Preker Teresa (Dobrska)

Preker, Teresa Teresa Dobrska, later Preker (Prekerowa), met Alina Wolman in 1940. The two girls became very close friends and Dobrska helped Wolman’s family as best she could. After the Wolman family was imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto, Dobrska would smuggle food into the ghetto for them. At a fairly early stage, Dobrska convinced Wolman to escape over to the Aryan side of the city and she arranged for her a job and a place to live. At the beginning of the large-scale deportation from the ghetto, Dobrska and other friends smuggled Wolman’s brother and parents out of the ghetto. Until the war ended, Dobrska kept in touch with Wolman and came to her assistance when she needed help. In September 1941, Dobrska found a little abandoned Jewish child crying on her doorstep. She took the child in and cared for her in her parents’ home, and after dressing her and teaching her how to behave like a Polish child, brought her to a convent. During the war, Dobrska married Mieczysław Preker and moved into the Skolimow estate near Warsaw, where she hid a Jewish man who used the name Jan Zieliński from January until August 1943. Everything Preker did to save Jews was motivated purely by altruism, for which she neither asked for nor received anything at all in return. On March 4, 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Teresa Preker (née Dobrska) as a Righteous Among the Nations. File 3147