Nadowska Janina

Nadowska, Janina File 5552 In November 1942, in the midst of the Aktionen in Eastern Galicia, twenty-five-year-old Norbert Aleksandrowicz decided to escape the Stanislawów ghetto and flee to Warsaw with the assistance of a Polish friend. His friend betrayed him and turned him over to the Germans, but several days later Aleksandrowicz escaped from prison and, physically depleted, roved the streets of Stanislawów in search of a place to hide. Entering a courtyard, Aleksandrowicz discovered a stable that had not been locked. The next day, Janina Nadowska found him there. Nadowska, a woman in her thirties, took pity on the Jewish refugee—a total stranger—and prepared a hideout for him in her cellar, where she met all his needs for the next twenty-two months. Apart from her six-year-old son Czesław, no one knew that Nadowska was concealing a Jew in her home. Even her father and brother, who visited her regularly, were oblivious to his presence. The Red Army liberated the city in September 1944, and it became apparent that Nadowska’s husband, exiled to Siberia at the beginning of the war, did not return. A year later, Nadowska and her son relocated to an area within Poland’s new borders and Aleksandrowicz, whose entire family had perished, joined them and remained with his rescuer until her death. On December 14, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Janina Nadowska as Righteous Among the Nations.