Righteous Pole’s Maccabiah Reunion With Rescued Jew
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Many of the athletes flying into Israel this week to participate in the 19th Maccabiah Games would say this is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. But for one 86-year-old Polish-Catholic woman who will be among the crowd of tens of thousands attending the opening ceremony at Teddy Stadium on Thursday evening, it marks the realization of a very different sort of wish.
Czesława Żak had always dreamed of flying to Israel so that she could reunite, after all these years, with those Jews she and her family had saved during the Holocaust. This week, thanks to a fundraising campaign launched by March of the Living Canada, it has come true. And as a side bonus, she’s also received a complimentary ticket to the best show in town.
For a period of two years and seven months, Żak and her family provided shelter to 14 Jews from several different families, in their Warsaw apartment. These Jews, who had fled the Warsaw Ghetto, were hidden in a spare room that was blocked off from the rest of their second-floor apartment on Grzybowski Square and not visible from the street. In 1993, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum recognized Żak as a Righteous Among the Nations – an honorific used to describe people who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis.
Of the 14 Jews her family saved, some moved to Switzerland after the war, some to France, and one family, the Treflers, moved to Israel.
For more, go to Haaretz
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
