Puchała Emilia ; Brother: Koszyk Eugeniusz

Puchała, Emilia Koszyk-Zwierzchanowski, Eugeniusz Emilia Puchała was a widow with three children who, until the end of the war, lived with her divorced brother Eugeniusz Koszyk-Zwierzchanowski in Korolowoka, in the Tarnopol district, in Eastern Galicia. In 1942, a Jewish friend named Szwarc, a local pharmacist, asked her to hide his one-year-old grandson Jerzy Teperberg in her home. She and her brother Koszyk-Zwierzchanowski, who was also the main breadwinner, decided to take the child into their home. The baby’s grandfather and mother perished, and for four years, Puchała raised Jerzy together with her own children. Puchała suffered many difficulties because the baby had been circumcised, and fearing suspicious neighbors, she was forced to move her family to different locations from time to time. After the war, Puchała moved with her family to an area within the new Polish borders, taking little Jerzy with her. In 1946, the boy’s father, Bronisław Gotesman, who had returned to Poland after serving in the Red Army, discovered that his son was still alive. Puchała and her brother handed the child over to him safe and sound without asking for anything in return for saving his life, despite the constant danger posed to their own lives for doing so. Gotesman and his son eventually immigrated to Israel. On June 28, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Emilia Puchała and her brother Eugeniusz Koszyk-Zwierzchanowski as Righteous Among the Nations.