Samołuk Joanna (Gliwa)

Lichtental-Samoluk, Joanna In 1939, Meir Lichtental, a wagon driver, fought in the Polish Army, and after escaping German captivity, returned, ragged and exhausted, to his town, Trembowla, in the Tarnopol district, which had meanwhile been annexed to the Soviet Union. Upon arriving in Trembowla, he knocked on the door of his friend, Joanna Samoluk, who lived alone with her three children after her husband, a soldier in the Polish Army, had failed to return from the war. In 1941, when the Germans occupied the city and herded all Jews into the ghetto, Samoluk sheltered Lichtental in her home and, at his request, entered the ghetto to bring his relatives food. Upon returning from one of her visits to the ghetto, Samoluk brought back Lichtental’s niece, two-week-old Misia Lichtental, as requested by her parents. When the Germans began searching for Jewish fugitives, Samoluk, whose neighbors knew of Lichtental’s origins, moved with her children, Lichtental, and Misia, into a half-ruined house on the outskirts of the city. Although the Germans raided their “new” abode, Lichtental managed to hide and was not discovered. In due course, Samoluk gave birth to Lichtental’s child, and all six of them stayed in the ruined house, while Samoluk worked as a casual laborer on the surrounding farms to support them, until March 1944 when the area was liberated. After the war, Samoluk, Lichtental, and all the children, moved to an area within the new borders of Poland. Samoluk and Lichtental later married and immigrated to Israel. Misia Lichtental subsequently immigrated to England. On June 17, 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Joanna Lichtental (née Samoluk) as Righteous Among the Nations.