KWIATKOWSKI, Eva – widow of rescuer 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. One day in September 1942, a 20-year-old woman, Chava Dudik, came into the office. She had escaped two months before from the Troscianiec ghetto and since then had been homeless, suffering countless ordeals.
Dudik approached Kwiatkowski, introduced herself as a Pole, and asked for a place to live. When Kwiatkowski realized that the woman was a Jewess, he rose from his chair and took the surprised refugee on his bicycle to the home of his parents, who lived in a nearby village. Fearing that Dudik’s true identity might be discovered, Kwiatkowski found her another shelter in the home of his acquaintances in another nearby village, and when the neighbors then also realized she was Jewish he moved her to a village near Luck, where she obtained work as a caregiver for an elderly couple from Czechoslovakia. Later in 1943, German soldiers who were retreating from the front filled the village in which Dudik was working. As a result, Kwiatkoswski decided to leave his job and together with Dudik moved to the city of Rzeszow, where they remained until liberation. Before that, he managed for a time to give shelter to Israel Stern who had fled the Torczyn ghetto. After the war, Kwiatkowski married Dudik and in 1946 they immigrated to Israel and settled in Jerusalem. Stern also immigrated to Israel after the war and there met Kwiatkowski, who had saved his life. Kwiatkowski passed away in Jerusalem in 1990.
On March 8, 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Eugeniusz Kwiatkowski as Righteous Among the Nations.
(Excerpt from”The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations”, Poland, Yad Vashem Publications, p. 436)
