Vale Irena Senderska-Rzońca (1931–2025)

Redakcja, 24 April 2025

It is with deep sorrow that we were advised of the passing of Irena Senderska-Rzońca, née Krzyształowska – Righteous Among the Nations, a long-time member of the Board of the Association of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, where she served as Secretary. In 2016, she was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta by the President of Poland “for her heroic attitude and extraordinary courage demonstrated by saving Jewish lives during World War II, and for outstanding merits in defending dignity, humanity, and human rights”. Irena Senderska-Rzońca passed away on 20th April 2025, at the age of 94. With great sorrow, the POLIN Museum team bids her farewell. We invite you to read Irena Senderska-Rzońca’s biography on the Polish Righteous portal. Learn about the story of her family’s aid to Jews during the German occupation, view archival photographs, and view her testimony from the POLIN Museum’s Oral History Collection.

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“Again, we began having trouble with food and, later, with keeping everything going,” recalled Irena Senderska-Rzońca in an interview for the POLIN Museum.

“A neighbor asked, ‘Why are you always going to that shed with that bucket?’ [...] I said, ‘I'm going to the goat. Well, my mother keeps a little piglet there.’ [...] ‘So often?’ I said, ‘Because I like animals. They like water, so I bring them water.’ And we carried it in [...] that bucket. We would place a pot of soup in it and go out to the she, and, from the shed, there was a ladder to the attic above the sheds, and we would bring them food to [...] that little attic. You had to bring a little water too, for washing up, and to take out the waste.”

“So [...] I kept going back and forth with that bucket, and it drew the neighbours’ attention, the ones living opposite us. That is where the fear came from – when that neighbour asked about it, we had no peace for three days. We would take my little sisters and go sleep at my aunt’s. Because if the Germans came at night and shot us, at least the children might survive. [...]”

“That’s how we lived – under stress for eight months, sharing our last scraps of food. My mother cooked soups from nettles, then [...] some weed that grew in the gardens, pig-weed – we cooked everything. A few potatoes, as I said, we had to obtain somehow, and we shared it all.”

Irena Senderska-Rzońca was born on 21st February 1931, in Borysław, near Lwów. She was the daughter of Józef Krzyształowski and Helena née Kryć, and the sister of Edward, Grażyna, and Eugenia.

During the German occupation, despite the difficult situation of their own family, Irena’s parents helped Jews confined in the Borysław ghetto – they provided them with food and, at the request of a pre-war acquaintance, Dr. Elias Bander, Irena smuggled a package into the ghetto containing medicines for those in need.

Soon, Dr. Bander asked the Krzyształowski family for help to hide his wife Regina and their six-year-old son Myron. Józef Krzyształowski organised a hiding place for them in the attic of an outbuilding. Irena brought food to those in hiding, removed the waste and brought toys for the boy. Elias later joined his wife and son.

The Bander family remained in hiding, with the help of the Krzyształowski family, from February to August 1944. After the war, they emigrated to the United States where, years later, Irena Senderska-Rzońca would reunite with Myron. The Krzyształowski family left Borysław and settled in Wałbrzych.

Irena Senderska-Rzońca recalled that her parents were ware of the danger that their decision created. It was also significant, as Irena noted in a 2014 interview for the POLIN Museum, that Helena Krzyształowska “was very sensitive to people’s suffering and poverty”.

On 7th November 2000, in recognition of the help given to Jews, Irena Senderska-Rzońca and her parents, Józef and Helena Krzyształowski, were honoured by Yad Vashem with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Irena Senderska-Rzońca was a longtime member of the Association of the Polish Righteous. From 2016 to 2024, she served as Secretary of the Association.

A sign of the close, long-standing cooperation between POLIN Museum and the Board of the the Association of the Polish Righteous was the honorary membership, awarded in August 2018, by the Association, to Museum’s directors – Prof. Dariusz Stola, Jolanta Gumula and Dorota Keller-Zalewska.

An unforgettable event for us remains the ceremonial gala celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Association of the Polish Righteous, organised jointly and held at the POLIN Museum on 16th October 2016. It was the first-ever national gathering of the Righteous Among the Nations from throughout Poland.

Irena was a frequent guest at the POLIN Museum. She showed us great trust and kindness. She will remain in our memory as an exceptionally warm and humble person. With deep sorrow, we bid her farewell.

To the family, to those close to her and colleagues of Irena Senderska-Rzońca, we extend our sincerest condolences. We encourage everyone to learn more about her life story on the Polish Righteous portal.