DOES ANYONE REMEMBER JÓZEF GROSMAN FROM THE RZESZÓW GHETTO?

Maria Zawadzka, 16 November 2016
Róża Gelbart nee Grosman is seeking information about her father. Probably Józef Grosman, a Jewish shoemaker from Kalisz, was killed in the Rzeszów ghetto. His wife and daughter Róża managed to escape from there thanks to “Aryan papers”.

Róża Gelbart has been living in the US for many years. She is trying to find out what happened to her family during the Second World War.

“Ms Róża is really counting on the help of the inhabitants of Rzeszów. Maybe there are still people who remember the Rzeszów ghetto, maybe someone knew the shoemaker Józef Grosman, born in 1905 in Łódź?” – says Jerzy Obniski, inhabitant of Łódź who is helping Róża Gelbart in her search.

According to the archive of the Holocaust Museumin Washington, D.C. Róża Gelbart was born on January 3rd, 1935 in Leszno. She was the only child of Józef Grosman and Sabina Stella Langner.

Grosmanand his sister had a shoe shop in Leszno. The family was living in Kalisz, on Puławskiego Street. In October 1939 Róża and her parents moved to Rzeszów. When the first deportations from the Rzeszów ghetto started, Róża’s mother Sabina, who had blond hair and an “Aryan look”, managed to take her daughter out of the ghetto and find a Polish family to take care of her.

The girl returned to the ghetto after a few days because she was missing her parents. Soon, Sabina Grosman managed to escape from the ghetto with her daughter. They reached Warsaw, where Adam Żak helped them. He got papers for them, helped to hide Rózia in various places. The girl was accompanied by Żak’s daughter Hanka.

The Żaksand Sabina and Róża Grosman survived until the entering of the Soviet army in 1944. After the war Róża and her mother emigrated first to Germany and then to the US. Adam Żak was honored by the Yad Vashem Institute with the title “Righteous Among the Nations”.

Róża does not know much about her father Józef Grosman. He remained in the Rzeszów ghetto. “Maybe he did not have enough money to hide on the Aryan side. It remains unknown when he was killed. “Ms Róża told me that Adam Żak was in Rzeszów in 1943 and that he didn’t find her father there” – says Obniski.

If anyone knows the history of the shoemaker Józef Grosman, please send all the information you have to: [email protected].