The Lubas Family

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Story of Rescue - The Lubas Family

In September 1942 Jews from the village of Jedlicze (Krosno county, Lviv province) were ordered to “come forward to be deported”. Not all of them carried out the German command.

Nine people – coming from a few mainly related families – decided to take the risk. They found a hiding place in Jaszczew. Someone denounced them, but they were warned by another person and managed to escape. The moved to the village of Bajdy. Betrayed one more time, they had to escape again – this time to Moderówka. There, they were given shelter for almost two years by a poor peasant family: Franciszek and Maria Lubaś.

Among the Jews who found shelter on their small farm were: Lea and Lejb Lerman, their daughter Bracha and their son Szlojme, their sister-in-law Chawa Lambek with her daughter Ester, their two nephews Menasze Najman and Herszl Frys, as well as a girl by the name of Irena Rosenhendler.

They had two hiding places: one in a shelter dug in the ground and the other in the attic of the wooden house, where Franciszek Lubaś put an additional wall. Only Julia Janina (currently Twardzik) was let in on this secret. Although she was the oldest daughter of the Lubaś family, she was still a child. She used to walk a few kilometers to get the bread, she brought water to the hiding places, disposed of the waste and served as a messenger.

Today, after numerous strokes and infarctions, Julia cannot speak. It is her husband who tells her story. For example, he describes how at someone’s request – probably Chawa Lambek’s – Janina managed to get into the Rzeszów ghetto two times. She delivered Chawa’s husband her letter, “in which she implored him to escape”. Without success – fear was stronger.

Others also experienced such tragedies. According to the account of Janina’s husband, the Germans caught and shot the three sons of the Lermans, hiding separately.

Fear was also familiar to the Lubaś family. Both fear and poverty. “Two Jews had some money, but the rest didn’t and my wife’s parents had to feed them. It was really hard, because we also had to hand over a quota to the Germans. We were very hungry. And we only wore shoes in winter” – recalls the husband.

He says that as much as ten Jews had been hiding on the farm of the Lubaś family. In the summer of 1944, when the Russian offensive reached the Krosno county, nine of them reached the area liberated from the Germans.

Only the little girl (Irena Rosenhendler?) remained in the hiding place. For a few weeks she was alone, because the Germans “displaced the Poles 3 kilometers away”. Janina brought her food, walking “among corpses, because it was the front, there were bullets”. Once, when the Germans suddenly appeared, she even had to hide inside the girl’s hiding place.

All the Jews hidden by the Lubaś family survived the Second World War. Most of them left to the US. One person went “to her aunt, to England”. In 1989 Maria and Franciszek Lubaś and Julia Janina Twardzik-Lubaś received the medals and titles “Righteous Among the Nations”.

Bibliography

  • Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, 349, 2116
  • Gutman Israel red. nacz., Księga Sprawiedliwych wśród Narodów Świata, Ratujący Żydów podczas Holocaustu