Jasiński Stanisław ; Daughter: Słodkowska Emilia (Jasińska)

Jasiński, Stanisław Słodkowska-Jasińska, Emilia One day in September 1942, German and Ukrainian policemen appeared at dawn in Siedliszcze Male, near the town of Kostopol, in the Wolyn district. The Germans rounded up all the Jews living there and executed them along with other Jews from the vicinity. Two brothers, Józef and Shmuel Liderman, managed to flee the massacre, and made their way through the fields to the village of Antonowka, near the city of Rowne, where Jews were still living. Shortly thereafter, the Jews of Antonowka were also murdered in the forest that bordered on the village, after having been forced to dig their own mass grave. While the Jews were digging the grave, the Liderman brothers broke into a run, although the Germans were shooting at them and wounded Shmuel in the hand. After fleeing, the two, naked and exhausted, arrived at the home of Stanisław Jasiński, who had known their dead father. Jasiński lived in an isolated house inside the forest with his daughter Emilia, her husband, and their three children. Although before the war, the relations between Jasiński, who was old and blind, and the boys’ father had not been good, he opened his home to the two Jewish refugees, and assured them that “everything that was has been forgotten.” Emilia took good care of the Liderman brothers, bandaged Shmuel’s hand, and gave them clothing and food. Without asking anything in return, Jasiński instructed his daughter to allow the boys to lie down and rest in the hayloft, and after they recovered, to dig themselves an underground hiding place, under the barn. A few days later, two more Jews, who had also survived the massacre in the forest, knocked on Jasiński’s door. They were Akiba Kremer and Shaya Odler, who also were provided with a hiding place and food. Two months later, after a rumor spread in the area that Jasiński was hiding Jews on his farm, the four refugees were forced to leave Jasiński’s home and hide deep inside the forest,where they remained until their liberation in July 1944. A month after the liberation, Ukrainian nationalists murdered Akiba Kremer, Shaya Odler and Józef Liderman. After her father’s death, Emilia Słodkowska emigrated to the United States, and many years later, when Shmuel managed to locate her, the two began to correspond regularly. On February 28, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Stanisław Jasiński and his daughter Emilia Słodkowska neé Jasińska as Righteous Among the Nations.