Pawlicka Janina

PAWLICKA, JANINA From childhood, Janina Pawlicka had had close ties with Jews because at a young age she began to work in the household of the Aronson family, the owners of a textile factory in Łódź. Pawlicka cared for the children of the family and grew very close to them. When the Aronson family moved into the Warsaw ghetto, she joined them and tied her fate to theirs. She worked in German factories together with the Jews of the ghetto, and during the large-scale deportation, hid together with them. Thanks to her knowledge of Yiddish, she expanded her circle of acquaintances in the ghetto to include other Jewish families. In 1942, after the Aronson family left the ghetto in the hope of being able to emigrate to France using documents they were able to obtain as citizens of Paraguay, Pawlicka moved over to the Aryan side of the city. There, she rented a large apartment that she turned into a shelter for 12 Jews that fled from the ghetto. Among the Jews she hid were Mr. Trauman, Rachel Gurman Wolkenheim, Mieczysław Sieraczek and Bundist Bernard Goldstein, who after the war wrote a book, The Stars Bear Witness, in which he described Pawlicka’s actions to save Jews, in great detail. Marek Edelman, a Bund leader, also hid in her apartment from time to time. Pawlicka cared for all those she took under her wing with warm devotion, running her private shelter with great courage and wisdom. After a number of cases in which blackmailers robbed Jewish fugitives of everything they owned, Pawlicka exploited her social connections and moved the Jews she was hiding to another safe house, until they were able to rent another apartment, where they remained until the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. Throughout that entire period, Pawlicka cared for the Jewish fugitives and provided them with all their needs. After the war, Pawlicka cared for the children of a Jewish family, and in 1957 immigrated to Israel with them, where she lived very modestly in a rentedapartment. On July 28, 1964, Yad Vashem recognized Janina Pawlicka as Righteous Among the Nations.