Korkuć Kazimierz

Korkuć Kazimierz In September 1939, Korkuciany, a remote village in the county of Lida, in the Nowogródek district, was annexed to the Soviet Union. After the annexation, the Soviets exiled many Poles suspected of anti-government activity to the camps in northern Russia. Among those designated for exile was a relative of Kazimierz Korkuć, a wealthy farmer from Korkuciany. Thanks to the intervention of a member of the Kabacznik family, Jews who owned a store in the nearby town of Ejszyszki, the relative was freed. Korkuć, eager to repay Kabacznik, helped him and his family to escape when, in 1941, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, the Germans rounded up all the Jews of Ejszyszki in the marketplace for deportation. After sheltering them temporarily on his estate in Korkuciany, he transferred them to the ghetto in the nearby town of Raduń. When, however, Korkuć discovered that the Raduń ghetto was about to be liquidated, he entered it and smuggled out the Kabaczniks and their relatives, the Sołomiańskis, and took them to a hiding place he prepared for them on his family’s estate. After witnessing the terrible suffering of the Jews, saving Jews became his life’s mission. At great personal risk, he smuggled out a number of Jews, including the Szulman and Lewin families, from the nearby town of Iwje. The refugees stayed with Korkuć’s neighbors, whom he persuaded to cooperate in the rescue operation. Korkuć was betrayed by informers to the Gestapo and, after being brutally interrogated, had to be hospitalized. The above notwithstanding, Korkuć continued to help the Jewish refugees staying with him and his neighbors. In risking his life for them, Korkuć was inspired by love of mankind and his religious faith. All his charges – sixteen in all – were liberated in the summer of 1944 by the Red Army. All the survivors left Poland after the war, and some of them invited Korkuć to visit them in the United States. On June 4, 1973, Yad Vashem recognized Kazimierz Korkuć as Righteous Among the Nations. File:785