Righteous ceremony held at Royal Castle in Warsaw

In opening the ceremony, the host, Director Wojciech Fałkowski said, "This is a history about which are reluctant to talk, but about which we want to remember because, at that time, there were people who showed not only their courage, but above all else showed the existence of values of humanity. Whoever save one life, saves the world entire".

Nineteen individuals were honoured posthumously during the ceremony held in the Great Hall of the Royal Castle in Warsaw – Jan and Wiktoria Ciurlik, Karolina Denkiewicz, Marta Kielak, Adam Rysiewicza, Franciszka Stękowska, Aleksander and Helena Styś and their children Janina Gołębiowska, Antoni Styś and Leokadia Wojtkowska, Natalia Szczekało and her sons Aleksander and Iwan, Adam and Maria Świąder, Stanisław Wolski, as well as Aleksandra and Kazimierz Woroszyłło.

Below, we present brief stories of those honoured posthumously as Righteous Among the Nations. We will publish their full histories on our website shortly.

During World War II, Jan and Wiktoria Ciurlik lived in Stary Korczyn (Świętokrzyskie Province). In November 1942, during the liquidation of the local ghetto, friends, the Grinbaum family, turned to them for help. They agreed to take Róża and her son Natan into  their home. Later, Szaul joined his wife there in hiding. He had jumped off a train heading to the Bełżec extermination camp. He and Jan Ciurlik dug out and arranged a hiding place under the barn. In March 1943, they were joined by Szaul's younger brother.

When the Germans began searches in Stary Korczyn, the Grinbaum family decided to flee with Jan's help. In a wagon, he took Róża and Natan to Kraków where Szaul was waiting for them. He had gone there on foot. The family then crossed the border into Hungary where they remained until the War ended.

Over the years, the two families remained in contact. That contact was broken following their deaths. It was only in 2009 that Natan's sons convinced their father to travel to Poland. At that time, they re-established contact with the descendants of the Ciurlik couple. A few years later, they applied to Yad Vashem to have them honoured with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

*

Karolina Denkiewicz, pseudnym Wanda (dec'd. 1954), lived in Chełm (Lubelskie Province). She was a widow and the mother of four daughters. At the end of 1942, Rywka, the daughter of friends where she had been the housekeeper, turned to her for help. The girl, together with a friend from the Chełm ghetto, Luba Izakson (1924-1991), was looking for somewhere to hide.

In January 1943, before Karolina Denkiewicz could prepare a hiding place, Rywka ended up in the Sobibor extermination camp. Faced with the liquidation of the ghetto, Luba again turned to Karolina Denkiewicz who agreed to help, introducing Luba as her cousin.

In March 1944, fearing being denounced by her neighbours, Karolina Denkiewicz found her a new hiding place with a friend who was already helping the tailor Chaim Feder. There, the girl remained until the end of the War. After the War, Luba and Chaim married. For many years, they remained in contact with Karolina Denkiewicz and, later, with her children. 

Present at the ceremony in Warsaw, the survivors' son, Gershon Feder, said, "During the Holocaust, Karolina Denkiewicz saved the life of my dear mother Luba Feder. She risked her own life and the lives of her family. Mrs Denkiewicz, just as other Polish heroes honoured here today, displayed immense courage, heroism and humanity during one of the darkest chapters in the history of mankind. Any nation would be proud of such heroes. We thank them all".

*

The engineer Rudolf Hermelin (born 1897) found himself in the Warsaw ghetto together with his wife and daughter. In April, they moved into the All Souls parish church on Plac Grzybowski which was inside the ghetto grounds. During the large ghetto liquidation operation in 1942, his entire family ended up in the Treblinka extermination camp. He remained alone in the so-called "ghetto remains", keeping in contact with the parish priests.

At the beginning of February 1943, at the request of Father Godlewski, All Saints parish priest Adam Świąder made contact with him. He helped him to cross into the so-called "Aryan side". For several months, Hermelin remained in hiding with the help of numerous Poles.

The first of these were Adam and Maria Świąder, who had earlier provided help to many Jews, as well as hiding Home Army weapons in their home. On one occasion, a Gestapo agent appeared at the Świąder home trying to arrest Hermelin and a Jewish boy who was also hiding there. They bribed him to leave.

Next, thanks to a friend of his sister, Hermelin turned for help to a single woman, Magdalena Miedziejewska. She was the housekeeper in the home of a certain German. The woman hid him in her small apartment. After a few days, Hermelin again turned to the Świąder couple who, this time, hid him with a group of Jews in the basement. Fearing discovery by the Germans, he would soon seek further help. In the summer of 1944, he was hidden by Franciszka Sętkowska, Adam Świąder's sister.

Following the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, Sętkowska moved to the countryside. She suggested that Harmelin join her, but he declined due to his bad health. The woman provided him with food supplies and entrusted his care to her neighbour, Marta Kielak (1905-1993). She also provided him with help. During a Gestapo search, she introduced him as her cousin and continued to care for him until lliberation in January 1945. They remained in contact for many years thereafter.        

*

Adam Rysiewicz (1918-1944) was a member of the Polish Socialist Party and was active in the Kraków branch of the Żegota Council to Aid Jews. In 1942-1943, he helped, among others, Mordechaj and Miriam Peleg-Mariański, as well as the writer and columnist Michał Brochwicz, whom he helped to escape from the Janów camp in 1943.

After the War, Miriam Peleg-Mariańska wrote about her Holocaust survival, "On behalf of my husband and myself, I ask that the title of Righteous Among the Nations be awarded to our three Polish friends who, even before the creation on Żegota, helped Jews. Thanks to this help, my husband and I received essential papers even back in 1940. They were Józef Cyrankiewicz, later a prisoner in Auschwitz, who also helped Jews in the camp, Adam Rysiewicz and Zygmunt Kłopotowski".

Adam Rysiewicz perished in 1944 during an attempt to free Józef Cyrankiewicz from the Auschwitz camp. At that time, he was one of the commanders of the Gwardia Ludowa (People's Guard).

*

Aleksander and Helena Styś and their children Antoni, Janina and Leokadia lived in the village of Dricz, not far from Stoczek Węgrowski (Mazowieckie Province). In August 1942, the Jewish Kwiatek family turned to them for help. Following the liquidation of the local ghetto in Stoczek, the family – Mosze, his wife Estera (born 1920) and his brother Chaim (born 1925) – sought refuge with cart-driver friends who had worked for them in their soda water bottling factory.

The Styś family agreed to help them. After some time, Mosze left the hiding place, but never returned. In all probability, he had been murdered. Whilst in hiding, Estera gave birth to a child which died soon after. Later, two other Jewish escapees joined them -  Szmuel Goldberg (born 1917) and Wolf Schneidman.

After the outbreak of war, Goldberg had fled to the USSR where,  before the War, he had been in the army. In June 1941, he found himself a captive of the Germans. At the beginning of 1942, he ended up in the Stoczek ghetto from where, in July 1942, he was sent, together with local Jews (among them Wolf Schneidman), to Treblinka in order to build an extermination camp there. Both worked in the camp for thirteen months and managed to flee during the prisoner revolt on 2nd August 1943. After two days of wandering through the forests, they came upon Estera and her brother-in-law. Estera told the Styś family about the meeting and Helena agreed to provide them with somewhere to hide.

Following liberation in the summer of 1944, Estera and Szmuel Goldberg married and, two years later, emigrated to the United States. They remained in correspondence contact with the Styś family for many years, even sending them parcels.  

*

During World War II, Natalia Szczekało, together with her sons Aleksander (born 1912) and Iwan (born 1914), helped the Widerman family – Ida (dec'd. 1983) and her daughhter Róża (born 1926) – who, in the spring of 1942, had escaped from the ghetto in Minsk (Belarus).

Róża had obtained false papers, under the name of "Pesz", from people active in the underground. Her sister, Żenia (born 1939), also under the same false name, had been moved into an orphanage in which she survived the War and where she was later recovered by her family.

After some time, Ida's son Jefim joined them in hiding with the Szczekało family. They remained hiding in the area until the summer of 1944. After the War, Iwan Szczekało moved to Poland. In the 1960's, he was accused of collaborating with the Germans, During the trial, the residents of his home village testified in his defence.

*

Stanisław Wolski (1902-1986) was a lawyer and former teacher of Janina Ofner (1925-1994). During World War II. Janina had escaped from the Lwów ghetto with her mother and hid in a small cell. Shortly after, her mother left the hiding place and gave herself up to the Germans (probably in order to save her daughter). Neighbours looked after Janina and obtained false papers for her under the name of "Janina Syganiec".

One day, after leaving the house, she met Stanisław Wolski on the street. He took over caring for the girl. Together, they left the city for the countryside, to the home of his brother, where they remained in hiding over the following months.

In 1944, fleeing from units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), they were captured by the Germans and sent to the Weidenbach labour camp in Germany. In September 1944, Janina fell pregnant and gave birth to a son Roman.

At the beginning of 1945, the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Janina and Stanisław went to Częstochowa, where they lived with his family. They later moved, permanently, to Warsaw.

*

During World War II, Kazimierz Woroszyłło (born 1901) and his wife Aleksandra (born 1903) lived in Warsaw. In 1942, they took Elżbieta Lewin into their home. The girl had come from Łódż – her father was a textile engineer and mother a journalist. After war broke out, the Lewin family moved to Warsaw where, together with her mother's family, they ended up in the ghetto.

Prior to the major ghetto liquidation operation in July 1942, the Lewin couple arranged a hiding place for their children – Elżbieta and Ryszard – with a woman named Zofia (surname is unknown). The girl arrived there with false papers under the name of "Barbara" and, from that moment, she presented herself as the niece of Kazimierz Woroszyłło.

Up until the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, Elżbieta's parents remained in contact with their daughter and sent money to support her. After the Uprising was put down, Elżbieta and Zofia Woroszyłło were sent to the transit camp in Pruszków. They escaped from a transport and hid in local villages. It was there that Elżbieta was found by her father Artur.

Kazimierz Woroszyłło died in Siberia in 1947. His wife Aleksandra died in Warsaw in 1980. Elżbieta, with her father and step-mother (her mother died during the War) moved to France in 1945.

Information on the procedure for awarding the State of Israel's highest civilian honour by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem, "Righteous Among the Nations of the World", can be found on our website: Yad Vashem Criteria.