Franciszka Halamaj receives the Courage to Care Award
“After the war there was still so much fear and hatred that Franciszka never revealed how she took care of the Jews and rescued them from the Nazis, who would have certainly killed them” – said the ADL director Abraham H. Foxman.
Franciszka Halamaj and her daughter Helena Liniewska nee Halamaj rescued 16 people. The cattle merchant Mosze Maltz and the doctor Dawid Kindler with their families hid at their place after they had escaped from the ghetto in November 1942. The Krams hid under the flooring in the Halamaj’s kitchen. During this time, Nazi soldiers were stationed on the farm.
Apart from Chaja Dewora Maltz, who died from tuberculosis in the hiding place, all of them survived the war. On September 16th, 1984 Franciszka Halamaj and her daughter were honored with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” for rescuing Jews.
The story of the Righteous was presented in the documentary “No. 4 Street of Our Lady”, produced in 2009. The film was inspired by the diary of one of the rescued, Moshe Maltz.
The Anti-Defamation League created the Courage to Care Award in 1987. It is granted to heroes who risked their own lives to save Jews during the Second World War.
In 1988 it was given to Jan Karski, the legendary courier of the Polish underground and in 1989 – to Anna and Jan Puchalski from the village of Łosośna (currently in Belarus) who saved Jews who escaped from the ghetto in Grodno.
The Righteous Stefania Burzmińska, who as a sixteen-year-old girl rescued 13 Jews in Przemyśl, received the Courage to Care Award in 1991. Teresa Koźmińska and her son Jerzy – honored in 1996 – helped the thirteen-person Glazer family escape from the Warsaw ghetto and hid them in the basement of their house on the outskirts of Warsaw.
In 2009 the award was given to the Righteous Irena Gut-Opdyke, whose dramatic story was presented in the play “Irena’s Vow”, premiered in September 2008. On May 23rd, 2010 it was Irena Sendler who received the award.
