During the German occupation, the Ruszkowski family - Weronika Zabagło and her daughters, Aurelia and Danuta - lived in Warsaw at ul. Radna 6. They extended help to Aurelia's friend, Marek Alstadt, who was hiding on the "Aryan side", using false identity documents.
The Ruszkowski family sheltered him in their apartment in Powiśle and, later, Aurelia arranged a safer hiding place outside the city.
Read the story of this help in a work by writer and journalist Teresa Torańska.
Four families risked their lives in order to save Marek Altstadt from Lwów, a Polish Army soldier, who had lost a leg during the September campaign [resisting the German invasion].
He first hid on ul. Koszykowa in Warsaw. "Aryan papers" were arranged for him and worked at the Tobacco Monopoly. He was recognised there.
"And then", he wrote, in 1993, to the Jewish Historical Institute, "Mrs. Aurelia Marszewska, a work colleague, immediately, because seconds mattered, organised my removal from there through the back gate".
"I began worrying about him, that something dangerous might happen" recalled Aurelia. "So, at one point, I approached him quietly and said, 'Marek, but you are Jewish'.
"That’s when I noticed an expression of terrible fear on his face. I said, 'You know, for now, just stay calm here, but it would be better if you were not here'."
She brought him to her family. She lived with her mother and sister on ul. Radna.
"We lived together with him", Aurelia wrote, "very modestly on my earnings and those of my mother, often also temporarily from the money earned by all of us".
He stayed with them for almost two years, with a two-week break when they had to take him to their friends in Żoliborz.
He found work again, at the Mint Printing Works and, once again, someone doubted his Aryan identity.
He was then taken to Albert and Florentyna Szart from the village of Dębe Wielkie, where he remained until the arrival of the Red Army.
He wrote, "Thanks to that help, I did not have to live in a ghetto, nor did I lose my life”.
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This text, by Teresa Torańska, comes from the album "Poles Saving Jews During the Holocaust - Restoring Memory” (2008), published by the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews on the occasion of honouring Poles, who saved Jews, with high state decorations by the President of the Republic of Poland.
Honouring the Ruszkowski Family for extending help to Jews during the Holocaust
On 14th November 1994, the Yad Vashem Institute honoured Weronika Ruszkowską and her daughter, Aurelia Marszewska, Danuta Pawłowska, with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
By a decision of the President of the Republic of Poland, on 13th November 2008, Aurelia Marszewska, née Ruszkowska, was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta.
