ALTERASZ, Vera (1914 – 2006)
Vera Alterasz dedicated her life to taking care of others. As a young woman in Hungary, she and her sister saved the lives of several people, including her husband, his family and two friends, by hiding them in their own homes. When this later became too dangerous, the sisters arranged for other safe himding places. Vera’s husband was able Keep Reading…
AVDEENKO, Valentin (1922 – 2009)
Valentin lived with his wife, son, daughter in-law and grandson in Holon. During WW II, Valentin, his brother and father saved a Jewish woman by giving her Valentin’s sister’s papers. They were also able to hide two other families in a basement in their apartment. At one point, the Germans captured Keep Reading…
AVNI-WIECZOREK, Zofia Marta (1915 – 2006)
In April 1943, ten-year-old Irena Machenbaum, her mother, Tova, and her uncle, Gustav Blajchman, succeeded in escaping from the blazing inferno of the Warsaw ghetto. When they reached the Aryan side of the city, they met a prewar acquaintance, Zofia Wieczorek. Zofia took the three refugees to an attic apartment, which she had rented as a Keep Reading…
BAR-NATAN, Celina (1913 – 2006)
Celina Kujawska was 21 years old when she left her hometown for Warsaw, where she became acquainted with Dr. Adam Rakower and his family. In 1940, Dr. Rakower was arrested by the Gestapo and executed. His wife, Alina, and three-year-old daughter, Elzbieta, were interned in the ghetto, but they remained in contact with Celina. She sent them Keep Reading…
BARANEK, Modesta (1928 – )
Modesta Jadlina and her parents, Jan and Marianna, lived on a farm in the village of Okrzeja in the Lublin district. In May 1943, 15-year-old Modesta chanced to meet Chaim Baranek, a Jew who had escaped with a group of forced laborers from the nearbly Wola Keep Reading…
BROMBERG, Tamara (1924 – 2014)
Like many who lived in Nazi-occupied Odessa, Tamara Maximenok-Bromberg has vivid memories of being locked in the Jewish ghetto with her mother and being refused permission to leave. But unlike the Jews of Odessa, who were sent to the ghetto against their will, Keep Reading…
BUDNIK, Adela (1921-2009) – widow of rescuer Piotr Budnik (1916 – 2002)
The Hellreichs lived with their three children in the village of Kaczanowka, in the Tarnopol district, not far from Piotr Budnik, an unmarried farmer who lived in a cottage with his elderly parents. When the Germans occupied the area, the local Jews, Keep Reading…
CSIZMADIA Sisters: FISCHER, Olga
CSIZMADIA, Malvina, and SHURANI, Orna
Olga (1922-2006), Malvina (1926-2010) and Orna (1928-2017) were sisters. Together with their mother, they saved more than 25 Jewish men from a work camp in Hungary. Keep Reading…
DANKOV, Regina (1922-2009) – widow of rescuer Sprio Dankov (1919 – 1996)
Regina’s husband, Spiro, saved the lives of 23 Jews during the Holocaust.After a pogrom in Sofia, Bulgaria, Keep Reading…
DOBKOWSKI, Wincenty (1933 -?)
Right: Wincenty Dobkowski and Itzik (Jan) Lewin, Givatayim, 2006
In the autumn of 1942, Israel Lewin, his wife, Feiga, their son, Jan, and their daughter, Teresa, fled Keep Reading…
DRAGICEWICZ-SYCZ, Irena (1932 – ?)
Irena Schwarz’s father got her out the Lwow ghetto when she was nine years old and placed her in the care of Janina Sycz, who lived with her children, Andrzej, Wlodzimierz, and Irena. Because of the danger they faced, Keep Reading…
HORNUNG-TOMCZAK, Anna (1922 – 2012)
In 1939, Leon Hornung, his wife and children moved from their hometown, Cieszyn, in Upper Silesia, to Stryj, in the Stanislawow district, under Soviet rule. When the Germans occupied the region, his wife and younger children were interned in the ghetto and later, during the liquidation of the ghetto, Keep Reading…
IMSHENIK, Galina (1912 – 2011)
Left: Elena Dolgov and Galina Imshenik, Jerusalem, 2006
The story of Galina Imshenik and Elena Dolgov is an inspiring tale of love, care and survival, beginning in a small village in White Russia over 60 years ago and continuing to this day in Jerusalem. Keep Reading…
IVANOV, Mladen (1923 – 2012)
As a youth in Sofia, Bulgaria, many of Mladen’s friends and neighbors were Jews. His girlfriend from age 13, Butcha, was Jewish as well.
In 1942, Bulgarian Jews were expelled to Keep Reading…
KAROLICKA-KARPINSKA, Janina (1912 – 2011)
In April 1943, after the outbreak of the Warsaw ghetto Uprising, Hilary Kochanski and Marian Stolinski escaped to the Aryan side of the city, where Malka, Kochanski’s wife, was hiding. Keep Reading…
KOLESNICHENKO, Zinaida (1925 – 2013)
Zinaida Kolesnichenko was 16 when the Wehrmacht entered Odessa. At the same time, Tzila Nikolskia, a Jewish woman, witnessed the murder of thousands of Odessan Jews in nearby Dalnik. Tzila escaped, reaching a cinema in Odessa run by Tulik, a mutual friend of her and Zinaida. Tzila hid in the cinema, closed due the warwhile Tulik Keep Reading…
KONDRAYEV, Celina (d. 2009) – widow of Ivan Kondrayev (1915-2005)
Left: Valentina and Celina, Pardes Hanna, Israel
Shortly before the war, Ivan Kondrayev was sent to work in an area near the Russian-Polish border. When the Germans invaded Russia, Ivan was taken captive, along with the rest of the people in the area. After five months in captivity he managed to escape to Ukraine. Keep Reading…
KWIATKOWSKI, Eva – widow of Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski (1918 – 1990)
During the German occupation, Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski worked as a clerk in an office of the municipality of Torczyn in the Wolyn district. The office distributed agricultural produce to the army and an adjacent department referred German officials and military personnel to apartments in the town. Keep Reading…
LESCHINGER, Nikolay (1912 – 2005)
Nikolay witnessed the deportation of Odessa Jewry in December 1941. He saved the life of a young Jewish boy, Aleksander Gilerman, who, in an attempt to escape from a deportation convoy, had been injured by gunshots and lay bleeding on the road. Nikolay pulled him to safety, nursed him back to health in his own home Keep Reading…
LEWICKA, Jaroslawa (1935 – )
Jaroslawa Lewicki (right) together with one of the people she rescued.)
Immediately after the occupation of the town of Zloczow, in the Tarnopol district in July 1941, Aleksander Lewicki came to the aid of his Jewish friends who were in troublep. When the Germans introduced measures restricting the movement of Jews and forbidding them Keep Reading…
LINTNER, Teresa – widow of Stefan Lintner (1908 – 1996)
Even before the war, Stefan Lintner was known by the residents of Czortkow in the Tarnopol district as being sympathetic toward Jews and employed many Jews in the town’s only cinema, which he owned. When the Germans occupied Czortkow in the summer of 1941, his cinema was requisitioned for the Department of German Propaganda Keep Reading…
MARTY, Violette – widow of rescuer Jean-François Marty (1920 – 2004)
Jean-François Marty, the son of a school principal, lived in Toulouse and was active in the French underground. In 1942, he met Violette Nahoum, who had fled to Toulouse from Paris with her parents and brother. Marty, who sympathized with the Nahoums, provided them with forged identity and ration cards and found a French family to shelter them. Keep Reading…
MEDUSHEVSKAYA, Wanda (1927 – 2016)
During the war, Wanda lived with her mother, Anna, in Budki, a village on the train route between Odessa and Moscow. Wanda’s father, Vasili was a tailor, killed in one of Stalin’s purges. He had been very friendly with the Margolis family, who were Jewish. They asked Wanda’s mother if she would help them. The Medushevskayas Keep Reading…
POLISCHUK, Viktor (1929 – 2009)
Viktor Polischuck and his wife, Elvira
Viktor Polischuk lived in his uncle’s household in Ukraine. When the Germans liquidated the Gaysin ghetto in 1943, it was clear that the Jews’ days were numbered. One night in the summer of 1943, Keep Reading…
RACZYNSKI, Shoshana (1921-2007) widow of Stefan Raczynski (1921-1995)
Stefan Raczynski, who lived with his family in the village of Wegelina in the Vilna district, was superficially acquainted with Jews in the nearby town of Niemczyn. In September 1941, after the massacre perpetrated by the Germans and Lithuanians against the local Jews, Jewish fugitives began turning up at Raczynski’s Keep Reading…
RADZIO, Aldona – widow of Jerzy Radzio (1925- )
In 1942, after the liquidation of the Legionow ghetto near Warsaw, Samuel Batz, his wife, Dvora, and his brother-in-law, Abram Lipszyc, were sent to the nearby Tarchomin camp, where they were employed locally as forced laborers, while Lea Batz, Samuel’s mother, hid nearby. During a work break, Keep Reading…
ROTTER-BOHOSIEWICZ, Helena
Before and during the war, Helena Bohosiewicz lived with her family in the village of Kozice, near Lwow, where she had a farm. Bohosiewicz was friendly with the Jewish families who lived in her village and in surrounding villages, especially with the Rotter and Hecht families. Keep Reading…
ROZEN, Yosef Widower of Zofia Katarzyna Rozen (1917 – 1980)
Although Zofia Katarzyna Rozen (née Tomczak) was born into a conservative Polish family and received a Catholic convent education, she threw in her lot with the Jewish people from an early age. In 1940, she married Zenon Merenholc, a Jew and the two reached the town of Ostrog in the Volhynia district as refugees. Keep Reading…
SANEVICH, Peotr (1924 – )
Peotr Sanevich and his family rescued two Jews, a sister and brother, who arrived at the family’s Ukrainian farm after escaping death. The siblings, Buzya and David, were first hidden in a pit, then in the house chimney and later in the barn, concealed in a special hiding place that Peotr created for them. Keep Reading…
SKWARA, Zdzislaw (1930 – 2009)
At the start of the war, Efraim Weinberg, a tailor, and his wife, Ester, moved with their baby daughter, Chava, to Baczki near Lochow in the county of Wegrow, Warsaw district. Among Weinberg’s customers were the Skwaras from the nearby village of Kamionna and the two families soon became friends. Keep Reading…
SYCZ-SCHWARZ, Irena – widow of Andrzej Sycz (1931 – 1995)
Irena Schwarz’s father got her out the Lwow ghetto when she was nine years old and placed her in the care of Janina Sycz, who lived with her children, Andrzej, Wlodzimierz, and Irena. Because of the danger they faced, Sycz and her children moved into her father’s home in Skarzysko-Kamienna, where she obtained Aryan papers Keep Reading…
SZAFT-SUCHODOLSKA, Jadwiga (d. 2007)
Jadwiga Suchodolska lived with her family in the village of Krzynowloga Wielka in the county of Przasnysz, Warsaw district. One night in 1942, somebody knocked at the door. It was Michal Szaft. The Suchodolskis had been acquainted with his family before the war. Michal said he had managed to escape from the ghetto Keep Reading…
STRUL, Elisabeta (1920 – 2013)
Elizabeth Strul (Nikopj) lived with her family in Iasi, Romania. In June 1941, there was a terrible pogrom in the city. In one day 15,000 Jews were killed. Upon hearing of plans to carry out the pogrom, Elizabeth ran through the streets of a primarily Jewish neighborhood to warn the Jews to escape. She hid Jews in her house for two weeks Keep Reading…
TARNAWSKI, Miriam – widow of Wilhelm Tarnawski (1911-1994)
Wilhelm (Wilek) Tarnawski lived with his Jewish wife in Kopyczynce in the district of Tarnopol in Eastern Galicia during the war. Between 1941 and 1944, he hid 17 of his wife’s relatives in his home. Keep Reading…
VEREMCHUK, Stepan (1932 – 2014)
Mariya Veremchuk lived in the village of Borki, close to Luboml, Wołyń. After the Germans occupied the area, on July 3, 1941, Mariya’s husband, a member of the Communist Party, was murdered, and she and her eight-year-old son Stepan were forced to leave their village home and move to Włodzimierz (later Vladimir-Volynskiy). With the help of her late husband’s friends, Veremchuk was accepted into the urban Keep Reading…
VRANETIC, Ivan (1926 – 2010)
Ivan, a Catholic, was raised to “love humankind.” Ivan began hiding Jews in 1942, at the age of 15. A group of Jewish refugees reached his town in Topusko, Yugoslavia. Ivan cared for them, helping them find food and hiding places. One of the people he helped was Erna Montilo Keep Reading…
____________________________________________________
