The Righteous Anna Pasek nee Sikoń Has Passed Away

KD, 16 November 2016
Anna Pasek was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations title in 2000. At the same time the Yad Vashem Institute awarded the title to her brother Stanisław Miczyński and posthumously to their mother, Zofia Sikoń.

In 1942-1945 the house of Zofia Sikoń in Łukowica near Nowy Sącz served as the shelter of the Brandel siblings: Oskar (nicknamed “Kazek”), Helena, and Genia. The modest farmstead was located by the village’s main road, three kilometers from the local Gestapo headquarters.

Anna, at the time a teenager, and her two-years-younger brother Stanisław were helping their mother not only with the farming work, but with hiding the fugitives as well. In her MHPJ interview in 2009, Anna Pasek told about the way she camouflaged the trap door to the hideout during Gestapo inspections: “[Kazek] dug out some earth in the room. They could hide there … They were sitting in there. So was I. I was pretending to play … And I was sitting [on] where [the Brandels] were hidden.”

Oskar and Helena Brandel survived the war. Genia died of tuberculosis in the spring of 1943.

The war-time stories of the Brandels and the Sikoń family were described by Anda Rottenberg in her autobiography You’re Very Welcome published in Poland in May 2009. The author’s father was related to the Rescued. After Anna Pasek’s death, Anda Rottenberg wrote: “She was the last of the family that took part in the heroic act of saving the lives of two people.”

Anna Pasek was 81.