The Righteous
Josef Wiederman was born in 1923 in Tarnopol, where he grew up; his family owned a grocery store at ul. Lwowska 17. The Kuczyńskis, farmers from the village of Poczapińce located seven kilometers from the town, were frequent customers at the store.
After the occupation of Tarnopol by the Soviet army in 1939, Julia Kuczyńska moved to the Wiedermans’ after she found a job in a restaurant in Tarnopol.
In 1941, two days after the German forces entered Tarnopol, a week-long pogrom of the Jewish population began. A ghetto was created in July. Julia was delivering food to the ghetto, and later, with the help of a network of the chauffeurs driving Jews to their workplaces, she was organizing escapes from the ghetto. In the spring of 1943 she prepared the escape of the then-nineteen-year-old Josef Wiederman: “me and Moti Schechter, we were taken out of the city to the Kuczyński farm in Poczapińce, and then Stefania and Rudolf took us, at night, to a well-hidden place and were bringing us food there. Later Stefania and Rudolf showed us around, under the cover of night, so we would know where to run in case of danger. And this was also how they helped other Jews.”
The Kuczyńskis hid him in the barn, in a hideout Aleksander made in the hay: “Father was this sort of man, and all of us, in general - we couldn’t throw him out. I mean, that’s ... He was a human being,” Stefania explains. Josef was hiding with the Kuczyński family until the time the Red Army entered Tarnopol in April 1944.
“And later, when the Russians came the second time, mom warmed up some water for him. He washed up. We were all afraid. We said: ‘Go.’ [We] gave him a bag of food, fed him, and said: ‘Go, and tell no one that you’ve been kept here.’ Because we were scared. We were afraid of our own shadow - after all, they were killing everybody who was helping Jews,” -Stefania Kleszcz recounts.
In his account, the Rescued wrote: “I can state with full responsibility that dozens of Jews owe their lives to these rescuers: the Kuczyński family of Poczapińce.” After the war Wiederman left for Australia
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Stefania Kleszcz nee Kuczyńska, when years later asked about their motivation for helping the fugitives, answered: “Well, how could you just leave them alone and say: ‘There you go, let them kill you?’ You couldn’t. You just couldn’t do that.”
