Maruczyński Włodzimierz

Maruczyński Włodzimierz In September 1942, the Germans declared the establishment of a ghetto in the city of Drohobycz in the Lwów district, ordering all the city’s Jews to move there. Eight Jews – Chaim and Rachela Krochmal, their son Adam, his wife Adela, Henryk and Amalia Backenroth and Chune and Basia Beller – refused to heed this order and remained behind in a hiding place they had prepared outside the ghetto. All eight Jews remained in the hideout until the liberation by the Red Army in August 1944. Throughout the entire period, their acquaintance Włodzimierz Maruczyński, a distinguished member of the Drohobycz community, supplied them with food, medicine and clothing, and cheered them up by providing them with news from the war front, despite the danger it posed to his life. Maruczyński was eventually forced to leave the city for his own safety, and he moved to the city of Przeworsk, in the Rzeszów district. Even then, he did not abandon his Jewish friends. Despite the danger merely showing up in Drohobycz posed to his life, he continued to visit the eight Jews in their hiding place from time to time in the dark of night in order to continue providing them with food and to take care of their needs. Everything Maruczyński did for the eight Jews was motivated by a sense of patriotic duty and deep human values, and he neither asked for nor received anything in return. After the war, the eight survivors together with Maruczyński moved to territory within Poland’s new borders. Eventually, the eight survivors left Poland and lost contact with their rescuer. On October 18, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Włodzimierz Maruczyński as Righteous Among the Nations. File 6824