Three new Polish Righteous Among the Nations

On Sunday, August 1st, 2010 in the seat of the Jewish Community of Bielsko-Biała, three Poles – Michalina and Stanisław Nawłoka, and Julia Wala – were posthumously honored with the title of the Righteous Among the Nations. The distinctions were presented by the rescued Rozalia Wassner from Israel and Ruth Rosenfelt from the US to the daughter of the Michalina and Stanisław Nawłoka, Teresa Łysoń, and to the granddaughter of Julia Wala, Halina Macher. In the ceremony participated the Deputy Ambassador and Counsellor for Political Affairs, Yahel Vilan, the Mayor of Bielsko-Biała, the Vice-starost of Bielsko, the President of the District Council of Bielsko and the Righteous from this town, who have been honored in previous years.

Michalina and Stanisław Nawłoka saved during the Second World War the six-year old Rozalia Wassner. When the war broke out, the girl, together with her parents, found herself in Przemyśl, occupied by the Soviet army, and then in the Warsaw ghetto. Bencjon, her father, escaped and left to the USSR. During the liquidation of the ghetto, the family of Rozalia was deported to the death camp in Bełżec – only the girl saved herself and managed to get to Lwów. Her aunt provided her with false documents in the name of Rozalia Stanisława Dudzińska and then – blackmailed by a servant who guessed that the girl is Jewish – asked her friends Michalina and Stanisław Nawłoka to take care of Rozalia. They were living in Borki Wielkie near Tarnopol in very bad conditions, in one small room with a kitchen, together with their two children. However, they accepted the girl without hesitation and had been hiding her until the end of the Nazi occupation. In 1947 Bencjon Wassner came back to Poland from the USSR, and in the sixties Rozalia emigrated to Israel. Today she uses the name Shoshana Ronen. This is what she said about the Nawłokas during the ceremony: “Today I am very touched. I would like to tell everyone about my saviors, about how heroic it is to give to a third child, who is not your own, the same you give to your children. They divided each slice of bread into three equal parts. I have three children of my own and I am not sure if I would be able, in a similar situation, to give less to them, only to feed someone else’s child. It is the biggest heroism possible”.

In her house in Buczkowice near Bielsko-Biała Julia Wala had been hiding Ruth (Róża) Rosenfelt and her sister Helena. Before the Second World War, the parents of the girls – Sara and Aaron Kriszer-Wienlez – had been living in Bielsko. During the Nazi occupation the family was transported to the ghetto in Wadowice. Sara was deported to Auschwitz, and Aaron managed to hide together with his daughters. However, he was soon killed and the orphaned girls came to the house of Julia Wala, where they lived until the end of the war. They were put in special hiding places only when the German soldiers visited the house. A few months after liberation, a Jewish organization took the girls and in 1949 they were adopted by an American couple. They changed their names into Helen and Ruth Banker. Julia Wala died in 1981. Receiving the medal in her name, Halina Macher said: “We are very proud that our grandmother was such a hero. I don’t know if anyone of us would have the courage to do what she did, having such a big family: seven children. Everyone knew what would happen, if the Germans found out”.