During the German occupation, Franciszek Rzottky was a watchman at a villa on the outskirts of Lwów, which was occupied by the Congregation of Albertine Sisters, where his sister, Floriana, served.
During the Holocaust, without the knowledge of the nuns, Franciszek hid Jews in a secret hideout which he had built. The assistance activities, in 1943-1944, also involved Tadeusz and Janina Lewandowski.
"Edek was 19 years old, a clever and well-mannered boy […] he never revealed his real last name to us – he was particularly cautious", wrote Selig Hochberg, a Holocaust survivor, in his memoirs.
"Edek offered his help if the need arose. He said that he would help us hide […]. When we found out about the liquidation of the [ed: Lwów] ghetto, Rudek [Bajzer] and I felt that it was time to ask Edek for help.
"We arranged to meet him in the evening, just before curfew. We hurried through the park, when suddenly three Gestapo officers appeared and stopped us. I threw a few gold coins into the bushes to divert their attention […].
"In the meantime, Bajzer managed to escape, and I joined him […], we were almost penniless. I still had coins hidden in my shoes and sewn into the fabric of my clothes, but there were only a few left. Eventually, we reached Edek's house. The hideout was an attic filled with hay."
Franciszek "Edek” Rzottky - before the war and during German occupation
Franciszek Rzottky came from Pawłowice in the Śląsk area. In 1938, at the age of fifteen, he began studying at the aviation school in Sanok. However, when the war broke out, he was not mobilised due to his age.
In 1940, he and his brother Florian were sent to a labour camp in Germany. A year later, both escaped from the camp and made their way to Bochnia, where their sister, Floriana, was the mother superior of the Congregation of the Albertine Sisters. With her help, they began work at a sawmill under the names "Edek" and "Kazik", using false identity documents. During this time, Franciszek became involved in underground activity with the Home Army (Armia Krajowa).
At the end of 1942, Floriana was transferred to Lwów to rebuild the structures of the Congregation, which had been dissolved during the Soviet occupation of eastern Poland in 1939-1941.
From the pre-war sweets manufacturer Hoeffinger, she received a building located on the outskirts of the city at ul. Persenkówka 66. It was a villa with a four hectare garden and a coach house. The night watchman for the property was Franciszek, whom Floriana brought to Lwów, when she learned that he was in danger in Bochnia.
The Shelter Under the Coach House - the Help Given to Jews by Rzottky
From the spring of 1943, when the Germans were deporting the Jews of Lwów to the extermination camps in Bełżec and Sobibor, several escapees from the ghetto, located in the central districts of Lwów, Zamarstynów and Kleparów, found shelter in the convent on Persenkówka.
Franciszek, without the knowledge of the Albertine Sisters hid Jews on the property and, in May 1943, together with those he was hiding, built a shelter under the coach house. The hideout was three metres long and two metres wide, accommodating about fifteen people.
One of them was Róża Hochberg, the wife of Selig who, after the war, provided a testimony to the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw:
"I left for Lwów, where my husband, along with three other people, was hidden by a caretaker in the convent. The caretaker spread the rumour that my husband had been shot in order to cover up the traces of his escape.
"In Lwów, I found out where he was staying. I wanted to bring the children, but my husband was afraid that this would lead to the discovery of the people hidden there. The conditions in which we lived were terrible. The heat in the attic and the stifling air were unbearable
"We lived in the attic for seven months and, during that time, our men built a shelter underground in the coach house. The nuns knew nothing about this and, in any case, they never suspected that Jews were hiding in the walls of the convent."
O ukrywaniu Żydów nie wiedziała początkowo Floriana, lecz tajemnicą było także jej pokrewieństwo z Franciszkiem:
At first, Floriana was unaware of the Jews being hidden, but the secret then also extended to her kinship with Franciszek.
"I only spoke with my brother at night, in secret from the others. Without my knowledge, he had built an underground shelter in the carriage house. Later, with my tacit approval, the people in hiding used vegetables from the garden. At that time, I didn’t know how many people were hiding there.
"In the meantime, the housekeeper, a half-Ukrainian, discovered my secret meetings with my brother, which led to a conflict. By accident, she learned from one of the nuns about our kinship", she wrote in her testimony for the Jewish Historical Institute in 1997."
The Hideout in the Horse-Drawn Cart - Help Given to Jews by the Lewandowski Couple
In June 1943, Józef Brendl, one of the Jews hiding in the shelter, sent Rzottky with a letter to his acquaintance, Tadeusz Lewandowski, asking him to arrange food for the people staying in the shelter.
The Lewandowski couple lived in Lwów at ul. Bajki 28. Tadeusz was a lawyer and, like his wife Janina, before the war had worked as a teacher and also served as the head of a primary school.
After the war broke out, he took on various jobs. From 1941, he worked, among other jobs, at a "collection depot for scrap metal, rags, and glass" at ul. Kazimierza Wielkiego 45, which also served as a secret base for the underground. Tadeusz, being a member of the Home Army’s (AK) communications cell, organised the smuggling of equipment and people, including the escape of Jews from the Lwów ghetto. He hid them, among other places, in a special compartment in a horse-drawn cart in the “collection depot”.
Lewandowski responded positively to Brendl's request, providing financial help and delivering food to the Jews hiding in the shelter.
They remained in the shelter on Persenkówka until 25th July 1944, when the Red Army re-entered the city. Just before liberation, someone warned those in hiding about a planned German raid, which allowed them to escape, and all of them survived.
In the spring of 1944, Franciszek Rzottky was arrested by the Gestapo in Kraków for being in hiding with false documents. He was deported to the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. Later, in the autumn of 1944, he escaped from the camp with three other Poles and hid in the Sudetes Mountains until the first months of 1945.
The Search for "Edka” - Honoured with the Title of "Righteous"
"The little girl walked around the village. She said she was from Wołyń and was looking for bread" - this is how Róża Hochberg recalled the fate of her very young niece, Janina, who wandered on "Aryan side" before finding shelter on Persenkówka.
In 2018, Janina (now Janine Webber) told the story of her survival from the Holocaust in the film "Edek".
In a message for young people, created together with the American rapper Malcolm Green, she spoke about “Edek” - the man who helped her and her family survive the Holocaust. At that time, she did not know his name. In April 2019, it was established that the man was Franciszek Rzottky.
After the war, "Edek” settled in Kraków, where he first worked as an account and later became a priest. He served in the priesthood until his death in 1972.
This part of his biography adds another layer to his life, showing his professional transformation and commitment to his religious vocation.
On 16th February 1997, the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem honoured Franciszek Rzottky, as well as Tadeusz and Janina Lewandowski with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations".
