During the war, Tadeusz Slowik worked in the hospital in Boryslaw. In this hospital he met Jews, who he later helped survive the war: his future wife Scharlotta Katz and Dr. Jakub Bauer.
Scharlotta’s mother perished in the Nazi concentration camp Belzec in August 1942 and her father died in the Boryslaw ghetto. As she writes in her story for the Jewish Historical Institute, “in order to avoid being locked in the ghetto” she had to go into hiding.
Tadeusz Slowik, whom she met by chance, helped her find a hideout with Remigiusz Wegrzynowicz, an acquaintance of his in Lviv. She stayed there about two months.
In January 1943 Scharlotta escaped to Podbuz, a summer holiday resort some 11 kilometres from Boryslaw, where Slowik had obtained work as a doctor. She was helped by another of her future husband’s acquaintances, Przemyslaw Zulawski, who ”escorted her” on a train trip from Lviv to Drohobycz, and from there on foot, in such icy conditions that he literally carried her on his back the thirty kilometres to Podbuz.
In November 1943, Slowik’s father, Jan Slowik, brought Jakub Bauer to Podbuz, since the latter’s Ausweis (German issue identity papers) as a doctor no longer protected him. Dr. Slowik hid Scharlotta Katz and Dr. Bauer from German oppression until July 1944, when the Red Army entered Wolyn.
The Jews lived in a room adjoining the doctor’s surgery. At times of danger they crawled into a hideout under the stairs leading to the attic. At night they also dug out a small cellar under the floor of their room.
They used this cellar on two occasions, when the Gestapo turned up to inspect the premises. During the day they read the newspapers and books, or wrote letters to their relatives in hiding. They ate their meals together with Tadeusz, whose wages went to keep the whole household.
