During the occupation, Alfred Engel lived in Warsaw at 3 Akademicka Street and worked at the building company "Inż. Piotr Butenko i spółka" at 30 Złota Street. In the summer 1941, this company delegated him to the territory of Eastern Galicia, to Lvov, Drohobych, Ternopil, Hluboczek and Krasne Podwołoczyska near Ternopil. From August 1942, he lived in Ternopil on Kolejowa Street. He witnessed crimes against Jewish people and helped many people who he had not known before.
As an administration manager, he tried to employ Jewish doctors, engineers and attorneys as workers and foremen at the building of the railway. He moved people from the ghetto in Ternopil, supported those who escaped from the trains transporting the Jews. He also employed two Jewish women from the ghetto in Ternopil, one as a secretary and the other as a housekeeper. He allowed them to hid at nights on the construction site and provided food to their families in the ghetto. He also employed a servant in his office who had false documents and a Warsaw architect, Jakub Grosglik-Groniowski, who used the surname Jakubowski. Jakub remained in Engel's place even after one of its colleagues had recognized him.
In July 1941, he took the engineer Ignacy Misiewicz and his wife Janina, who were in danger of arresting, from Drohobych to Hluboczek Wielki near Ternopil. In Hluboczek, they contacted the engineer Anatol Wróblewski (Proweller) and Jan Osełęka, who already worked for Engel's firm. Due to the danger of arresting, in 1943, Engel moved the Misiewiczs to Podwołoczyska. In 1944, they had to escape again, then they stayed in Engel's place in Ternopil and then they remained hidden until the liberation.
In 1946, Engel was demobilized from the Polish Army on the Recovered Territories. After that, he moved to Warsaw, where he met the Misiewiczs and used to see Groniowski. In 1949, the Misiewiczs 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, demonstrated clearly his attitude to the present system in the light of the conversations with us as well as the manner of conduct." "We can say definitely that the citizen Engel saved my and my wife's lives at least three times, jeopardizing his liberty and putting his heart and soul into it as well as the funds," they underlined.
Engel wrote in 1981 that he helped Jews "from his internal need to maintain human dignity."
In 1982, the Yad Vashem Institute awarded Alfred Engel the title of Righteous Among the Nations.
