During the occupation, Alfred Engel lived in Warsaw at ul Akademicka 3 and worked in the construction company, "Inż. Piotr Butenko i spółka" at ul Złota 30. In the summer 1941, he represented his company in the territory of Eastern Galicia, in Lwów, Drohobycz, Tarnopol, Hluboczek and Krasne Podwołoczyska near Tarnopol.
From August 1942, he lived in Tarnopol on ul Kolejowa. He witnessed crimes against Jewish people and helped many people whom he had not known before.
As an administration manager, he tried to employ Jewish doctors, engineers and attorneys as workers and foremen on the building of the railway. He moved people from the ghetto in Tarnopol and supported those who escaped from the trains transporting the Jews.
He also employed two Jewish women, from the ghetto in Tarnopol - one as a secretary and the other as a housekeeper. At nights, he allowed them to hide on the construction site and provided food to their families in the ghetto. He also employed a cleaner in his office, who had false documents and also the Warsaw architect, Jakub Grosglik-Groniowski, who used the surname" Jakubowski". Jakub remained with Engel even after one of his colleagues had recognised him.
In July 1941, he took the engineer Ignacy Misiewicz and his wife Janina, who were in danger of being arrested, from Drohobycz to Hluboczek Wielki near Tarnopol. In Hluboczek, they contacted the engineer Anatol Wróblewski (Proweller) and Jan Osełęka, who already worked for Engel's firm. Due to the danger of arresti, in 1943, Engel moved the Misiewicz couple to Podwołoczysk. In 1944, they were forced to escape again and stayed in Engel's home in Tarnopo, where they remained hidden until the liberation.
In 1946, Engel was demobilia\sed from the Polish Army on the Recovered Territories. He then moved to Warsaw, where he met the Misiewicz couple and would see Groniowski. In 1949, the Misiewicz couple gave him a mutually prepared declaration in which they described Engel as a "remarkably positive individual in the Democratic System, who, as early as in the years 1941 to 1944, clearly demonstrated his attitude to the present system in the light of the conversations with us as well as the manner of his conduct".
"We can say definitely that the citizen Engel saved my life and that of my wife at least three times, jeopardizing his liberty and putting his heart and soul into it as well as funds", they stressed.
In 1981, Engel wrote that he helped Jews "from his internal need to maintain human dignity".
In 1982, the Yad Vashem Institute honoureded Alfred Engel with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations".
