Antonina Wyrzykowska

Antonina Wyrzykowska 2007

Antonina Wyrzykowska , b. Karwowska (born August 2, 1916 in Janczewko near Jedwabne , † November 29, 2011 in Milanówek ), was a Polish woman who was awarded the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations .

Born into a Catholic farming family, she had to drop out of school after the 2nd grade to help her parents. At the age of 16 she married Aleksander Wyrzykowski and stayed with her husband on her parents' farm.

In the summer of 1941, the German authorities set up a ghetto in Łomża and imprisoned Jews from the area there. Despite the mortal danger, the Wyrzykowskis tried to help the Jews and provided them with food. The Łomża ghetto was liquidated on November 1st, 1942 and the inmates were deported to extermination camps .

In November 1942, the Wyrzykowskis set up two secret rooms under the pig and chicken coop and hid seven Jews there: Moses Olszewicz, Berek Olszewicz, Schmul Wasserstein, Elke, the bride of Moses Olszewicz, Israel Grądowski, Jankel Kubrzański and Lea Sosnowska. Some of them survived the Jedwabne massacres before .

The German gendarmes searched the farm with sniffer dogs, but did not discover the hidden rooms. The Jews stayed there until the Red Army marched in in January 1945. Six out of seven Jews soon left the homestead, only Schmul Wasserstein stayed with the Wyrzykowski family.

Two months later, on the night of March 13-14, 1945, Antonina Wyrzykowska was attacked and beaten by six neighbors. The bandits wanted to kill the rescued Jew Wasserstein, but could not find him, they only robbed the homestead. The next day the Wyrzykowskis fled with their two children to Łomża , where they found shelter with the rescued Jews.

The Wyrzykowskis were insulted by the anti-Semites more and more often. In order to avoid the harassment, Antonina decided to leave Poland with the rescued Jews. In autumn 1945 they were illegally taken to the refugee camp in Linz . Her husband and children stayed in Poland. Later Antonina came back to Poland and settled with her family in Bielsk Podlaski . They bought a homestead there, but in the early 1960s they moved to Milanówek, not far from Warsaw. Antonina found a job in Warsaw as a school servant, then as a saleswoman. Her husband passed away during this time. In the 1970s, she visited the rescued Jews in the United States . There she married an American Pole, but the marriage soon divorced. The next marriage also ended in divorce.

Antonina Wyrzykowska corresponded with the rescued Jews. In 1976 she and her husband were awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem . On October 1, 2007, she was honored with the Commander's Cross of the Polonia Restituta Order .

swell

• Yad Vashem (English)
• Anna Bikont, My z Jedwabnego , (We from Jedwabne) Warszawa: Prószyński i S-ka, 2004, ISBN 8373376941
• Szymon Datner, Las sprawiedliwych. Karta z dziejów ratownictwa Żydów w okupowanej Polsce , (The Forest of the Righteous), Warszawa: Książka i Wiedza, 1968.