In 1941 her father, Witold Maringe said that a young man was coming to their place in order to teach her younger siblings.
After being displaced from their estate in Poznań region they lived in the village of Zuzanka near Warsaw.
Tadeusz was a very nice and joyful youngster. He was twenty-one, just like her.
“He did honestly tell me at once that he was a Jew” – says Wanda.
He had lived in Warsaw with his parents before the war. He had studied in Heidelberg and thus, when the ghetto was established, he obtained for himself a German Kennkarte in the name of Teodor Hanke. He was a translator from German and did not want to go the ghetto just like his father.
“We went to his father once, I as his fiancée – says Wanda. – He wanted neither to run away nor to hide. He only grieved that Tadeusz’s mother was on the Aryan side and did not want to join him in the ghetto. He was later deported and killed.”
They married in 1942.
“I married Hanke – she says – my first son was born under the surname Gulina. It was only after the liberation that I was able to enroll our other two children under his true surname, Grostal.
They kept moving to different addresses and towns. They were bribing a Polish policeman, who was threatening them with denunciation and interrogation by the Gestapo. Once again there was a need to change surname. He became Zygmunt Witalis Gulina and had his nose operated on.
“It was Tadeusz who applied for granting me the Righteous Among the Nations Medal” – says Wanda.
