Hartabus Stefan

Hartabus, Stefan The members of Zegota (the Council for Aid to Jews) in Wieliczka near Krakow, focused on helping Jewish prisoners working in the local salt mines, and finding hiding places for Jews who had escaped the liquidation of the local ghetto in August 1942. Among the members of Zegota who were operating in the area was Stefan Hartabus, formerly a volunteer firefighter from the nearby village of Krzyszkowice. Hartabus was mainly responsible for finding hiding places for Jewish refugees, in and outside the city. Among those whose lives he saved were the four members of the Aleksandrowicz family who fled from the Krakow ghetto. Dr. Julian Aleksandrowicz was put in touch with an AK partisan unit, where he fought as a doctor and commander, under the code name Doctor Twardy. Hartabus’s brother worked as Wieliczka’s only mailman, and Hartabus, who used to “help” him sort letters, removed incriminating letters against Jews sent by local inhabitants to the Gestapo. The work of Zegota, and Hartabus’s part in it, has been described in the book Righteous Among the Nations by Wladyslaw Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewinowna, and in books by Michal Borwicz, a historian and member of the underground. On January 7, 1981, Yad Vashem recognized Stefan Hartabus as Righteous Among the Nations.