During the years of German occupation, Stanisław and Julianna ran a farm in Stoczek Węgrowski. They had ten children, eight of whom lived with them at the time.
It is not known as to when, exactly, the first Jews turned to the Postek family for help. In the summer of 1942, there were three people from the Warsaw Ghetto. More came later. For them, the Postek family organised two hiding places. In total, seventeen people found refuge there.
On 5th September, as a result of being denounced, the Germans raided the Postek home. All the Jews were forced out of their hiding places and were murdered. The Germans took Stanisław to Auschwitz, arrested two of his sons and, in the yard, beat Julianna to death "for baking bread for Jews".
The Postek family farm
The Postek family farm was located on the outskirts of Stoczka Węgrowski (Mazowieckie Province), near a forest. It covered thirty-five hectares.
In September 1939, the Germans bombed many houses in Stoczek and began the occupation of the town. As a result of the war activities, the Postek home was also burned down.
Stanisław built a new house and adapted the remains of the old one into a cellar, where the family stored potatoes and grain.
Helping run the farm were the children - Marianna, Wacław, Henryk, Józef, Zofia, Franciszek, Cecylia, and Jerzy. The eldest, Marianna, was twenty-four years old when the war broke out, while the youngest, Jerzy, was seven-years-old. The Postek family also had a son, Kazimierz, who lived separately, and another son, Jan, who passed away, during the war, due to illness.
Before the war, the Postek family maintained trade relations with the Jewish residents of Stoczek, who made up the majority of the town's population. Stanisław also visited the (open) ghetto, which the Germans had established, in Stoczek, at the beginning of 1941.
In September 1942, the ghetto was liquidated, and most of the Jewish men and women were deported to the Treblinka exterminaton camp, located about twenty kilometres from Stoczek.
Seventeen Jewish Men and Women in Two Hiding Places
Jews hiding in the forests often knocked on the Postek family's door asking for food - especially in winter. Most likely, in the summer of 1942, escapees from the Warsaw Ghetto turned to Stanisław for help in finding shelter. Among them was Puciek, a cattle trader, who was around 50 years old.
Postek provided help to him and two others, a man and a woman, offering them refuge in the potato cellar. It was a small, stone-lined room, several metres in size, located a few dozen metres from the house.
Shortly afterward, following the liquidation of the Stoczek ghetto, Hajkiel Zieleniec, a flour merchant and groat producer from Stoczek, asked for help. According to the testimony of Joel Lande, Zieleniec’s son-in-law who survived in the USSR, Hajkiel hid there with his wife, Szyfra, although other accounts do not confirm this.
The Majorek family also found refuge with the Postek family - two brothers, their sister and her twelve-year-old son. For them, Postek organised a second hiding place, a few dozen meters from the house - a pit dug next to the barn, camouflaged by wooden planks and straw.
There were also two Jewish women - a mother and her approximately twenty-year-old daughter - who spent their days sitting on a platform (a pile of straw covered with a roof and bound by wooden planks). Cecylia Borkowska, Postek's daughter, twelve-year-old at the time, recalls the quiet conversations she had with the women:
"I often went there and visited those Jewish women. One of them was writing a book. She had a notebook and asked me to buy her another one. So, I bought it for her and, sometimes, a pencil also."
Among those in hiding were escapees from the prisoner revolt in Treblinka in August 1943. In total, seventeen people found refuge there.
Nothing must be said - the conditions for the Jews hiding with the Postek family
"Why are they eating all that bread", the neighbours would say about the Postek family. Julianna baked bread up to three times a week to feed her family and those in hiding.
In the evenings, Stanisław would also bring them potatoes and groats, supposedly cooked for the pigs or cows. He would also do extra shopping. His older sons and daughter Marianna helped him. The parents did not involve the younger children in the helping, but they made sure to warn them about the danger:
"Mummy said that we must not say anything, anywhere”, recalls Cecylia.
Many people came to the Postek home, but the children did not invite their peers. Julianna was initially hesitant to shelter Jews, fearing for her family's safety. However, her husband Stanisław convinced her, saying, "Come on, it's a human being".
Under the cover of night, some of the Jews would occasionally enter the Postek home. However, their hosts most likely did not realise that such a large group was hiding on their property. It is unknown as to whether those in hiding provided any financial support to the Postek family:
"I don't know if they gave a little to daddy, maybe they did, because to support so many people ... that I don't know…”, says Cecylia.
The German raid - the result of being denounced
On the morning of 5th September 1943, German soldiers surrounded the Postek farm. Stanisław warned the family, "Kids, get up and start working, because there might be a raid. There are Germans all over the forest", Cecylia recalls. Some of the children scattered - Marianna and Zofia ran into the forest, Franciszek went to the animals and the youngest, Cecylia and Jerzy, ran to the school.
The Germans knew exactly what they were looking for. In two hiding places, they found seventeen people. Some of them were shot on the spot, while the rest were taken to a nearby forest and shot there. They also found a loaf of bread in the hiding place.
They took Stanisław and two of his sons to the police station. Julianna remained in the yard. The Germans did not forget about her. When they returned, they were holding sticks. They beat her to death "for baking bread for Jews". Her mutilated body was buried the next day by Józef Burczak, a neighbour of the Postek family.
Stanisław never returned home. After being taken to the Pawiak prison, he was sent later to Auschwitz, where he died after a few months. His sons, Wacław and Henryk, were initially released by the Germans but, in June 1944, they were re-arrested. All trace of them was lost.
The raid occurred as the result of denunciation. According to Kazimierz Postek's account, the informant was either a forester or a neighbour, who reported the family for allegedly having Jews steal potatoes from his field. However, the exact identity of the informant remains unclear.
"They kept asking us as to who said something. But, how can I know who may have accused us?", says Cecylia.
It was only in October that the children returned home and were cared for by neighbours and extended family members. Meanwhile, looters had ransacked the Postek farm. "People rushed in and took everything, saying that these belonged to the Jews", recalls Cecylia,
Soon after, due to the liberation battles in 1944, the Postek home was again burned down.
The remains of the Jews, buried in the yard, were exhumed in 1949.
Commemorating the Postek Family
In 1988, all surviving members of the Postek family, as well as other witnesses, gave testimonies to the Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes in Białystok.
In 2009, Stanisław and Julianna Postek were honored by the President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for their heroic actions during the war.
In 2019, the family was commemorated in Stoczek as part of the "Called by Name" project by the Pilecki Institute.
In 2024, Cecylia Borkowska, in her home in Stoczek, gave an interview to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and met with Dan Lande, the great-grandson of Hajkel Zieleniec, who was murdered while in hiding. Dan, who lives in Buenos Aires. honoured the story of the Postek family through his project "La Ruta de las Bobes" (Following in the Footsteps of Grandparents), which aims to restore, among Argentinians, the memory of ancestors from Central and Eastern Europe .
