Jozef Walaszczyk, Poland’s oldest rescuer of Jews, dies at 102

(JTA) — As an undercover partisan in Nazi-occupied Poland, Jozef Walaszczyk had little need so as to add any extra dangers to his plans.

However Walaszczyk, who died in Warsaw on Monday on the age of 102, fell in love with a Jewish girl and have become compelled to rescue her and dozens of different Jews from the Holocaust.

Though he was chargeable for saving not less than 50 Jews, Walaszczyk’s story is comparatively unknown in Poland and past, partly due to his aversion to being celebrated as a hero.

“It was a course of of 1 factor main to a different. There was a variety of concern and uncertainty,” he informed the Jewish Telegraphic Company in 2020.

Walaszczyk was acknowledged by Israel in 2002 as a Righteous Among the many Nations, the Jewish state’s title for non-Jews who risked their lives to save lots of Jews from the Holocaust. He was believed to be Poland’s oldest residing Righteous, based on the From the Depths Holocaust commemoration group. (That title now belongs to Stanisław Wróbel, who was born six months after Walaszczyk. He and his household hid Jews of their attic and had been acknowledged as Righteous in 1989.)

Walaszczyk’s rescuing story started at a lodge room close to Warsaw, the place he was together with his girlfriend in 1941, as Nazi officers barged in and demanded to examine the friends’ papers. Walaszczyk’s girlfriend informed him then that she was Jewish because the officers descended on their room — so Walaszczyk hid her in a closet and left the room whereas feigning a bout of vomiting that distracted the Germans.

He later married her and supplied her with a faux, non-Jewish id. However she was once more arrested with 20 different Jewish ladies in hiding.

Walaszczyk would bribe Polish cops to launch them. He helped not less than 30 different Jewish individuals discover hiding locations.

“I most likely took on too many dangers,” he informed JTA. “However serving to individuals in actual want has been one thing I couldn’t resist.”

An solely baby, Walaszczyk’s father died when he was 8, leaving his mom struggling financially and infrequently on the mercy of strangers, Walaszczyk stated.

Walaszczyk and his spouse Irena divorced after World Conflict II. He remarried and had one son together with his second spouse, earlier than divorcing once more and having one other son with the third.

Walaszczyk was afraid of being betrayed to the Germans by different Poles throughout the conflict. In his interview with JTA, he stated that he doesn’t assist legal guidelines in Poland that censor what might be stated about collaboration.

“There have been many rescuers. There have been additionally traitors,” he stated. “I do know as a result of a few of my buddies had been killed due to traitors. We have to discuss each on the identical time as a result of the existence of every a kind of teams helps us perceive the importance of the actions of each.”