Kretchmar Hedwig

Kretchmar, Hedwig Witkowski, P. P. Witkowski was the managing director of a Todt factory in Lwow in occupied Poland. In 1941, Helena Hauser (née Koch) and her husband Wilhelm Hauser, both equipped with forged Aryan papers, obtained jobs at the factory. Witkowski, who was well aware of the Jewish identity of his new employees, advised Wilhelm Hauser, who had an imperfect command of the Polish language, that it would be safer for him to move to the Ukraine. Sometime later, however, Witkowski got news that Hauser and other Jews were caught by the Gestapo and killed. He then directed the remaining family – Hauser’s wife, daughter, and mother-in-law – to his sister, Hedwig Kretchmar, in Cracow. She arranged temporary accommodations for the Hausers and a place of work for Helena. However, since in Cracow there was the constant danger that the Hausers would be recognized by former acquaintances, Kretchmar sent them as Polish workers to her sister-in-law and mother-in-law in Bautzen, Germany, without divulging their Jewish identity. The Hausers stayed in Bautzen until the liberation. After the war, Helena, who had meanwhile remarried and settled in England together with her second husband, invited Mrs. Kretchmar to visit her. Mrs. Krechmar came and stayed with Helena and her husband for two months, but refused their offer to move to England. On September 13, 1979, Yad Vashem recognized Hedwig Kretchmar and P. Witkowski as Righteous Among the Nations.