Domanus Adela

Domanus, Adela In the winter of 1942, Klara Szapiro fled from the Warsaw ghetto with her seven-year-old daughter, Nina. After being harassed by blackmailers, Szapiro was directed by an acquaintance to Adela Domanus, who obtained forged documents for her and her daughter, and arranged for them to stay with one of her friends. When this hiding place proved unsafe, Domanus placed little Nina in a Christian orphanage, and found a job for Klara as a maid for a German family, with whom she stayed until the area was liberated. In risking her life for persecuted Jews, Domanus was guided by sincere humanitarian considerations, which overrode considerations of personal safety. In early 1941, her son, Józef, smuggled his girlfriend, Stefania Adler, out of the Warsaw ghetto, and married her under an assumed identity. About a year later, Domanus sheltered Stefania’s mother, Helena, after she, too, escaped from the ghetto. After the war, Klara and Nina Szapiro immigrated to Israel, where they kept up a regular correspondence with Domanus until her death. On October 26, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Adela Domanus as Righteous Among the Nations.