Ornatowska Zofia

Ornatowska- Śniadecka, Zofia Zofia Śniadecka, a teacher from Brzeżany, in the Tarnopol district in Eastern Galicia, had been friendly with the Podhorcer family and dentist Emil Ornstein before the war. Thanks to her fluency in German, Śniadecka was hired as a secretary with a German company that had warehouses in the Jewish quarter of the city. This enabled her to remain in contact with and help her Jewish friends. In the spring of 1942, Rosa Podhorcer approached her, asking her to help save her family. Śniadecka took the seven members of the Podhorcer family into her home, among them Emil Ornstein and his six-year-old son Jacek. After she located a family of farmers that would agree to hide the Jews in their home, she transferred five members of the Podhorcer family to the farm and hid them in the hiding place the farmer prepared. Disregarding the danger to her life, she took the care of the family upon herself, doing all the things the farmer refused to do for them, and although she obtained false papers for Ornstein, she decided to hide him in her apartment because of his Jewish appearance. Śniadecka searched for a suitable hiding place for Ornstein’s son Jacek for a long time until she found a place to hide him far from the city. In late March 1944, a member of the Podhorcer family, Ornstein’s sister – who was in the advanced stages of pregnancy – suddenly showed up at Śniadecka’s door. The farmer on whose farm they had been hiding refused to allow her to give birth in his home and she had come to Śniadecka to give birth in her apartment. Śniadecka called in a trustworthy midwife and little Danuta was born. The baby remained with Śniadecka, and the mother returned to the hiding place on the farm. The Germans eventually discovered the Podhorcer family’s hiding place and murdered them all. Śniadecka, who feared that the Germans would soon come to search her home, moved Ornstein to her brother’s home, and she fled with the infant to stay with friends thatlived outside the city. Śniadecka cared for the baby as best she could, but after she returned home, the Germans demanded that she give up the Jews she was hiding. This happened on the eve of the liberation, and only the entry of the Red Army into the city saved her life. Despite the danger to her life, Sniadecka resolved to save Jews and did so motivated by pure altruism, never asking for nor receiving anything in return. After the liberation, Ornstein (later Ornatowski) married Śniadecka, and they raised his son Jacek and niece Danuta. After the war, they left Brzeżany and moved to Bytom, located within the new borders of Poland. On June 19, 1986, Yad Vashem recognized Zofia Ornatowska-Sniadecka as Righteous Among the Nations.