Tomb of ‘Righteous’ Pole Is Rededicated
The tombstone of a Polish woman who saved a Jewish woman by hiding her in the roof of her barn for two years during the Holocaust was rededicated with a Talmudic inscription.
Maria Jalowiec, who died in 1979, hid her neighbor Regina (Rivka) Wallach, who had managed to jump off a wagon after being rounded up by the Nazis, from 1942 to 1944.
Rivka’s son, Irving Wallach, who lives in Sydney, and her daughter, Sabina, of California, were present at the ceremony Sunday in Brzostek, Poland. They sponsored the renovation of the tomb after discovering it by chance last year.
Other family members traveled from Israel, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands to witness the event, which also marked the 70th anniversary of the roundup by the Nazis of the Jews of Brzostek. Most were shot in a mass grave.
A new memorial to the Jews of Brzostek and nearby villages who were shot by the Nazis also opened in the presence of the chief rabbi of Poland and Australia’s ambassador to Poland.
Irving Wallach said of the event, “It marks the righteousness and courage in saving life, that of a Jewish neighbor. Maria Jalowiec’s courage and her decision to save my mother’s life came at the risk of possibly sacrificing her family’s and her own life. Such people deserve to have their names and deeds shouted from the rooftops.”
Wallach and his sister included on Jalowiec’s tombstone the Talmudic dictum “Whoever saves one life, it as if he saved the whole world.”
He said he hoped to have Jalowiec included as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
