Tribute to the Polish Righteous – Mieczysław Kobylański
Mieczysław Kobylański and his mother Jadwiga were honored by the Yad Vashem Institute with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” for rescuing Jews during the Second World War.
Before the war, Lola Holdengraeber and her daughter Rita were living in Vienna. In 1942 they reached Tarnów, where they found shelter at the house of their prewar friends, the Kobylański family.
They did not stay in their first hiding place for a long time. Mieczysław Kobylański soon organized the so-called “Aryan papers” for them. He managed to rent an apartment for them and found Lola a job in a canteen for SS officers.
Lola Holdengraeber got involved in underground activity. She was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she was killed.
Kobylański then helped her daughter Rita once again. With the help of a priest he knew, he got a baptismal certificate for her. The girl lived with the Kobylańskis until July 1943, when a relative found her and took the child to Lviv.
After the war, Rita emigrated to Canada. She remained in contact with the Kobylańskis. As the Righteous Among the Nations said in one of the interviews: “We didn’t do anything unusual, we just helped – that’s what we had to do”.
Mieczysław Kobylański founded the Scandinavian studies in Poland. He had been teaching English and Swedish at the Adam Mickiewicz University for many years.
During the war, he organized clandestine classes in Tarnów. After the war he graduated in English studies at the Jagiellonian University. He started his cooperation with the Poznań University as Swedish teacher for the German studies. He also taught English at the Lublin Catholic University.
He was decorated with the Medal of National Education and the Knight’s Cross Polonia Restituta. Together with his mother, he was honored with the title “Righteous Among the Nations” on December 25th, 1984. Mieczysław Kobylański died in 1999.
