Maria married doctor Józef Kreisberg in June 1941, shortly before the German troops entered Lvov. After the Nazis occupied the city, Maria was determined to save not only herself, her husband and his family, but also other Jews supposed to de exterminated. She managed to save her husband and his mother by hiding them in her Lvov apartment and at times in Drohobycz.
Early in the summer of 1942 Ukrainian police captured the 17-year old son of Józef Kreisberg’s cousin, Lucjan Kops, meaning to transport him to the Lacki Wielkie camp. At the pleas of the boy’s mother, Maria undertook the risky attempt to contact the head of the Jewish Department of Arbeitsamt, who was making decisions regarding the transport. She had a hard time reaching him, but once she did, she managed to convince him to let the boy go. That saved his life; no one came back from that transport. Maria took care of Lucjan later on, as well– in Drohobycz, where she got the boy, equipped with the baptism certificate of his middle school colleague, Adam Komers, a job at the sawmill and joinery ran by a trusted acquaintance, Leon Pełczyński. In a risky situatuion, when Lucjan was to join a Polish youth work camp in Borysław and was to attend a medical board examination, Maria managed to get him substituted with a young Pole, Józef Gumienny, who assumed Lucjan’s name for that purpose. Lucjan Kops has survived and currently is a university professor in Canada.
Lucjan maintained contact with Maria for years, and it was at his application that the Yad Vashem Institute awarded her with the Righteous Among the Nations title.
