Vale Canon Witold Stolarczyk (1921–2020)

Editorial staff / English translation: Andrew Rajcher, 24 January 2020
It was with great sorrow that we received the news of the passing of Canon Witold Stolarczyk (1921–2020) – a Righteous Among the Nations and Honorary Citizen of the State of Israel (1995). In 2007, the President of Poland awarded him the Commander’s Cross of the Order of the Rebirth of Poland. He passed away on 16th January 2020 at the age of 99. He was one of the oldest of the clergy of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, having served in the priesthood for more than seventy years. We recall, here, his story.

“You could say that it was a friendly co-existence. For a long time, people didn’t even know that they [in hiding] were Jews [...] They spoke Polish, they were baptised, they went to church, just like us parishioners, for holy communion”.

– Father Witold Stolarczyk in an interview for POLIN Museum.

During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, Witold Stolarczyk’s parents, Franciszek and Apolonia, provided help to a Jewish family from Katowice – the Pankowski family, Czesław and Róża, with their three children.

The Pankowski family hid in the Stolarczyk home from the spring of 1941 until August 1944 when, as the result of a neighbour’s denunciation, they were forced to hide in the forest amongst the partisans. After that time, there was no contact between the family. It was only after fifty yearsm that the Pankowskis’ daughter, Irena, contacted the Stolarczyk’s son, Witold.

On 20th June 1995, Father.Witold Stolarczyk, together with his parents Franciszek and Apolonią, were honoured by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

We published the family’s story of the Polish Righteous website, based on an interview which Father Stolarczyk gave to POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in 2010.

» Read: The Story of the Stolarczyk Family

Father Witold Stolarczyk passed away on 16th January 2020 at the age of 99. He had served as a priest for more than seventy years, including as parish priest in Cisów (near Daleszyce) and in Łany Wielkie (Zawiercie District). The deceased was farewelled on 20th January at the parish churchin Obiechów (Słupia Jędrzejowska, Świętokrzyskie Province) in a ceremony conducted by Bishop of Kielce Jan Piotrowski.