009, Sendler was posthumously granted the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award.[98]

“Around this time American filmmaker Mary Skinner filmed a documentary, Irena Sendler, In the Name of Their Mothers (Polish: Dzieci Ireny Sendlerowej), featuring the last interviews Sendler gave before her death. The film made its national U.S. broadcast premiere through KQED Presents on PBS in May 2011 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day [99] and went on to receive several awards, including the 2012 Gracie Award for outstanding public television documentaries.[100]

“In 2010 a memorial plaque commemorating Sendler was added to the wall of 2 Pawińskiego Street in Warsaw – a building in which she worked from 1932 to 1935. In 2015 she was honoured with another memorial plaque at 6 Ludwiki Street, where she lived from the 1930s to 1943.[101] Several schools in Poland have also been named after her.[102]

“In 2013 the walkway in front of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw was named after Sendler.[103]

In 2016, a permanent exhibit was established to honor Sendler's life at the Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes museum, in Fort Scott, KS.[104]

“Gal Gadot has been cast to play Sendler in a historic thriller written by Justine Juel Gillmer and produced by Pilot Wave.[105]

“On February 15, 2020, Google celebrated her 110th birthday with a Google Doodle.[106]

“In 2010, Polish historian Anna Mieszkowska wrote a biography Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust.[107] In 2011, Jack Mayer tells the story of the four Kansas school girls and their discovery of Irena Sendler in his novel Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project.[102]

“In 2016, Irena's Children, a book about Sendler written by Tilar J. Mazzeo, was released by Simon & Schuster. A version adapted to be read by children was created by Mary Cronk Farell.[108] Another children's picture book titled Jars of Hope: How One Woman Helped Save 2,500 Children During the Holocaust, is written by Jennifer Roy.

“Sendlerowa. W ukryciu ('Sendler: In Hiding'), a biography and book about the people and events related to Sendler's wartime activities, was written by Anna Bikont and published in 2017. The book received the 2018 Ryszard Kapuściński Award for Literary Reportage.

a. Sendler was one of the first Poles recognized as Righteous Among the Nations due to the efforts of Jonas Turkow, who stated for a Polish language periodical in Israel: "This noble woman ... worked for Żegota and saved hundreds of Jewish children, placing them in orphanages, convents, and other places".[109] The number of Jewish children saved through Sendler's efforts is not known. The Social Welfare Department of the Central Committee of Polish Jews stated in January 1947 that Sendler saved at least several dozen Jewish children.[110]

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79.   Zawadzka, Maria. "TREES OF IRENA SENDLER AND JAN KARSKI IN THE GARDEN OF THE RIGHTEOUS". Polish Righteous. POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Retrieved 5 February 2017.

80.   "Irena Sendler". Jewish Virtual Library. American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE). Retrieved 5 February 2017.

81.   P. 1996 nr 58 poz. 538, citation: "za pełną poświęcenia i ofiarności postawę w niesienui pomocy dzieciom żydowskim oraz za działalnośċ spoleczną i zawodową" (Polish)

82.   "Krzyz Komandorski Orderu Odrodzenia Polski..." (in Polish). Retrieved 27 April 2015.

83.   M.P. 2002 nr 3 poz. 55, citation: "w uznanui wybitnych zasług w nieseniu pomocy potrzebującym" (Polish)

84.   "About the Project – Life in a Jar". Retrieved 27 April 2015.

85.   The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler at CBS.com

86.   Richard Maurer (ram-30) (19 April 2009). "The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler (TV Movie 2009)". IMDb.

87.   "List Papieża do Ireny Sendler [Letter of the Pope to Irena Sendler]". wyborcza.pl (in Polish).

88.   Scott T. Allison; George R. Goethals (2011). Heroes: What They Do and Why We Need Them. Oxford University Press. p. 24.

89.   M.P. 2004 nr 13 poz. 212, citation: "za bohaterstwo i niezwykłą odwagę, za szczególne zasługi w ratowaniu życia ludzkiego" ("for heroism and extraordinary courage, for outstanding merits in saving human lives") (Polish)

90.   Warszawa, Grupa. "The Association of "Children of the Holocaust" in Poland". www.dzieciholocaustu.org.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 27 April 2015.

91.   "Opis konkursu".

92.   "Polscy Sprawiedliwi – Przywracanie Pamięci". www.sprawiedliwi.org.pl (in Polish).

93.   Wyszyński, Kuba. "Irena Sendler nie żyje". www.jewish.org.pl (in Polish).

94.   "IRENA SENDLEROWA Kawalerem Orderun Uśmiechu". OrderUsmiechu.pl (in Polish).

95.  "Nagroda im. Ireny Sendlerowej". NagrodaIrenySendlerowej.pl (in Polish).

96.   Tarczyn official website (2017), "Irena Sendler." Honorary citizen, lived in Tarczyn before the invasion.

97.   Smolen, Courtney. "Executive Director of NJ Commission on Holocaust Education to Bestow Honorary Award to CSE Professor, April 19". NJ.com. Retrieved 5 February 2017.

98.   "Irena Sendler awarded the Audrey Hepburn Humanitarian Award". www.audrey1.org.

99.   "PBS National Premiere of IRENA SENDLER In the Name of Their Mothers on May 1st, National Holocaust Remembrance Day". KQED's Pressroom.

100.                           "SF-Krakow Sister Cities Association – Irena Sendler Documentary Film Wins 2012 Gracie Award". www.sfkrakow.org.

101.                           "Odsłonięto tablicę upamiętniającą Irenę Sendlerową" (in Polish). Retrieved 24 June 2015.

102.                           "About the Project". Life in a Jar: The Irena Sendler Project. Retrieved 5 February 2017.

103.                           "Aleja Ireny Sendlerowej, Honorowej Obywatelki m.st. Warszawy". www.radawarszawy.um.warszawa.pl (in Polish).

104.                           "Lowell Milken Center for Unsung Heroes - Freedom's Frontier National Heritage Area".

105.                           "Gal Gadot Will Play This Real-Life Holocaust Hero Who Rescued Jewish Children". Kveller. 16 October 2019.

106.                           "Irena Sendlerowa's 110th Birthday". Google. 15 February 2020.

107.                           Mieszkowska, Anna. "Prawdziwa historia Ireny Sendlerowej". Retrieved 5 February 2017.

108.                           "Three Twice-told stories". Toronto Star, 12 November 2016, page E22.

109.                           Bikont, Sendlerowa, pp. 13–14

110.                           Bikont, Sendlerowa, p. 287

111.                           Bikont, Sendlerowa, pp. 403–407

112.                           Bikont, Sendlerowa, pp. 399–401

113.                           Bikont, Sendlerowa, pp. 327–329, 338–340

Bibliography

Anna Bikont, Sendlerowa. W ukryciu ('Sendler: In Hiding'), Wydawnictwo Czarne, Wołowiec 2017, 

Yitta Halberstam & Judith Leventhal, Small Miracles of the Holocaust, The Lyons Press; 1st edition (13 August 2008), 

Richard Lukas, Forgotten Survivors: Polish Christians Remember the Nazi Occupation 

Anna Mieszkowska, IRENA SENDLER Mother of the Holocaust Children Publisher: Praeger; Tra edition (18 November 2010) Language: English 

Mordecai Paldiel, The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, Ktav Publishing House (January 1993), 

Irene Tomaszewski & Tecia Werblowski, Zegota: The Council to Aid Jews in Occupied Poland 1942–1945, Price-Patterson, 

Sendler, Irena

“When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker, employed by the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality. After the German occupation, the department continued to take care of the great number of poor and dispossessed people in the city. Irena Sendler took advantage of her job in order to help the Jews, however this became practically impossible once the ghetto was sealed off in November 1940. Close to 400,000 people had been driven into the small area that had been allocated to the ghetto, and their situation soon deteriorated. The poor hygienic conditions in the crowded ghetto, the lack of food and medical supplies resulted in epidemics and high death rates. Irena Sendler, at great personal danger, devised means to get into the ghetto and help the dying Jews. She managed to obtain a permit from the municipality that enabled her to enter the ghetto to inspect the sanitary conditions. Once inside the ghetto, she established contact with activists of the Jewish welfare organization and began to help them. She helped smuggle Jews out of the ghetto to the Aryan side and helped set up hiding places for them. When the Council for Aid of Jews (Zegota) was established, Sendler became one of its main activists. The Council was created in fall 1942, after 280,000 Jews were deported from Warsaw to Treblinka. When it began to function towards the end of the year, most of the Jews of Warsaw had been killed. But it played a crucial role in the rescue of a large number who had survived the massive deportations.

“The organization took care of thousands of Jews who were trying to survive in hiding, seeking hiding places, and paying for the upkeep and medical care. In September 1943, four months after the Warsaw ghetto was completely destroyed, Sendler was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children. Sendler, whose underground name was Jolanta, exploited her contacts with orphanages andinstitutes for abandoned children, to send Jewish children there. Many of the children were sent to the Rodzina Marii (Family of Mary) Orphanage in Warsaw, and to religious institutions run by nuns in nearby Chotomów, and in Turkowice, near Lublin. The exact number of children saved by Sendler and her partners is unknown. On October 20, 1943, Sendler was arrested. She managed to stash away incriminating evidence such as the coded addresses of children in care of Zegota and large sums of money to pay to those who helped Jews. She was sentenced to death and sent to the infamous Pawiak prison, but underground activists managed to bribe officials to release her. Her close encounter with death did not deter her from continuing her activity. After her release in February 1944, even though she knew that the authorities were keeping an eye on her, Sendler continued her underground activities. Because of the danger she had to go into hiding. The necessities of her clandestine life prevented her from attending her mother's funeral.

“On October 19, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Irena Sendler as Righteous Among the Nations. The tree planted in her honor stands at the entrance to the Avenue of the Righteous Among the Nations.”

Henryk Sławik, helped save over 5,000 Polish Jews in Budapest by giving them false 'arian' passports.

“Henryk Sławik (16 July 1894 – 23 August 1944) was a Polish politician in the interwar period, social worker, activist, and diplomat, who during World War II helped save over 30,000 Polish refugees, including 5,000 Polish Jews in Budapest, Hungary by giving them false Polish passports with Catholic designation.[1] He was executed with some of his fellow Polish activists on order of Reichsführer SS in concentration camp Gusen on August 23,1944.[2]

“Henryk Sławik was born July16,1894 in Timmendorf (now Szeroka, a part of Jastrzębie-Zdrój),[1] into an impoverished Polish Silesian family as one of its 5 children. He was sent by his mother to an academic secondary school. After graduation, Sławik left his hometown for Pszczyna where he was drafted to the army during World War I. Released from internment in 1918, he joined the Polish Socialist Party in Upper Silesia and went to Warsaw for additional training. He took active part in the Silesian Plebiscite as one of its organizers and began working as a journalist for Gazeta Robotnicza. A year later, he became its Editor-in-chief.[1]

“In 1922 Sławik was elected president of the Regional Chapter of the Worker's Youth Association "Siła" and took part in setting up Worker's Universities. In 1928 he married a Varsovian, Jadwiga Purzycka, and in 1929 was chosen as councillor for Katowice City Hall on PPS platform. He was an ardent opponent of Sanacja. Between 1934 and 1939 Sławik served as president of Polish Journalist Association of Silesia and Zagłębie (Syndykat Dziennikarzy Polskich Śląska i Zagłębia).[1]

“At the outbreak of the German invasion of Poland in 1939 Sławik joined the Polish mobilised police battalion attached to the Kraków Army. He fought with distinction during the retreat along the northern Carpathians. His battalion was attached to the 2nd Mountain Brigade, with which he defended mountain passes leading to Slovakia. On September 15 Sławik and his men were ordered to retreat towards the newly established border with Hungary. On September 17, after the Soviet Union joined the war against Poland, Sławik crossed the border and was interned as a prisoner of war camp. In Silesia, his name appeared on the Nazi German list of the "enemies of the state" (Sonderfahndungsbuch Polen).[1]

“Sławik was spotted in the POW camp near Miskolc by József Antall (Senior), a member of the Hungarian ministry of internal affairs responsible for the civilian refugees and the father of the future prime minister József Antall (Junior). Thanks to his fluent knowledge of German, Sławik was brought to Budapest and allowed to create the Citizen's Committee for Help for Polish Refugees (Komitet Obywatelski ds. Opieki nad Polskimi Uchodźcami). Together with József Antall he organised jobs for the POWs and displaced persons, schools and orphanages. He also clandestinely organised an organisation whose purpose was to help the exiled Poles leave the camps of internment and travel to France or the Middle East to join the Polish Army. His colleague was Ernest Niżałowski lieutenant and interpreter, who was a Polish-Hungarian citizen. Sławik also became a delegate of the Polish Government in Exile.

“After the Hungarian government issued racial decrees and separated Polish refugees of Jewish descent from their colleagues, Sławik started to issue false documents confirming their Polish roots and Roman Catholic faith. He also helped several hundred Polish Jews to reach Yugoslav Partisans. One of his initiatives was the creation of an orphanage for Jewish children (officially named School for Children of Polish Officers) in Vác. To help disguise the true nature of the orphanage, the children were visited by Catholic Church authorities, most notably by nuncio Angelo Rotta.

“After the Nazis took over Hungary in March 1944, Sławik went underground and ordered as many of the refugees as were under his command to leave Hungary. Because he had appointed a new commanding officer of the camp for Polish Jews, all of them were able to escape and leave Hungary. The Jewish children of the orphanage in Vác were also evacuated. Sławik was arrested by the Germans on March 19, 1944. Although brutally tortured, he did not inform on his Hungarian colleagues. He was sent to the concentration camp Gusen where he was hanged with some of his fellows on August 23, 1944. His wife survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp and after the war found their daughter hidden in Hungary by the Antall family. Sławik's place of burial remains unknown.

“It is estimated that Henryk Sławik helped as many as 30,000 Polish refugees in Hungary, approximately 5,000 of them Jews. After 1948, the communist authorities of both Poland and Hungary did commemorate his deeds and pointed out his importance for humanity. According to Maria Zawadzka of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Henryk Sławik was posthumously awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem Commemorative Authority already on January 26,1977, but achieved wide recognition only after Zvi Henryk Zimmerman, his wartime associate, and a distinguished Israeli politician, popularized his efforts in the 1990s. [3]

Notes

1.     Tomasz Kurpierz (IPN Katowice) with Michał Luty (2010). "Henryk Sławik (1894–1944) – Sprawiedliwy Socjalista". Sylwetki (in Polish). Institute of National Remembrance, Poland. Archived from the original (pdf) on 9 December 2011.

2.     Polish Embassy Vienna, Commemoration on August 23, 2014, at Mauthausen-Gusen

3.     Maria Zawadzka, "Righteous Among the Nations: Henryk Sławik and József Antall."  Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Warsaw, 7 October 2010. See also: "The Sławik family" (ibidem).

Bibliography

Henryk Zvi Zimmerman, Dr. Henryk Slawik - a Polish Raoul Wallenberg? Baran i Suszczynski, Kraków, 1997.

Grzegorz Łubczyk, Henryk Slawik - the Polish Wallenberg.) Trybuna 120 (3717), May 24, 2002

Grzegorz Łubczyk, "Polski Wallenberg. Rzecz o Henryku Sławiku", Oficyna Wydawnicza Rytm, Warszawa, 2003.

Nathan Davolt, Henryk Slawik - The Man Who Saved Thousands

"Unsung Hero". Warsaw Voice. 2004-01-28.

Article about Henryk Sławik. Onet.pl. 29 August 2008. (in Polish)

Waldemar Szymański, "Henryk Sławik – zapomniany bohater." Tydzień Żuławski, May 2004.

Premiera filmu "Henryk Sławik – Polski Wallenberg."

Michał Jaranowski, Grzegorz Łubczyk, "Polski Wallenberg. Rzecz o Henryku Sławiku." Stowarzyszenie Wspólnota Polska. SENAT RP.

Henryk Sławik – his activity to save Jews' lives during the Holocaust, at Yad Vashem website

Tomasz Kurpierz, Henryk Sławik 1894-1944. Biografia socjalisty, Warszawa-Katowice 2020

Świder, Franciszek
Wąskowska-Tomanek, Maria
Sławik, Henryk

“With the defeat of Poland in September 1939 and the subsequent Nazi occupation, thousands of Poles crossed into Hungary and settled there. The Polish refugees were followed by hundreds of Jewish families. More Jewish refugees arrived in 1942 and 1943, when the Polish ghettos were liquidated, and Hungary was still relatively safe.

“Henryk Sławik, a Polish activist, together with his Polish unit, was arrested when crossing the border and was interned as prisoner of the war in Hungary. In the camp he was introduced to József Antall, a member of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior, responsible for civilian refugees from Poland. Shortly after, Antall and Sławik created the Citizen's Committee for help for Polish Refugees.

“Sławik was deeply devoted to his work, and contrary to other officials, did not discriminate against the Jewish refugees. Together with Antall, Countess Erzsébet Szapáry and the head of the Polish Red Cross in Hungary, Jan Kołłątaj-Srzednicki, provided all Jewish refugees with forged Cristian documents, and located Jews in the refugee camps in Hungary.

“Among the Polish refugees were also many orphaned children. Itzhak Brettler (Władysław Bratkowski) and his wife, Mina, took care of many of them. In July 1943, they gathered a group of 76 children between the ages of three and nineteen from Budapest and led them out to the locality of Vac, some 30 kilometers away.

“There, Izaak organized a boarding school and with the help of the local Jews he got in touch with the delegate to Hungary of the Polish Government-in-Exile, Mr. Henryk Sławik, and asked him for help. The latter agreed unhesitatingly. In September 1943, the boarding school was proclaimed a Polish educational institution that was acting on behalf of the Polish Committee in Hungary. All students and personnel were given forged documents and Polish Army officer, Franciszek Świder, was appointed as manager of the school. Maria Tomanek, a teacher, also volunteered to work there. With the invasion of Nazi troops into Hungary on March 19, 1944, the institution appeared to be under threat. To give the school a more Polish and Christian image, all the students and teachers attended regular church services at the local church. In addition, a priest from Slovakia, Dr. Pavel Boharčík (*Boharčík, Pavel, Slovakia) came to the school to teach religion, but in reality, he was merely teaching the students Hungarian. “With great difficulties I succeeded in protecting all of the residents of the boarding school, both the youth and the Jewish personnel, from deportation to Auschwitz,” wrote Franciszek Świder in his testimony to Yad Vashem. He also noted that both the adults and the students were brought over to Budapest and dispersed into private apartments. Upon the end of the war, some of the Vac students returned to Poland, but the majority resettled in the United States and Israel.

“On January 26, 1977, Yad Vashem recognized Franciszek Świder, Maria Wąskowska-Tomanek and Henryk Sławik as Righteous Among the Nations.” File 1112

Jadwiga and Stanislaw Solecki hid a Jewish girl, Marlena Wagner, at their house for at least 24 months in Korczyna, Krosno, Lwow, Poland.  Stanislaw Solecki was executed on January 1, 1945.

Honored as Righteous Among the Nations August 25, 2015. File 13086.

Barbara and son Jerzy Szacki, harboured a pregnant Ghetto fugitive with a 5-year-old, helped with the newborn [68]

“Jerzy Ryszard Szacki (February 6,1929 – October 25, 2016) was a Polish sociologist and historian of ideas.[1][2] From 1973 he was a professor at the University of Warsaw, and in 1991 became a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is considered one of the most prominent representatives of the Warsaw School of the History of Ideas.

“Szacki was born in Warsaw in 1929. After World War II, he worked for the Polish Telephone Authority, first as a locksmith, then at a desk job. In 1948, he began to study sociology at the University of Warsaw.[2] Incidentally, his was the last class to graduate before sociology was declared a "bourgeois" discipline and the sociological departments of Polish universities were closed in 1952. Szacki himself was sent to work in the Wrocław-based train wagon factory Pafawag.

“In 1956, when the sociological department in Warsaw re-opened, Szacki returned there to obtain a Ph.D. degree. He wrote his thesis at the "Institute for the Education of Research Staff" (Instytut Kształcenia Kadr Naukowych), which was attached to the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party and was soon afterwards renamed to "Institute for Social Sciences" (Instytut Nauk Społecznych), whose director at the time was Bronisław Baczko.

In 2004, Szacki was honoured as a Righteous Among the Nations. As a teenager during World War II, Szacki had helped his mother Barbara Szacka (who was also honoured) hide and support a pregnant Jewish woman named Irena Hollender, who had escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto. In Nazi-occupied Poland, hiding Jews was an offence punishable by death.[7][8]

“Szacki was married to fellow sociologist Barbara Szacka. He died on 25 October 2016.[3]

Szacka, Barbara; Castle, Marjorie (Winter 2006). "Polish remembrance of World War II". International Journal of Sociology. 36 (4): 8–26.

Szacka, Anna-Barbara
Szacki, Jerzy

“In the spring of 1943, before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Irena Century Hollander was smuggled out to the "Aryan" side of the city together with her five-year-old daughter, Danuta (Dalia). Shortly thereafter, her husband also made it to the “Aryan” side, arriving through the sewers. They outfitted themselves with proper "Aryan" documents and found a hiding place. Irena soon discovered that she was pregnant, and she began to search for an alternative place to live in the vicinity of a doctor. Barbara Szacka, an acquaintance of hers, suggested that she come and live in her apartment together with Danuta, while her husband would stay somewhere else. Barbara was living alone with her son, Jerzy, who was then aged 15. She had been widowed when a German officer, in unclear circumstances, murdered her husband. Although Barbara was in dire financial straits, she agreed to rent a room in her apartment to Irena at the normal price, something, which was not usual in such cases, given the danger of providing a hiding place for Jews. This case was even more precarious being that it was expected for Irena to give birth in the apartment. When Irena was nearing the end of her pregnancy, Barbara brought a midwife to the apartment, and the birth took place in her home. There were complications and Irena required hospitalization to undergo a caesarian operation. Irena refused because she feared that while she was under the anesthetic, they might discover that she was Jewish.

“Using her contacts, Barbara found a Polish surgeon who agreed to operate on Irena in the apartment. For many months after the surgery, she continued to look after Irena and the new baby girl. After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, the two families were evacuated from the city together and went through a difficult period as displaced persons until after the liberation. Barbara lived to a good old age and her son, Jerzy, who had helped to rescue the Jewish family in his home, recounted that when his mother reminisced on those days she would recall only how much Irena helped her when they were evacuated from Warsaw. Not once did she mention what she had done to rescue Irena.

“On January 12, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Anna-Barbara Szacka and her son, Jerzy Szacki, as Righteous Among the Nations. File: 9888.”

Józef and Wiktoria Ulma from Markowa, harbored 8

Jews, killed together with them, and their own 6 children by German police [69]

“Servants of God Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, a Polish husband and wife, living in Markowa near Rzeszów in south-eastern Poland during the Nazi German occupation in World War II, were the Righteous who attempted to rescue Polish Jewish families by hiding them in their own home during the Holocaust. They and their children were summarily executed on 24 March 1944 for doing so.[1][2][3] Notably, despite the murder of Ulmas meant to strike fear into the hearts of villagers, their neighbours continued to hide Jewish fugitives until the end of World War II in Europe. At least 21 Polish Jews survived in Markowa during the occupation of Poland by Nazi Germany.[4]

“At the onset of World War II, Józef Ulma (born in 1900) was a prominent citizen in the village of Markowa: a librarian, a photographer, active in social life and the local Catholic Youth Association. He was an educated fruit grower and a bee-keeper. His wife Wiktoria (born Wiktoria Niemczak in 1912), was a homemaker. The Ulmas had six children: Stanisława, age 8, Barbara, age 7, Władysław, age 6, Franciszek, age 4, Antoni, age 3 and Maria, age 2. Another child was due to be born just days after the family's summary execution on 24 March 1944.[5]

Wiktoria Ulma

“Wiktoria Ulma, née Niemczak (December 10, 1912 – March 24, 1944) was from Markowa village near Łańcut. She was nine months pregnant, at the time of her death.[6]

“Wiktoria was born in Markowa as the seventh child of Jan Niemczak and his wife Franciszka. At the age of six, Wiktoria lost her mother.[7] She took courses at the folk high school in Gać.[8] In 1935, she married Józef Ulma, 12 years' her senior, with whom she had six children: Stanisława, age 8 at the time of her death, Barbara, age 7, Władysław, age 6, Franciszek, age 4, Antoni, age 3 and Maria, age 2 in 1944.[5] Wiktoria was an educated housewife, taking care of the home and their children.[7] Through hard work, persistence and determination, the Ulmas were able to purchase a bigger farm (5 hectares in size) in Wojsławice near Sokal (now Ukraine), and had already begun planning a relocation when the war began.[5] At the moment of her death, Wiktoria was about to give a birth to their seventh child.[7]

“In the summer and autumn of 1942, the Nazi police deported several Jewish families of Markowa to their deaths as part of the German Final solution to the Jewish question.[5] Only those who were hidden in Polish peasants' homes survived. Eight Jews found shelter with the Ulmas: six members of the Szall (Szali) family from Łańcut including father, mother and four sons, as well as the two daughters of Chaim Goldman, Golda (Gienia) and Layka (Lea) Didner.[9] Józef Ulma put all eight Jews in the attic. They learned to help him with supplementary jobs while in hiding, to ease the incurred expenses.[5]

“The Ulmas were denounced by Włodzimierz Leś, a member of the Blue Police, who had taken possession of the Szall (Szali) family's real estate in Łańcut in spring 1944 and wanted to get rid of its rightful owners.[5] In the early morning hours of 24 March 1944 a patrol of German police from Łańcut under Lieutenant Eilert Dieken came to the Ulmas' house which was on the outskirts of the village. The Germans surrounded the house and caught all eight Jews belonging to the Szall and Goldman families. They shot them in the back of the head according to eyewitness Edward Nawojski and others, who were ordered to watch the executions. Then the German gendarmes killed the pregnant Wiktoria and her husband, so that the villagers would see what punishment awaited them for hiding Jews. The six children began to scream at the sight of their parents' bodies. After consulting with his superior, 23-year-old Jan Kokott, a Czech Volksdeutscher from Sudetenland serving with the German police, shot three or four of the Polish children while the other Polish children were murdered by the remaining gendarmes.[9] Within several minutes 17 people were killed. It is likely that during the mass execution Wiktoria went into labour, because the witness to her exhumation testified that he saw a head of a newborn baby between her legs.[7]

“The names of the other Nazi executioners are also known from their frequent presence in the village (Eilert Dieken, Michael Dziewulski and Erich Wilde). The village Vogt (Polish: Wójt) Teofil Kielar was ordered to bury the victims with the help of other witnesses. He asked the German commander, whom he had known from prior inspections and food acquisitions, why the children too had been killed. Dieken answered in German, "So that you would not have any problems with them."[9] On 11 January 1945, in defiance of the Nazi prohibition, relatives of the Ulmas exhumed the bodies to bury them in the cemetery, and found out that Wiktoria's seventh child had almost been born in the grave pit of its parents.

“On September 13, 1995, Józef and Wiktoria Ulma were posthumously bestowed the titles of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.[10][11] On 24 March 2004 a stone memorial to honor memory of the Ulma family was erected in Markowa.[7] Their medals of honor were presented to Józef's surviving brother, Władysław Ulma. Their certificate informs that they tried to save Jews at the risk of their lives, but fails to mention that they died for them, as noted in the book Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny.[12]

“On the 60th anniversary of their execution, a stone memorial was erected in the village of Markowa to honor the memory of the Ulma family.[13] The inscription on the monument reads:

Saving the lives of others, they laid down their own lives. Hiding eight elder brothers in faith, they were killed with them. May their sacrifice be a call for respect and love to every human being! They were the sons and daughters of this land; they will remain in our hearts.[9]

“At the unveiling of the monument, the Archbishop of Przemyśl, Józef Michalik – the President of the Polish Bishops' Conference – celebrated a solemn Mass. [9]

“The local diocesan level of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland initiated the Ulmas' beatification process in 2003.[14] The Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone spoke in Rome of the heroic Polish family on 24 January 2007 during the inauguration of the Italian edition of Martin Gilbert's book I giusti. Gli eroi sconosciuti dell'Olocausto ("The Righteous. Unknown Heroes of the Holocaust").[9]

“Special commemorations were held in Markowa on 24 March 2007 – 63 years after the Ulma, Szall and Goldman families were massacred. Mass was celebrated, followed by the Way of the Cross with the intention of the Ulma family's beatification. Among the guests was the President of the Council of Kraków, who laid flowers at the monument to the dead. The students of the local high school presented their own interpretation of the Ulmas' family decision to hide Jews in a short performance entitled Eight Beatitudes. There was also an evening of poetry dedicated to the memory of the murdered. Older neighbors and relatives who knew them spoke about the life of the Ulmas. One historian from the Institute of National Remembrance presented archival documents; and the Catholic diocesan postulator explained the requirements of the beatification process.[9] On 24 May 2011, the completed documentation of their martyrdom was passed on to Rome for completion of the beatification process.[15]

“A new Polish "National Day of the Ulma Family" has first been suggested by the former Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński. Subsequently, the growing support for a more formal commemoration inspired the Sejmik of Podkarpackie Voivodeship to name 2014 the Year of the Ulma Family (Rok Rodziny Ulmów).[16] The new Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in Markowa was scheduled to be completed in 2015.[17]

“On 17 September 2003 the Pelplin Diocese's Bishop Jan Bernard Szlaga initiated beatification process of 122 Polish martyrs died during World War II, including Józef and Wiktoria Ulma with their six children among the others. On 20 February 2017 Congregation for the Causes of Saints allowed to take over management of the process of Ulma family by Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Przemyśl.[18]

“The fate of the Ulmas become a symbol of martyrization of Poles killed by the Germans for helping Jews. On 17 March 2016 The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II was opened in Markowa in presence of the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda.[19]

Notes

1.     Mateusz Szpytma, "The Righteous and their world. Markowa through the lens of Józef Ulma", Institute of National Remembrance, Poland.

2.     Due to occasional downtime of the IPN server, please see the machine translation of Mateusz Szpytma's article in Polish made available by Google Translator.

3.      (in Polish) Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Wystawa „Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów Świata”– 15 czerwca 2004 r., Rzeszów. "Polacy pomagali Żydom podczas wojny, choć groziła za to kara śmierci – o tym wie większość z nas." (Exhibition "Righteous among the Nations." Rzeszów, 15 June 2004. Subtitled: "The Poles were helping Jews during the war - most of us already know that."); accessed 8 November 2008.

4.     Polish Press Agency PAP. "Commemorations in Markowa, on the 71st anniversary of the murder of Ulma family" [W Markowej uczczono 71. rocznicę zamordowania Ulmów i ukrywanych przez nich Żydów]. Dzieje.pl (in Polish).

5.     Teresa Tyszkiewicz. "Rodzina Ulmów. Miłość silniejsza niż strach". Adonai.pl (in Polish). Bibliography: M. Szpytma: "Żydzi i ofiara rodziny Ulmów z Markowej podczas okupacji niemieckiej" [in:] W gminie Markowa, Vol. 2, Markowa 2004, p. 35; M. Szpytma, J. Szarek: Sprawiedliwi wśród narodów świata, Kraków 2007.

6.     Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of Poland (25 February 2018). "The Ulma Family: Symbol of Polish Heroism in the Face of Nazi German Brutalities". German Camps, Polish Heroes. Instytut Lukasiewicza. What Was the Truth? Project under the honorary patronage of the President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda. Project coordinators: Auschwitz Memorial and State Museum in Oświęcim, and Institute of National Remembrance, Warsaw.

7.     Mateusz Szpytma (2006-03-25). "Lay down their lives for their fellow man. Heroic family who perished for hiding Jews" [Oddali życie za bliźnich. Bohaterska rodzina Ulmów zginęła za ukrywanie Żydów]. Nasz Dziennik. 72 (2482). Archive.

8.     Mateusz Szpytma (2014-03-24). "Martyrdom of Ulma family. Polish people murdered for rescuing Jews" [Kaźń rodziny Ulmów. Polska rodzina zamordowana za ratowanie Żydów]. NowaHistoria.Interia.pl.

9.     Wlodzimierz Redzioch, interview with Mateusz Szpytma, historian from the Institute of National Remembrance (4 March 2016), "They gave up their lives." Tygodnik Niedziela weekly, 16/2007, Editor-in-chief: Fr Ireneusz Skubis Częstochowa, Poland. Internet Archive.

10.   Israel Gutman (red.): Księga Sprawiedliwych wśród Narodów Świata. Ratujący Żydów podczas Holocaustu: Polska. T. II. Kraków: Jad Waszem, 2009, s. 777.

11.  "Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma | Paying the Ultimate Price | Themes | A Tribute to the Righteous Among the Nations". www.YadVashem.org. Retrieved 2018-02-22.

12.   Jolanta Chodorska, Alicja Augustyniak, Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny, Wyd. Sióstr Loretanek (publishing), 2002, Warsaw, Poland.

13.   Joe Riesenbach, "The Story of Survival". Footnote by Richard Tyndorf

14.   Anna Domin (2015), Słudzy Boży - Józef i Wiktoria Ulmowie z Dziećmi. Nasi patronowie. Stowarzyszenie Szczęśliwy Dom. Internet Archive.

15.   Fight Hatred (27 May 2011), "Sainthood for Martyred Polish Jew-Defenders", Jabotinsky International Center; accessed 30 August 2016.

16.   Katarzyna Potocka. "2014 - Rok Rodziny Ulmów". Wrota Podkarpackie. Retrieved 17 February 2014.

17.   Polskie Radio (24 March 2014), Ulmowie poświęcili życie by ratować Żydów. 70. rocznica niemieckiej zbrodni (On the 70th Anniversary of the Ulma Martyrdom); PolskieRadio.pl; accessed 30 August 2016.

18.  "Proces beatyfikacyjny Rodziny Ulmów będzie prowadzony przez Archidiecezję Przemyską | Archidiecezja Przemyska". Archidiecezja Przemyska (in Polish). 2017-03-08. Retrieved 2018-02-22.

19.  "Uroczystość otwarcia Muzeum Polaków Ratujących Żydów im. Rodziny Ulmów w Markowej". Dzieje.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2018-02-22.

Sources

The Righteous and their world. Markowa through the lens of Józef Ulma, by Mateusz Szpytma, Institute of National Remembrance, Poland

Gisele Hildebrandt, Otto Adamski. "Markowa" Dorfimfersuchungen in dem alten deutsch-ukrainischen Grenzbereich von Landshuf. 1943. Kraków.

(in Polish) Interview with the President of the Committee for the Monument in Markowa

Józef and Wiktoria Ulma at the Israeli Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem

Józef & Wiktoria Ulma

“While indifference and hostility to the Jews’ fate was common, some Poles chose to help their former Jewish neighbors, even though hiding Jews was punishable by death. The murder of the Ulma family – an entire family that was killed together with the Jews they were hiding – has become a symbol of Polish sacrifice and martyrdom during the German occupation. It stands in stark contradiction to the conduct of the villagers of Jedwabne, who murdered their Jewish neighbors in July 1941, and who have become to represent Polish complicity in the murder of the Jews.

“Józef Ulma was a farmer and lived with his wife Wiktoria and their six young children in the small town of Markowa in the county of Łańcut, district of Rzeszów. Ulma cultivated his farm and engaged in photography. With his camera he documented his family and life in his rural town.

“The Ulmas, like other residents of Markowa, had witnessed the execution of the Jews of their small town in the summer of 1942. The Jews were taken out of their homes, shot, and buried in a former animal burial ground. Some managed to escape and went into hiding in the surrounding area. In November 1942 the local fire brigade was ordered to search for the escapees in the town and its vicinity, and to turn them in to the Germans. The number of Jewish victims in Markowa is unknown.

“In the summer of 1942, while the hunt for Jews was going on in the entire area, a Jewish family from Łańcut by the name of Szall came to Markowa to find shelter.

“When they asked Józef and Wiktoria Ulma to hide them, the couple agreed, and took them in along with two sisters – Gołda and Łajka Goldman with a small daughter. “These Jews stayed on the premises of the Ulmas and slept in the garret of the house... They never hid in particular, since all of them were busy helping to run the Ulmases’ farm,” reported Stanisław Niemczak, a neighbor of the Ulma family. Although the Ulma house was at the outskirts, the Jews’ presence on the farm was soon discovered. It is not certain who denounced them to the Germans, but a study conducted by Mateusz Szpytma for the Polish IPN (Institute for National Remembrance), states that it was probably a policeman from Łańcut by the name of Włodzimierz Leś. Leś knew the Szall family’s whereabouts, because he had helped them at an earlier stage in return for payment. Since then, he had been holding on to the Szall’s belongings. When they wanted to retrieve their property, Leś turned them in. In the night of 23-24 March 1944 German police came to Markowa from Łańcut. They found the Jews on the Ulma farm and shot them to death. Afterwards they murdered the entire Ulma family - Józef, Wiktoria, who was nine months pregnant, and their six small children - Stanisława, Barbara, Władysława, Franciszka, Maria, and Antoni. The eldest of the Ulma’s children had just begun to attend classes in primary school. Yehuda Erlich, was hiding in Sietesz, only a couple of miles from Markowa. He applied to Yad Vashem to have his rescuers, Jan and Maria Wiglusz, recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, and in his testimony also described the immense impact of the murder of the Ulma family: “These were hard time for them [Jan and Maria Wiglusz] and for us. Searches were conducted both by the Germans and the Polish peasants themselves, who wanted to find the hiding Jews. In spring 1944 a Jewish family was discovered hiding with Polish peasants. The Polish family – eight souls, including the pregnant wife – was killed with the hiding Jews. As a result, there was enormous panic among the Polish peasants who were hiding Jews. The morning after 24 corpses of Jews were discovered in the fields. They had been murdered by the peasants themselves, who had hidden them for twenty months.” Others continued to shelter the Jews, including the Wiglusz family and other families in Markowa and the surroundings. On September 13, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Józef Ulma and his wife, Wiktoria Ulma, as Righteous Among the Nations. File 6788.

Rudolf Weigl, made and supplied vaccines to two Jewish ghettos, employed Jews in hiding [70]

“Rudolf Stefan Jan Weigl (September 2, 1883 – August 11, 1957) was a Polish biologist, physician, and inventor, known for creating the first effective vaccine against epidemic typhus. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine each year between 1930 and 1934, and from 1936 to 1939.[1]

“Weigl worked during the Holocaust to save the lives of countless Jews by developing the vaccine for typhus and providing shelter to protect those suffering under the Nazis in occupied Poland.[2] For his contributions, he was named a Righteous Among the Nations in 2003.

“Weigl was born in Prerau, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Austrian parents.[3][4] When he was a child, his father died in a bicycle accident.[5] His mother, Elisabeth Kroesel, married a Polish secondary-school teacher, Józef Trojnar.[6] Weigl was raised in Jasło, Poland.[7] Although he was a native German speaker, when the family moved to Poland, he adopted the Polish language and culture.[8]

“Later, the family moved to Lviv (Lwów in Polish, Lemberg in German and Yiddish), where in 1907 Weigl graduated from the biology department at the Lwów University, at which he had been a pupil of Professors Benedykt Dybowski (1833–1930) and J. Nusbaum–Hilarowicz (1859–1917).[9] After graduation, Weigl became Nusbaum's assistant, and in 1913 he completed his habilitation which effectively gave him tenure.[10] He then received his doctorate degrees in zoology, comparative anatomy, and histology.[11]

“After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Weigl was drafted into the medical service of the Austro-Hungarian army and began research on typhus and its causes.[12] Weigl worked at a military hospital in Przemyśl, where he supervised the Laboratory for the Study of Spotted Typhus from 1918 to 1920.[13] In 1919, he became a member of a military sanitary council in the Polish army.[14] As he began researching and experimenting, he discovered and developed a vaccine.

“After the invasion of Poland by Germany in 1939, Weigl continued his research and work at an institution in Lwów.[15] There, he was able to increase the production of his typhus vaccine. He spent the next four years in Lwów focusing his research on developing a vaccine for spotted fever. He led and directed the Institute for Typhus and Virus Research based in Lwów. Weigl created a vaccine for spotted fever; the vaccine did not provide full immunity against the disease, but it substantially reduced the symptoms.[16]

“During the Nazi German occupation of Poland in World War II, Weigl's research attracted the attention of the Nazis.[17] When they occupied Lwów, they ordered him to set up a typhus vaccine production plant at his Institute. Weigl hired several Jewish friends and colleagues for the plant. Weigl employed and protected approximately 2,000 Polish intellectuals, Jews, and members of the Polish underground.[18] Many of these people he hired assisted him in his typhus research and experiments with lice. Many of his Jewish associates primarily helped grow the lice and in return, they received food, protection, and doses of the vaccine when it was fully developed.[19] His vaccines were smuggled into ghettos in Lwów and Warsaw, various concentration camps, and even certain Gestapo prisons. It was estimated that Weigl was able to save around 5,000 lives during the Nazis' reign.[20]

“Weigl died on 11 August 1957 in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane at age 73.[10] He was buried at the historic Rakowicki Cemetery in Kraków.[23]

“Weigl was continuously nominated for a Nobel Prize in the years 1930–1934 and 1936–1939.[1] Despite these nominations, he never received a Nobel Prize for his vaccine accomplishments or social work.[19]

“A half-century after his death, Weigl's research, work, and service were recognized by many. In 2003, he was honored as Righteous Among the Nations. This award was given by Israel and commemorated his work for saving countless Jewish lives during World War II.[24]

“On September 2, 2021, Google commemorated Weigl’s 138th birthday with a Google Doodle.[25][26]

1.     "Nomination archive Rudolf Weigl". The Nobel Institute. April 2020.

2.     "The Doctor Who Protected Jews from Disease and Destruction". International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. 2020-01-29.

3.     Towarzystwo Miłośników Wrocławia 1998, p. 176

4.     Krawczyński 2010, p. 28

5.     Towarzystwo Miłośników Wrocławia 1998, p. 176

6.     Krawczyński 2010, p. 28

7.     Krawczyński 2010, p. 28

8.     Wincewicz, Sulkowska & Sulkowski 2007, pp. 111–115

9.     Krawczyński 2010, p. 28

10.   Waclaw Szybalski, "The genius of Rudolf Stefan Weigl (1883–1957), a Lvovian microbe hunter and breeder" In memoriam. McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI 53705, USA

11.   Krawczyński 2010, p. 28

12.   Krawczyński 2010, p. 28

13.   Krawczyński 2010, p. 29

14.   Krawczyński 2010, p. 29

15.   Krawczyński 2010, p. 29

16.   Flamm 2014, pp. 152–163

17.   Krawczyński 2010, p. 29

18.   Krawczyński 2010, pp. 29–30

19.   "Story of Rescue - Weigl Rudolf Stefan". Polish Righteous. Retrieved 2021-03-22.

20.   "Rudolf Weigl's Institute". Lviv Interactive.

21.   "Maintenance of Human-fed Live Lice in the Laboratory and Production of Weigl's Exanthematous Typhus Vaccine". Lwow.home.pl.

22.   Barabasz, Wiesław (8–10 July 2015). "The life and scientific activity of Professor Rudolf Stefan Weigl" (PDF).

23.   Krawczuk 1998, p. 134

24.  "The Righteous among the Nations". The Righteous among the Nations.

25.   "Rudolf Weigl's 138th Birthday", Google, 2 September 2021.

26.    Musil, Steven (2021-09-01). "Google Doodle honors Rudolf Weigl, vaccine inventor who saved Jews from Nazis". CNET.

Bibliography

Allen, Arthur (2015). 'The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigl: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Flamm, Heinz (2 December 2014). "Das Fleckfieber und die Erfindung seiner Serodiagnose und Impfung bei der k. u. k. Armee im Ersten Weltkrieg". Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift (in German). 165 (7–8): 152–163.

Krawczuk, Aleksander (1998). Cmentarz Rakowicki w Krakowie (in Polish). Kraków: Agencja Omnipress.

Krawczyński, Wiesław (2010). Przez tundrę i tajgę po sowieckich łagrach (in Polish). Krzeszowice: Kubajak.

Towarzystwo Miłośników Wrocławia (1998). Kalendarz Wrocławski (in Polish). V. 39. Wrocław: Prasa.

Wincewicz, Andrzej; Sulkowska, Mariola; Sulkowski, Stanislaw (2007). "Rudolph Weigl (1883–1957) – a scientist in Poland in wartime Plus ratio quam vis". Journal of Medical Biography. 15 (2): 111–115.

Henryk Woliński, harbored 25 Jews in his apartment, helped 283 (AK BIP)

“Henryk Woliński (1901–1986) was a member of the Polish resistance movement in World War II, specifically the Armia Krajowa (AK), where he reached the rank of colonel. He was the head of the "Jewish Department" in AK's Bureau of Information and Propaganda. His codename was "Wacław". He was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations. He himself harbored in his apartment over 25 Jews for a period going from a few days to several weeks.

Woliński was a lawyer in the Warsaw administration before the Germans invasion of Poland in September 1939. He had a Jewish wife and many Jewish associates and friends, many of them from the Polish Bar Association, he was in contact with the Jewish intelligentsia involved in the administration of the ghetto and he quickly got involved with the support for the Jews organized by the Poles.[1]

“Polish underground got organized much quicker than the first Jewish underground organization, so at first the Polish underground authorities contacted Jews unofficially. Polish authorities had soon established contacts with Jewish communities in ghettos and beyond, with the help of the Bund through the Polish Socialist Party and with the Hechaluc, through the Polish Scout Association and Aleksander Kamiński. In time, both the Polish and Jewish undergrounds matured, and new organizations evolved.

“On February 1, 1942, Woliński became the head of the "Jewish Department" (or "Referat Żydowski") in Bureau of Information and Propaganda (Biuro lnformacji i Propagandy) at 'Komenda Główna' of the AK and provided information to the Polish government-in-exile about the Holocaust. Wolinski was the co-author of the report of the underground authorities to the Polish government-in-exile in London. He provided information about the mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka that lasted from July 22 till mid September 1942, when over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto were transported under the guise of "resettlement for work in the East". He received daily reports from railway men about the number of trains and of people in them, and he likely received the reports from Witold Pilecki, AK operative who became the only person to volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to organize camp's resistance and provide information on the atrocities. Through Woliński's network the Polish government in London was able to inform the Allied governments and the western mass media about the enormity of German crimes in Poland and particularly against its Jewish population, however much of the reports were judged as exaggeration in the West.

“Woliński served as the Polish underground’s liaison with the Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa (ŻOB, or Jewish Fighting Association). For Arie Wilner, the Jewish liaison of ZOB, and for Jewish Żegota leaders Woliński was their primary contact in the Armia Krajowa. He was also one of people who came out with the initiative of creating Żegota - Council for Aid to Jews. His department provided work permits and shelter allowing many Jews to escape imprisonment and death, he also procured weapons for the Jewish underground. The latter aid was small, insufficient for the enormous needs, but the AK had itself only a very limited number of arms and ammunition and in the Warsaw Uprising a year and a half after the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Polish insurgents were even less equipped than the ghetto fighters.

“Woliński is known to have been a strong voice in the AK command supporting any action supporting the Jews.[2] He headed a Żegota cell that saved almost 300 Jews and he himself harbored in his apartment over 25 Jews for a period going from a few days to several weeks.[3]

“After the war Woliński was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations.[2] He worked as a lawyer in the People's Republic of Poland, in Katowice, until he retired in 1976.[4] He died in 1986.

“In 2008 Woliński was posthumously awarded with the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.[5]  

Notes

1.     Dan Kurzman (22 August 1993). The Bravest Battle: The Twenty-eight Days Of The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Da Capo Press. p. 48.

2.     "Woliński Henryk". The Righteous Among The Nations Database. Yad Vashem.

3.     Martin Gilbert (February 2004). The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust. Henry Holt and Company. pp. 143–.

4.     "Adwokatura.pl: Woliński".

5.     "Postanowienie Prezydenta Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej z dnia 14 kwietnia 2008 r. o nadaniu orderów". prawo.sejm.gov.pl.

References

Henryk Wolinski, last accessed on 16 June 2006, quotes as its source: Yad Vashem; Simon Wiesenthal Center; Dor, Danny, Ed. Brave and Desperate. Israel: Ghetto Fighters' House Museum, 2003, p. 153.

Zegota: The Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland 1942-1945

Woliński, Henryk

“Henryk Woliński (alias “Wacław” and “Zakrzewski”), a lawyer by profession, was active in the resistance movement during the war. In 1942, he headed the newly established Department of Jewish Affairs, which was attached to the main command of the AK. Due to this position, Henryk was in contact with the underground organizations that were active in the Jewish ghettos. From these contacts he learned about the situation of the Jews in occupied Poland. He sent all the information that he collected to the Polish government-in-exile in London. One of his reports was about the deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka (July-September 1942). As part of his activities in the Department of Jewish Affairs, Henryk was in contact with representatives of the Jewish underground in the Warsaw ghetto, such as Arie Wilner (“Jurek”), Yitzhak Cukierman (“Antek”) and others. During the war, Henryk was also one of the initiators of the Council for Aid to Jews, the Zegota, in the summer of 1942. “Wacław’s attitude towards the ZOB’s armed struggle as well as towards helping Jews was very favorable. He renounced antisemitic positions in the AK command and helped us very much,” wrote Adolf Berman, an activist of the Warsaw ghetto Jewish underground. Before the outbreak of the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, Henryk helped with smuggling weapons into the ghetto, as well as Molotov-cocktail production. He constantly demanded an increase in the amount of help given to the Jewish resistance movement.

“In the years 1942-43, [Woliński] provided shelter in his apartment to a few people of Jewish origin, who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto. He did this despite the exceptional risk, taking into account the fact that he was engaged in underground activity, while his wife... was herself of Jewish origin,” wrote Zbigniew Byrski. He added that, “in the years 1942-43 I received various sums from him several times, which I gave to persons of Jewish origin who werehiding in Warsaw.”

“On November 14, 1974, Yad Vashem recognized Henryk Woliński as Righteous Among the Nations. File 511.”

Paweł Zenon Woś, together with his parents, Paweł and Anna, smuggled 12 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto.

“Paweł Zenon Woś (December 22, 1920 – December 2, 2013) was a member of the Polish Army and the underground Polish Home Army (AK) in German-Occupied Poland during World War II.[1] Woś was born in Warsaw, Poland in December 1920. In 1997 he, together with his parents, Paweł and Anna, were recognized as Righteous Among Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for his role in rescuing 12 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto.[2][3] Six of them perished during the Warsaw Uprising, while the rest survived to tell the story.[4]

“Woś was active in the American Polonia, fighting against anti-Polish stereotypes.[5] He later emigrated to the United States, where he died in December 2013 at the age of 92.[6]

Notes

1.     "Pawel Zenon Wos", United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

2.     Paweł Zenon Woś – his activity to save Jews' lives during the Holocaust, at Yad Vashem website

3.     "Wanda Lorenc – kobieta, która przeżyła czas zagłady", Polish Daily News, 20 March 2011

4.     "Ocaliły wiele żydowskich dzieci",

5.     "Protest przeciwko zniesławianiu",

6.      Paul Zenon Wos Obituary

Woś, Paweł
Woś, Anna
Woś, Paul-Zenon

“The friendship between the Melamed and Woś families from Warsaw began even before the war. When Benjamin and Yehudit Melamed, their sons, Meir and Abraham, and their little daughter, were interned in the local ghetto, Paweł and Anna Woś and their son, Paweł-Zenon, with enormous resourcefulness, supplied the Woś family with food, and saw to their needs. After the small uprising in the ghetto in January 1943, in which they lost their little daughter, the Melameds decided to escape from the ghetto. Although the Woś family found them a hiding place, they could not stay there any length of time because of informers. The Melameds therefore decided to join the Jews who had collected in the Hotel Polski, hoping to be exchanged for German prisoners-of-war in enemy countries. The exchange plan, however, never got off the ground, and the Melameds were taken to Bergen-Belsen where they survived. The Woś family also helped three other acquaintances – David and Perla Himelsztaub, and their son, Israel – who were still interned in the Warsaw ghetto. In one of the Aktionen in the Warsaw ghetto, the Himelsztaubs were transferred to the Poniatowa camp, in the Lublin district. Soon after, Perla and her son decided to escape and return to Warsaw, while the father, who looked Jewish, and spoke only a broken Polish, stayed behind. With the help of young Paweł-Zenon (later Paul Zenon), Perla and Israel Himelsztaub reached Warsaw, where they joined the Melameds in their hiding place.

“When the Melameds left their hiding place, the Himelsztaubs left with them and like them, reported to the Hotel Polski. They, too, were sent to Bergen-Belsen, and were liberated there. After the war, the Melameds and Himelsztaubs immigrated to Israel while the Woś family immigrated to the United States. On June 30, 1997, Yad Vashem recognized Anna and Paweł Woś, and their son, Paul-Zenon, as Righteous Among the Nations. File 7662.

Jan Żabiński and wife Antonina, sheltered hundreds of displaced Jews at his Warsaw Zoo [73][74]

“Jan Żabiński (pronounced [ˈjan ʐabiˈɲski]) (April 8, 1897 –  July 26, 1974) and his wife Antonina Żabińska (née Erdman) (1908–1971) were a Polish couple from Warsaw, recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic rescue of Jews during the Holocaust in Poland.[1] Jan Żabiński was a zoologist and zootechnician by profession, a scientist, and organizer and director of the renowned Warsaw Zoo before and during World War II.[2] He became director of the Zoo before the outbreak of war but during the occupation of Poland also held a prestigious function of the Superintendent of the city's public parks in 1939–1945.[3] A street in Warsaw is named after him.[4]

“Jan and his wife Antonina and their son Ryszard used their personal villa and the zoo itself to shelter hundreds of displaced Jews. Additionally, Jan fought during the Warsaw Uprising, was subsequently injured, and became a prisoner of war. After his liberation Żabiński became a member of the State Commission for the Preservation of Nature (Państwowa Rada Ochrony Przyrody). Jan Żabiński authored approximately 60 popular science books.[3] His wife Antonina authored several children’s books written from the perspective of animals.[5]

“Jan Żabiński was born in Warsaw, the son of Józef Żabiński and his wife Helena née Strzeszewska who taught him the love of animals.[6] Jan joined the nascent Polish Army in 1919 and took part in the Polish–Soviet War of 1920, for which he was awarded his first Cross of Valour.[6]

“In the reconstituted sovereign Poland of the interwar period, Żabiński became an agricultural engineer with the Doctoral Degree in Zoology.[6] He was employed at the Institute of Zoology and Physiology of Animals of the Warsaw University of Life Sciences (SGGW),[4] and met Antonina Erdman, his future wife there.[6] He was the co-founder of the Warsaw Zoo, and served as its director for a decade from 1929 until the German invasion of Poland in 1939.[4] He also taught geography at the private Kreczmar Secondary (pl). In 1937 Żabiński supervised the birth of "Tuzinka", the 12th elephant ever born in captivity.[6] After the liberation of Poland in 1945, he soon resumed his position of the Warsaw Zoo director and served there until March 1951.[6] For his Holocaust rescue, he was posthumously awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta with the Star, by President Lech Kaczyński in 2008. His wife Antonina was also awarded the Commander's Cross.[6]

“Following the German takeover of Warsaw in September 1939, Żabiński, a Zoo director, was appointed by the new Nazi administration as the superintendent of the public parks as well. An employee of the Warsaw municipality, he was allowed to enter the Warsaw Ghetto officially, when the ghetto was founded in 1940.[7] Jan and his wife Antonina began helping their many Jewish friends right away.[8] Availing himself of the opportunity to visit the Warsaw ghetto ostensibly to inspect the state of the flora within the ghetto walls, Żabiński maintained contact with his Jewish colleagues and friends from before the invasion, helped them escape and find shelter on the "Aryan" side of the city. Among the many Jews he saved were sculptor Magdalena Gross with her husband Maurycy Paweł Fraenkel, writer Rachela Auerbach, Regina and Samuel Kenigswein with children, Eugenia Sylkes, Marceli Lewi-Łebkowski with family, Marysia Aszerówna, the Keller family, Professor Ludwik Hirszfeld as well as Leonia and Irena Tenenbaum, wife and daughter of entomologist Szymon Tenenbaum [pl] (killed in the Ghetto), as well as numerous others; most of whom survived the Holocaust and nominated him for the Righteous Award years later.[6][9]

“During the German air assault on Warsaw in September 1939, many animal enclosures had been emptied and the zoo specimens taken elsewhere. The Żabińskis decided to utilize the clean pens, cages, and stalls as the hiding places for fleeing Jews.[8] Over the course of three years, hundreds of Jews found temporary shelter in these abandoned cages on the eastern bank of the Vistula River until finding refuge elsewhere. In addition, close to a dozen Jews were sheltered in Żabiński's two-story private home on the zoo's grounds. In this dangerous undertaking he was helped by his wife, Antonina, a recognized author, and their young son, Ryszard, who nourished and looked after the needs of the many distraught Jews in their care. At first, Żabiński paid from his own funds to subsidize the maintenance costs; then money was received through Żegota: Council to Aid Jews.[8]

“An active member of the Polish underground resistance movement Armia Krajowa (the Home Army) in the rank of lieutenant, Żabiński participated in the Warsaw Polish Uprising in August and September 1944. Upon its suppression, he was taken as a prisoner to camps in Germany. His wife continued their work, looking after the needs of some of the Jews left behind in the ruins of the city.[7]

“For this Jan and his wife received the Righteous Among the Nations award in 1965. On October 30, 1968, a tree planting ceremony was held at Yad Vashem honoring them.[10][11]

“In 2007, an American poet and writer Diane Ackerman published The Zookeeper's Wife, a book about the Żabiński family's wartime activities that draws upon Antonina Żabińska's diary. The Polish film director Maciej Dejczer announced in 2008 that he had plans for a film about Żabiński's wartime activities.[12]

“A war drama about the Żabiński couple based on the book by Ackerman, The Zookeeper's Wife, was filmed in 2015 and released on March 31, 2017, with American actress Jessica Chastain portraying Antonina and Belgian actor Johan Heldenbergh cast as Jan. [13]

1.     Gasiorowska-Szmydtowa, Zofia (1973). Rocznik literacki 1971. Warszawa: wyd. PIW. pp. 652–653.

2.     "Hiding in Zoo Cages: Jan & Antonina Zabinski, Poland".

3.     "Żabiński Jan". Internetowa encyklopedia PWN. 2018.

4.     Ulice Twojego Miasta (2015). "Ulica Żabińskiego Jana, Ursynów, Osiedle Natolin". The Streets of Your Hometown: Warsaw.

5.     Hoffman, Barbara. "How a zookeeper's hero wife saved hundreds of Jews from the Nazis". New York Post. Retrieved 30 July 2017.

6.     Polish Press Agency, PAP (March 2017). "Jan Żabiński, a man remembered by Hollywood" [Jan Żabiński - człowiek, o którego upomniało się Hollywood]. Dzieje.pl.

7.     Yad Vashem (2010). "Jan and Antonina Zabinski, Poland". The Righteous Among the Nations.

8.     Sprawiedliwi.org (2018). "Żabiński Family. History of Rescue" [Rodzina Żabińskich, Historia pomocy]. Warsaw: POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

9.     Polscy Sprawiedliwi (2010-11-18). "Jan Żabiński (1897–1977) and Antonina Żabińska (1908–1971)". POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw.

10.  "Hiding in Zoo Cages: Jan & Antonina Zabinski, Poland". Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority. Retrieved 2017-05-12.

11.  "Żabiński Jan & Żabińska Antonina (Erdman)". The Righteous Among The Nations Database. Yad Vashem.

12.  Polscy reżyserzy planują filmy o II Wojnie Światowej - Wiadomość - FILMWEB.pl

13.  Chastain will play Archived "Żabiński Jan". WIEM Encyklopedia.

Notes

1.    "Righteous Among the Nations Honored by Yad Vashem"(PDF).

2.     "Names of Righteous by Country www.yadvashem.org". www.yadvashem.org. Retrieved 29 September 2018.

3.     Furth, Hans G. (1999). "One million Polish rescuers of hunted Jews?". Journal of Genocide Research. 1 (2): 227–232. Thousands of helping acts were done on impulse, on the spur of the moment, lasting no longer than a few seconds to a few hours: such as a quick warning from mortal danger, giving some food or water, showing the way, sheltering from cold or exhaustion for a few hours. None of these acts can be recorded in full detail, with persons and names counted; yet without them the survival of thousands of Jews would not have been possible.[228] If these people are anywhere typical of non-Jews under the Nazis, the percentage of 20 percent [rescuers] represents a huge number of many millions. I was truly astonished when I read these numbers...[230]

4.     “Righteous Among the Nations” by country at Jewish Virtual Library

5.     London Nakl. Stowarzyszenia Prawników Polskich w Zjednoczonym Królestwie [1941], Polska w liczbach. Poland in numbers. Zebrali i opracowali Jan Jankowski i Antoni Serafinski. Przedmowa zaopatrzyl Stanislaw Szurlej.

6.     Franciszek Piper. "The Number of Victims" in Gutman, Yisrael & Berenbaum, Michael. Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp, Indiana University Press, 1994; this edition 1998, p. 62.

7.     Martin Gilbert. The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust. Macmillan, 2003. pp 101.

8.     Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). "Assistance to Jews". Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. p. 117.

9.     John T. Pawlikowski, Polish Catholics and the Jews during the Holocaust, in, Google Print, p. 113 in Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003,  

10.   Andrzej Sławiński, Those who helped Polish Jews during WWII. Translated from Polish by Antoni Bohdanowicz. Article on the pages of the London Branch of the Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association. Last accessed on 14 March 2008.

11.   Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). "Assistance to Jews". Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. p. 118.

12.   Dariusz Libionka, "Polska ludność chrześcijańska wobec eksterminacji Żydów—dystrykt lubelski," in Dariusz Libionka, Akcja Reinhardt: Zagłada Żydów w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2004), p.325. (in Polish)

13.   The Righteous and their world. Markowa through the lens of Józef Ulma, by Mateusz Szpytma, Institute of National Remembrance

14.   Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Wystawa, Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów Świata”– 15 czerwca 2004 r., Rzeszów. "Polacy pomagali Żydom podczas wojny, choć groziła za to kara śmierci – o tym wie większość z nas." (Exhibition "Righteous among the Nations." Rzeszów, 15 June 2004. Subtitled: "The Poles were helping Jews during the war – most of us already know that.")

15.   Jolanta Chodorska, ed., "Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny: Świadectwa," Warsaw, Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek, 2002, Part Two, pp.161–62.  (in Polish)

16.   Kalmen Wawryk, To Sobibor and Back: An Eyewitness Account (Montreal: The Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies, and The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, 1999), pp.66–68, 71.

17.   Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1969, pp.533–34.

18.   Donald L. Niewyk, Francis R. Nicosia, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, Columbia University Press, 2000,  

19.   Antony Polonsky, 'My Brother's Keeper?': Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust, Routledge, 1990.

20.   Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: Poland

21.   Robert D. Cherry, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007,  

22.   Mordecai Paldiel, The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews, page 184. Published by KTAV Publishing House Inc.

23.   Iwo Pogonowski, Jews in Poland, Hippocrene, 1998.  Page 99.

24.   Unveiling the Secret City H-Net Review: John Radzilowski

25.   Margaret Monahan Hogan, ed. (2011). "Remembering the Response of the Catholic Church" (PDF file, direct download 1.36 MB). History 1933 – 1948. What we choose to remember. University of Portland. pp. 85–97.

26.   John T. Pawlikowski. Polish Catholics and the Jews during the Holocaust: Heroism, Timidity, and Collaboration. In: Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003.

27.   Anna Poray,

28.   W. Bartoszewski and Z. Lewinowna, Appeal by the Polish Underground Association For Aid to the Jews, Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority, 2004.

29.   Anna Poray,

30.   Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority 2008, The Righteous: Anna Borkowska, Poland

31.  ""Saving Jews: Polish Righteous" (b-v): Banasiewicz family including Franciszek, Magdalena, Maria, Tadeusz and Jerzy". 6 February 2008.

32.   Anna Poray,

33.   Kystyna Danko, Poland.  

34.   Anna Poray,

35.   About Maria Fedecka at www.mariafedecka.republika.pl

36.   Anna Poray,

37.   Anna Poray,

38.   Anna Poray,

39.   The Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem

40.   Mordecai Paldiel, "Churches and the Holocaust: unholy teaching, good samaritans, and reconciliation" p.209-210, KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 2006,  

41.   Cypora (Jablon) Zonszajn in Siedlce, Poland. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

42.   Sylwia Kesler, Halina and Julian Grobelny as Righteous Among the Nations

43.   Holocaust Memorial Center, 1988 – 2007, Opdyke, Irene; Righteous Gentile

44.   Anna Poray. Armia Krajowa mayor.

45.   Stefan Jagodzinski at the www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org

46.   Anna Poray,

47.   Poles Honoured by Israel, Warsaw Life news agency

48.   Anna Poray,

49.   Anna Poray,

50.   Michael T. Kaufman, Jan Karski warns the West about Holocaust, The New York Times, 15 July 2000

51.   Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority, The Tree in Honor of Zegota, 2008

52.  "Maria Kotarba at www.auschwitz.org.pl" (PDF).

53.   Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2008, The Righteous Among the Nations, 28 June 2003

54.   Peggy Curran, "Pole to be honoured for sheltering Jews from Gestapo," Reprinted by the Canadian Foundation of Polish-Jewish Heritage, Montreal Chapter. Station Cote St. Luc, C. 284, Montreal QC, Canada H4V 2Y4. First published: Montreal Gazette, 5 August 2003, and: Montreal Gazette, 10 December 1994.

55.  "Jerzy Jan Lerski. From biography featured in Historical Dictionary of Poland, 966–1945".

56.   March of the Living International, The Warsaw Ghetto

57.   Anna Poray,"Archived copy".

58.   Bartoszewski, Władysław; Lewinówna, Zofia (1970). "Franciszka Tusk-Scheinwechsler". In Jordan, Alexander T. (ed.). The Samaritans: Heroes of the Holocaust (English ed.). New York City: Twayne Publishers, Inc. pp. 237–244.

59.   Komorowski, Andrzej (2020). Schollenberger, Antoni (ed.). "Wystąpienie prezesa Krajowej Rady Lekarsko Weterynaryjnej I i II kaden" [Speech by the President of the National Medical and Veterinary Council of the 1st and 2nd Term] (PDF). Życie Weterynaryjne (in Polish). Warsaw: Krajowa Izba Lekarsko-Weterynaryjna. 95 (4): 199–201.  

60.   David M. Crowe, The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath. Published by Westview Press. Page 180.

61.  "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original on 6 February 2008. Retrieved 23 May 2012. Polish Educational Foundation in North America, Toronto 2007. "Collective Rescue Efforts of the Poles", (pdf file: 1.44 MB).

62.   Stefania and her younger sister Helena Podgorska, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., 2008

63.   Anna Poray,

64.  "Urodziny s. Cecylii Marii Roszak – najstarszej zakonnicy na świecie". niedziela.pl.

65.   www.mateusz.pl – interview with Konrad Rudnicki (Polish)

66.   Monika Scislowska, Associated Press, 12 May 2008, "Irena Sendler, Holocaust hero dies at 98".

67.   Grzegorz Łubczyk, FKCh "ZNAK" 1999–2008, Henryk Slawik – Our Raoul Wallenberg

68.   Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, „Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów Świata” – Warszawa, 7 stycznia 2004

69.  "Sunday – Catholic Magazine". Sunday.niedziela.pl.

70.   FKCh "ZNAK" – 1999–2008

71.   Anna Poray,"Archived copy".

72.   Anna Poray,"Archived copy".

73.   Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority, 2008, Hiding in Zoo Cages; Jan & Antonina Zabinski, Poland

74.   Anna Poray,"Archived copy".

References

Polish Righteous at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews

Anna Poray, "Saving Jews: Polish Righteous. Those Who Risked Their Liveswith photographs and bibliography, 2004. List of Poles recognized as "Righteous among the Nations" by Israel's Yad Vashem (31 December 1999), with 5,400 awards including 704 of those who paid with their lives for saving Jews.

Piotr Zychowicz, Do Izraela z bohaterami: Wystawa pod Tel Awiwem pokaże, jak Polacy ratowali Żydów, Rp.pl, 18 November 2009 (in Polish).

Żabiński, Jan

Żabińska, Antonina

“Dr. Jan Żabiński was the director of the Zoological Garden in Warsaw and was the author of many popular-knowledge books about biology and the psychology of animals, as well as the producer of a number of very popular radio-shows. From the moment the Warsaw ghetto was established, Jan and his wife, Antonina, began helping their Jewish friends inside the ghetto. When the situation “behind the walls” became dangerous, “Dr. Żabiński with exceptional modesty occupied himself absolutely without self-interest with the fates of his prewar Jewish suppliers... different private acquaintances as well as strangers,” wrote Irena Mayzel. She added: “He carried them off to the Aryan side, provided them with indispensable personal documents, looked for accommodations, and when necessary, hid them at his villa or on the zoo’s grounds.” Between the years 1942 and 1944, a lawyer named Levi (Krzyżanowski), his wife and two daughters hid in Jan’s villa, as well as the lawyer Pavel Frenkel (Zieliński) and his wife, the sculptress Magdalena Gross, and the four-member Kenigswein-Sobol family. Jan, who worked at the National Institute of Hygiene, “was a specialist in finding work for Jews,” wrote writer Rachel Auerbach, who got a job as a clerk in the factory thanks to him. “All of Dr. Żabiński’s actions were done without publicity, without big, noisy words, but very effectively. It should be noted, that Dr. Żabiński provided for his own family (a not-completely-healthy wife and a little son).

“Not only did he not take a penny from any of those he helped, he also refused to accept gifts... such as sugar or flour,” wrote Irena Mayzel. On the motives for his behavior, Jan wrote in his own testimony: “I do not belong to any party, and no party program was my guide during the occupation... I am a Pole - a democrat. My deeds were and are a consequence of a certain psychological composition, a result of progressive-humanistic upbringing, which Ireceived at home as well as in Kreczmar High School. Many times, I wished to analyze the causes for dislike for Jews and I could not find any, besides artificially formed ones.”

“On September 21, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Jan Żabiński and his wife, Antonina Żabińska, as Righteous Among the Nations. File 170.

Jerzy Zagórski and wife Maria, harbored 18 Jews in their home before the Warsaw Uprising [72]

“Jerzy Zagórski (December 3,1907 in Kiev – August 5, 1984, in Warsaw) was a Polish poet, essayist and translator. Member of literary group Żagary. Awarded the Righteous Among the Nations together with his wife Maria (Maryna) Zagórska, translator of belles-lettres.[1]

“The Zagórski couple with their three children resided in Bielany, suburb of Warsaw. During the German occupation of Poland, they harboured eighteen (18) people of Jewish descent between 1942 and the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Among them was the poet Tadeusz Holender and Mrs. Kott given the documents of Maria's sister-in-law. Another fugitive, thirteen-year-old boy Janek Wilk, was introduced to neighbors as Maria's nephew. Danuta Grossfeld also spent some months in their home as well as the Tenenbaums (three persons), who found refuge there after fleeing the Ghetto. Their father-in-law, Mr. Kitel came all stained by blood of his wife shot during that escape. People started to talk that the Zagorskis harbor Jews. As a precaution, they placed the boy and Tadeusz Holender with a female friend.

“Jerzy and Maria returned to Warsaw in 1945 and found their home ruined. After World War II they maintained contact with Mrs. Kott from the United States and Janek Wilk in Germany. Yad Vashem recognized Maria and Jerzy Zagórski as Righteous Among the Nations in 1977.[2]

References

1.     "Zagórski Jerzy". Internetowa encyklopedia PWN (in Polish).

2.     Yad Vashem, The Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, Zagorski Jerzy & Maria 

Zagórski, Jerzy
Zagórska, Maria

“Jerzy Zagórski (the brother of Wacław Zagórski*) was a poet, essayist, critic, and translator who lived in Warsaw during the war with his wife Maria, an art historian, and their children. In the spring of 1944, Lidia Kott asked him for help after she was left without documents or a hideout. “The Zagórskis accepted me into their home, endangering not only themselves, but their children too. Thanks to their help and care I lived through what was for me the hardest part of the occupation,” wrote Lidia in her testimony to Yad Vashem. She stayed with the Zagórski family for a few months until she could arrange new documents and a place to live (also with the Zagórskis’ help). Lidia emphasized in her testimony that the Zagórskis assisted many other fugitives too, offering advice, care, help with documents, and even financial support from their own modest earnings.

“On July 17, 1977, Yad Vashem recognized Jerzy Zagórski and his wife, Maria Zagórska, as Righteous Among the Nations.  File 1160.

Updated October 24, 2021PART 1: ADAMOWICZ - GUT