Righteous meets rescued after 65 years
Misiuna came to the United States to meet after 65 years with the Jewish woman from Radom he rescued during the Second World War: Zofia Stupnicka, today – Sara Marmurek, living in Toronto. The Righteous will spend Thanksgiving with her.
The meeting was possible thanks to the initiative of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (read more about the activity of this organization).
In September 1939 Władysław Misiuna was 15 years old. At that time he was living in Radom, near the ghetto, where the family of Szmul Pinkus, a friend of the Misiunas, was being held.
Together with his brothers Władysław Misiuna was helping the Jews. They provided them, among others, with food and medicine. The whole Pinkus family survived until the liquidation of the ghetto, but later they were all killed.
In 1942 Misiuna was working as a supervisor on a rabbit farm housed on labor camp premises in one of the warehouses of an arms factory.
Thanks to his efforts several women were hired to feed the rabbits. They were Jewish:Rachela Micmacher, Dworka Zalcberg and Zofia Stupicka.
Misiuna looked after them, supplying them with food, medicine and hygiene products. He also gave them psychological support – he wrote poems for them.
As Sara Marmurek said during the press conference held in New York: “Mr Misiuna gave me the strength to survive, to live, to stop destroying myself and to believe that I am someone and that I can survive. It is an honor for me to be able to thank him personally”.
Because of his aid for the Jews, Misiuna was arrested and tortured by the Nazis. He was sent to a camp, but he managed to escape from there.
In 1944 the Jewish women he had been helping were deported to Auschwitz. Sara Marmurek survived the camp. After the war she settled in Toronto and started up a family.
Władysław Misiuna became an economist, he worked at the Polish Academy of Sciences. After retiring he returned to Radom. In his home town he founded the Polish-Israeli Friendship Association.
On June 28th, 1966 the Yad Vashem Institute honored him with the “Righteous Among the Nations” title for saving Jews during the Second World War.
The former President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński decorated him with the Commander’s Cross Polonia Restituta.
