Praszek Bronisława

Praszek, Bronisława In late 1942, on the eve of the liquidation of the Rawa-Mazowiecka ghetto, in the Lodz district, Rachel Rubinlicht fled with her two young children to Warsaw, after her husband was taken to the Majdanek death camp, from which he never returned. Because Rubinlicht did not know anyone in Warsaw, she was forced to move frequently from one hiding place to another to keep her identity and the identity of her children secret. In June 1943, Rubinlicht and her children came to the home of Bronisława Praszek and asked to stay with her. Praszek, whose husband had been taken to a forced-labor camp in Germany, was a poor woman living with her three young children in a one-room cellar apartment. Although Rubinlicht told Praszek that she was Polish, she soon revealed the truth to her, but this did not deter Praszek, who agreed that Rubinlicht and her two children remain with her. Because Praszek was unable to support the three Jewish fugitives, she often took Rubinlicht along with her on her trips to the surrounding villages, where they bought food, which Praszek later sold in the city to support her own children and the Rubinlicht family. Even after a neighbor began to suspect that Praszek was hiding a Jewish family in her apartment, she continued to risk her life, paying off the neighbor to keep his mouth shut by doing housework for him. Rubinlicht remained in Praszek’s home until the liberation in January 1945, and thanks to her help, which was motivated by pure altruism, without asking for or receiving anything in return, all three were saved. After the war, Rubinlicht and her children immigrated to Israel. On June 20, 1990, Yad Vashem recognized Bronisława Praszek as Righteous Among the Nations.