In early November 1942, Władysław Janczarek, a resident of Lublin, stumbled across two young Jewish acquaintances, the sisters Lea (aged 13) and Sara (aged 20) Bass. They had escaped some six weeks earlier from the Majdan Tatarski ghetto and had been hiding ever since in various places, among others the Jewish cemetery.
The Germans had established the so-called residual ghetto in Majdan in the spring of 1942. According to German propaganda, this was to be a showcase estate, whose residents would be able to live and work in peace. The promises made by the Germans quickly proved to be false: selections soon began, with transports of the ghetto’s population being sent to extermination camps. The Bass family, one of the many imprisoned in the ghetto, were sent to their deaths in September. The only family members to escape the roundup were Sara and Lea.
Janczarek had known the father of this family before the war and decided to help the two daughters. He arranged "Aryan documents” to be forged for them and persuaded the girls to volunteer for work in Germany. The two Bass girls hung around the neighbourhood for some time yet, until they finally ended up in an institution for women run by Sister Maria Gulbin. She directed them to the priest Jan Poddębniak.
Thanks to his assistance, the girls managed to find work in the Reich as Poles. They worked near Berlin until the liberation.
