Sławik Henryk

ŚWIDER, FRANCISZEK WĄSKOWSKA-TOMANEK, MARIA SŁAWIK, HENRYK With the defeat of Poland in September 1939 and the subsequent Nazi occupation, thousands of Poles crossed into Hungary and settled there. The Polish refugees were followed by hundreds of Jewish families. More Jewish refugees arrived in 1942 and 1943, when the Polish ghettos were liquidated and Hungary was still relatively safe. Henryk Sławik, a Polish activist, together with his Polish unit, was arrested when crossing the border and was interned as prisoner of the war in Hungary. In the camp he was introduced to József Antall, a member of the Hungarian Ministry of Interior, responsible for civilian refugees from Poland. Shortly after, Antall and Sławik created the Citizen's Committee for help for Polish Refugees. Sławik was deeply devoted to his work, and contrary to other officials, did not discriminate against the Jewish refugees. Together with Antall, Countess Erzsébet Szapáry and the head of the Polish Red Cross in Hungary, Jan Kołłątaj-Srzednicki, provided all Jewish refugees with forged Cristian documents, and located Jews in the refugee camps in Hungary. Among the Polish refugees were also many orphaned children. Itzhak Brettler (Władysław Bratkowski) and his wife, Mina, took care of many of them. In July 1943, they gathered a group of 76 children between the ages of three and nineteen from Budapest and led them out to the locality of Vac, some 30 kilometers away. There, Izaak organized a boarding school and with the help of the local Jews he got in touch with the delegate to Hungary of the Polish Government-in-Exile, Mr. Henryk Sławik, and asked him for help. The latter agreed unhesitatingly. In September 1943, the boarding school was proclaimed a Polish educational institution that was acting on behalf of the Polish Committee in Hungary. All students and personnel were given forged documents and Polish Army officer, Franciszek Świder, was appointed as manager of the school. Maria Tomanek, a teacher, also volunteered to work there. With the invasion of Nazi troops into Hungary on March 19, 1944, the institution appeared to be under threat. To give the school a more Polish and Christian image, all the students and teachers attended regular church services at the local church. In addition, a priest from Slovakia, Dr. Pavel Boharčík (*Boharčík, Pavel, Slovakia) came to the school to teach religion, but in reality, he was merely teaching the students Hungarian. “With great difficulties I succeeded in protecting all of the residents of the boarding school, both the youth and the Jewish personnel, from deportation to Auschwitz,” wrote Franciszek Świder in his testimony to Yad Vashem. He also noted that both the adults and the students were brought over to Budapest and dispersed into private apartments. Upon the end of the war, some of the Vac students returned to Poland, but the majority resettled in the United States and Israel. On January 26, 1977, Yad Vashem recognized Franciszek Świder, Maria Wąskowska-Tomanek and Henryk Sławik as Righteous Among the Nations.