Fr. Ludwik Wrodarczyk and Felicja Masojada

These events happened in the month of April in the year 1942 in Rokitno (district of Wolyn, today's Ukraine). All the Jews living there got the order to gather at the local train station. After a while, when they realized that they were surrounded by German and Ukrainian police they started to panic, many of them tried to run away. Seeing this, police opened fire with the machine guns. However, some Jews managed to escape and hide in the nearby forest.

Among those lucky ones were the two Lewin brothers: 17 year old Samuel and 10 year old Alexander. They were trying to find the hidden place in one of the villages, but they were chased out by its inhabitants. After a tiring walk they reached a village called Okopy. There they knocked at the door of one of the houses situated on the edge of the forest hoping to get something to eat. Felicja Masojda and her guest Fr. Ludwik Wrodarczyk invited them inside. They were aware that in the local area the chase to find all those who run away from the train station was going on. That is why they decided to give shelter to the boys and keep them inside the storeroom until the chase was over. Afterwards Felicja and Fr. Ludwik gave them some food and asked them to hide in the forest. They knew that the forest would be a safer place for the boys. Samuel and Alexander found a safe hiding place in a sort of cave. Felicja's house remained for them a base where they could get a meal and clothes. According to the different relation of the same story, the boys first knocked on the door of the parish house in Okopy where the parish priest was Fr. Wrodarczyk. From there they went to the forest.

 Fr. Ludwik helped also others Jews that came to the village. In his parish house many found a hiding place. One of them was a Jewish boy who came there in November of 1939. Fr. Ludwik gave him a job as the organist in the church. Later on both of them organized a choir and an orchestra there.

 Fr. Ludwik and Felicja, for their help, paid with their lifes. They were accused of helping Jews and then murdered by Ukrainian nationalists, who, in the time of spring of 1943 started to plunder villages in the district of Wolyn. Felicja was murdered in June in 1943. Six monts later, after having been brutally tortured, Fr. Wrodarczyk was murdered in the village of Kisorycze (today's Ukraine).

In the year 2000, by the request of the survivor Alexander Lewin, who was now living in Canada, Yad Vashem posthumously honoured Fr. Ludwik Wrodarczyk and Felicja Masojda with the title Rightous Among the Nations.

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