NOVANEWS
ed note–imagine if there were the equivalent, a ‘Righteous Jew’ award for those who spoke out against what’s being done to Palestinians, opposed clemency for Pollard or advocated for 9/11 truth. Foxman and the rest of his gang of criminals would be pissing their pants in outrage over such terminology. HOWEVER, when Jews use it to describe otherwise-evil Gentiles who ‘broke’ with their natures in helping Jews escape the nazis, no one thinks twice about the implications of such language.
jpost.com
Ludwika and Zygmunt Szostak, an elderly Polish couple who hid and protected a Jewish mother and her young daughter from the Nazis during World War II, were given a posthumous Righteous Among the Nations award at Yad Vashem Monday, honoring their courage.
During a ceremony, attended by Karolina Eisen, the then-seven-year-old daughter saved by the Szostak’s, the couple’s names were unveiled in a stone monument honoring other Polish “Righteous Gentiles” who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
Elzbieta Stradowska, the great-niece of the Szostak’s, flew to Israel from Ludz, Poland to accept the award on the couple’s behalf at the unveiling in the museum’s Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations.
“Here you have a young girl who survived the Holocaust with her mother and now you can see three generations of her family,” said Irena Steinfeldt, director of Yad Vashem’s Righteous Among the Nations Department, while Eisen’s family and Stradowska posed for photographs.
“But imagine if her relatives, who were murdered, had been here today,” she continued. “Then you can begin to see the enormity of the loss. This is why the metal [given to Righteous Gentiles] says ‘Whoever saves one life saves the entire universe’ – and this is a very visual representation of this saying.”
In 1942, while living in a suburb of Warsaw, the Szostak’s rented out a room in their home to Dora Agatstein and her only child, Karolina, who escaped the Lvov Ghetto one month before the Great Deportation.
Despite the dangers surrounding housing the Jewish mother and daughter, the Szostak’s quickly became attached to the pair and kept them in hiding – even when Dora could no longer pay rent.
To assist the couple, Dora and Karolina wrapped homemade confections inside the home for extra income.
Later on, to lessen suspicions among neighbors, Dora, a teacher, was given an instructing position by a nun at a nearby school, and Karolina was enrolled in a local kindergarten.
However, during the onslaught of the Polish Uprising in 1944, the Szostak’s, Dora and Karolina, were forced to leave their home and sent to southern Poland where they lived as refugees.
The four continued to stay together there, where they lived with a poor farming family and picked potatoes, until being liberated by the Soviet army in April 1945.
Dora and Karolina subsequently immigrated to Israel in 1950, and lived in Jerusalem. Ludwika died in Poland in 1970; her husband died there two years later.
On November 13, the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations officially recognized Ludwika and Zygmunt as Righteous Among the Nations.
Following the ceremony honoring the Szostak’s, Eisen, a retired Jerusalem high school history teacher living in the capital, said she often thinks about the couple, whom she described “like family.”
“They did more than save me, they became my family,” she said. “I have a very warm place in my heart for them in my life, even when I try to forget everything [about the war].”
Stradowska said there was never any question in her family, all of whom were against the Nazis, that protecting Eisen and her mother was necessary and just.
“To them, and to me, it was a very obvious situation,” she said. “In my family it wasn’t an act of bravery or heroism, it was normal. Someone needed help, that’s all.”
Asked if her relatives spoke of Eisen years after she was free and living in Israel, Stradowska smiled.
“She was like a member of our family, especially when my aunt talked about her,” she said. “[Ludwika] talked about her warmly – about a little girl who was wise, beautiful, and the clever things she said. But they never talked of ‘sacrificing’ for her. My aunt and uncle loved her and were happy to help her.”
While Eisen said her late mother kept in contact with the Szostak’s for many years prior to her death, Eisen only regained contact with the family’s descendants within the last year, after her grandson asked her about her experiences during the Holocaust.
“He was going on a trip to Poland and wanted to know what happened to me there,” said Eisen. “That was when I reconnected with them.”
Surrounded by her family and loved ones following the ceremony, Eisen said she had mixed feelings about the day.
“I was very excited today and I tried not to cry all the time,” said Eisen. “I told myself to be strong.”
