Libera Wacław & Stanisława

Libera, Wacław Libera, Stanisława Mendel Gwiazda, born in the summer of 1942 in the Biała Rawska Ghetto, was an infant when his parents Elka and Anczel were sent to Treblinka and murdered. Anczel had worked in the leather industry and had commercial connections, one of whom, a cobbler named Wacław Libera, had somehow found him in the ghetto. Libera took Mendel out of the ghetto in a basket and brought him back to the farm where he lived with his wife and daughter. Unfortunately, both his father and father-in-law opposed the presence of a Jewish child that would endanger the entire household. Libera sent the baby to stay with a relative of his for a brief spell while he built a rudimentary home on his father’s land but off the farm itself. He then retrieved Mendel and moved into the new home with his wife and daughter and the baby. In 1943 the Liberas had a son. Eventually, there was no more work for Wacław in the area of Biała Rawska, and he had to go to another part of the country to work and send money to his wife from there. She remained with the children, including Mendel, and cared for them. In 1945, after the liberation, the Liberas took 3.5-year-old Mendel to the Jewish Agency. They were so impoverished they could barely feed him, and they hoped that the Agency would provide for him. This it did, and in about a year Mendel was adopted by a relative in Canada and lived as Melvin Goldberg for the rest of his life. On January 14, 2014, Yad Vashem recognized Wacław and Stanisława Libera as Righteous Among the Nations.