Sosnowska Paulina

Sosnowska, Karolina Sosnowska, Paulina During the occupation, Karolina Sosnowska lived with her mother and sister in a small settlement of four farms near the village of Pawelcze, in the Stanislawow district, next door to Paulina Sosnowska, her sister-in-law, whose husband was being held in a detention camp in Hungary. Although most of the inhabitants of the region were Ukrainians, there were some Polish families, too, and three of the farms there belonged to the Sosnowskis. In February 1943, Harry Simon and his mother came to Karolina’s home, and after describing how they had narrowly escaped death, asked whether they could stay there for a few days. Karolina and her sister-in-law who, due to the settlement’s proximity to one of the German murder sites, knew the fate that awaited the Jews, decided to help the Jewish refugees. Simon and his mother were later joined by Salka Wagner and the three members of the Merberg family, who hid alternately with Karolina and Paulina. In April 1944, Ukrainian nationalists set fire to the Sosnowskas’ farms, and the Sosnowskas fled, together with their charges, to Stanislawow, where they settled in the ghetto area, which was already empty of Jews. The Sosnowskas and their charges lived in a number of apartments as Polish refugees, until May 1944, when the area was liberated. After the war, Wagner and the Merbergs immigrated to Israel, and Simon to the United States, while the Sosnowskas moved with their families to an area within Poland’s new borders. On March 9, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Karolina and Paulina Sosnowska as Righteous Among the Nations. File 6001