During the German occupation, Marianna and Witold Rogala as well as their son Krzysztof lived on Krasińskiego Street in the Żoliborz District of Warsaw. Witold worked in the Warsaw Housing Cooperative. He was involved in allocating housing to those at risk of arrest, including many Jews.
A few days before the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the Rogala couple adopted a five-year-old Jewish girl named Marta. The child had “Aryan” documents for the name Brzezińska. The transfer of the girl was carried out in a shop on Chmielna Street by two young men. Stanisław Wasilewski, Witold’s brother-in-law, brought Marta to the flat in Żoliborz.
On the same day in the afternoon, the girl’s aunt and cousin Lutek appeared in the flat on Krasińskiego Street. They revealed the true name of the child – Elbinger – and gave addresses of her family in Israel and the US. The girl was malnourished and weak, but thanks to the loving care she came back to health. The family told the neighbours that she was a child of Konstanty Jagiełłóo, Marianna’s brother, who was in KL Auschwitz.
Konstanty ended up in the camp after a brutal interrogation conducted as a result of an accidental arrest in 1940. He was caught when he was taking guns out of his mother Helena’s flat. Until the outbreak of the war, Konstanty worked for the Red Scouting of the Association of the University of Workers – a leftist culture-sport youth organisation in which one of the main objectives was to combat anti-Semitism.
Helena Jagiełło was also involved in helping Jews. In her house on Płońska Street, she kept a Jewish woman with a small child. Both happily survived till the end of the war.
Five-year-old Marta called Marianna and Witold “auntie” and “uncle”, and adapted pretty quickly to the new environment. Marianna recalled: “Marta was a lively, intelligent child. She quickly entered the environment of children from the yard and nursery. She quickly befriended my 2-year-old son Krzysztof. Apart from my family and closest friends, I do not know whether anyone from the environment guessed the truth”.
In September 1945, Marta’s aunt, Tusia Gewercman came to Marianna and Witold and took the girl away. A year later, the child left for Israel to meet her second aunt.
