Saloni Juliusz & Jadwiga (Brzezińska)

Saloni, Juliusz Strzelecka, Jadwiga File 5786 During the occupation, Juliusz Saloni and his wife Jadwiga, subsequently Strzelecka, lived in Warsaw and remained on friendly terms with Jews whom they had known from their university days. After the Warsaw ghetto was established, they made their home into a temporary refuge for Jewish acquaintances and friends who had fled to the Aryan side, until they could find permanent hideouts. In November 1942, a Jew named Józef Dąb, who left the ghetto each day as a member of a group of laborers, contacted Saloni at his place of work and asked him to help take his wife Barbara out of the ghetto and arrange permanent shelter for Irena, his seven-year-old daughter, who was already on the Aryan side. Saloni and his wife, to whom Dąb was a total stranger, made the rescue of the Jewish family into their personal cause. Within a short time, the Salonis removed Barbara Dąb from the ghetto and placed her with relatives of theirs. In February 1943, they brought Irena to their home and gave her a birth certificate and baptism certificate in the family name of Jadwiga’s brother. From then on, Irena posed as Saloni’s orphaned niece in the care of her aunt, which is how the Salonis treated her. Saloni and his wife registered Irena as a Polish child in the town school and continued to care for her until the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. In February 1943, Dąb joined them on the Aryan side, and the Salonis equipped him with “Aryan” papers with which he found work and housing. In November 1943, the Gestapo arrested Dab and placed him in Pawiak Prison. Out of concern that the Gestapo would also discover his wife Barbara, Jadwiga contacted members of Żegota, who transferred Dąb to a different hideout. In February 1944, Dąb escaped from Pawiak Prison and made his way to the Salonis’ home. The Salonis moved him to the nearby town of Grodzisk Mazowiecki, where his wife was hiding, and in October 1944, they were joined by their daughterand lived together until the liberation in January 1945. The Salonis also concealed eighteen-year-old Jurek Milejkowski for several weeks in May-June 1943 after he had escaped from a train bound for Treblinka. Milejkowski took part in the Warsaw Uprising, and died in battle. By assisting persecuted Jews as they did, Saloni and Strzelecka displayed a nobility of spirit and symbolized the embodiment of humanitarianism for its own sake. On July 25, 1993, Yad Vashem recognized Jadwiga Strzelecka and Juliusz Saloni as Righteous Among the Nations.