Ruczkan Helena

Ruczkan, Helena In 1930, Helena Ruczkan, who was a widow, worked as a maid for the Wajsman family in the district capital of Stanislawow. In 1941, when the Germans occupied the city, and Jewish citizens were interned in the ghetto, Ruczkan offered to take her former employers’ two children – 15-year-old Zygmunt and 11-year-old Amalia – into her house. The parents, who were unwilling to be separated from their children, turned down Ruczkan’s offer. In the summer of 1942, however, during the Aktion perpetrated by the Germans against the Stanislawow ghetto, all the members of the Wajsman family were deported and killed, except for Amalia who managed to escape. When Ruczkan found out, she arranged for the girl to be smuggled out of the ghetto, with the help of Jewish women who worked in a German factory outside the ghetto. In order to protect her charge, Ruczkan left town, and moved with Amalia to a one-roomed apartment in a village, without a toilet or running water. Ruczkan looked after Amalia, kept her clean, shared her meager fare with her, and risked her life to keep her safe from the hostile Ukrainian population that surrounded her. Even after the area was liberated in July 1944, Amalia stayed with Ruczkan, who saw to her schooling and treated her like a daughter until 1953, when Amalia married. When Amalia Wajsman and her husband moved to Australia, they took Ruczkan with them, and honored her and loved her like a mother, and later, as a devoted “grandmother.” On April 28, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Helena Ruczkan as Righteous Among the Nations.