Janina Gutowska lived with her mother and younger sister in the Żoliborz district of Warsaw. She was involved in the underground, active first in the ZWZ, then in the Home Army.
In early 1943, Janina’s mother’s friend brought a Jewish couple with a small child and asked Janina’s family to shelter them. The Gutowski women agreed to hide the family. They were the Teichers from Łódź. A week later, the same friend arrived to take the parents. She was to return later for the boy. However, the Teichers’ new hiding place was found; the friend was frightened and stopped helping. The boy stayed with the Gutowskis, hiding in the attic of their house.
Janina obtained Aryan papers for the boy under the name of Piotr Chrzanowski. A few months later the Gutowski home also became an asylum for Irena Palenker, the wife of a Jewish officer being held in an oflag. After the war, Piotrek and Irena both immigrated to Israel. Neither of them ever forgot the Gutowski family, each owing their survival of the Holocaust to them.
