Wolfinger Julia

WOLFINGER MARKUS, JULIA Julia Markus was born in Stryj, in Eastern Galicia. Prior to the war, she graduated from a teacher’s seminar and worked as a teacher in the local elementary school. During the German occupation, she ran a grocery store. Before the war, she met a Jewish man named Józef Wolfinger. During the war, their friendship grew deeper. Through Josef, she came to know his entire family and subsequently grew very accustomed to them. In fact, whenever there was an anti-Jewish Aktion in Stryj, Julia would hide Józef's relatives, never asking for any compensation. In 1941, another anti-Jewish Aktion took place in Stryj and Józef was caught. Thanks to Julia’s bribing somebody in the Gestapo, however, Józef was able to go free. In the same manner, she also managed to save Józef's brother Henryk. On June 3, 1943, the final liquidation of the ghetto began. Julia agreed at that time to hide Józef’s entire family. They included Klara-Chaja Wolfinger, Józef’s mother, Józef himself, and his brothers and sisters (Herman Wolfinger and his wife Klara, Shulamit Wolfinger Frans, Henryk Wolfinger, Helena Wolfinger Nusenblatt and Regina Wolfinger Hubel) - eight people in all. Julia provided food for the entire family, though getting the food was not easy because buying so many provisions ran the risk of raising suspicions. Julia therefore went shopping in the evenings and bought products from different stores. “Miss Markus treated us well and honestly, despite the danger she was constantly under. She kept our spirits up and finally she reached her goal: We all survived the occupation and awaited liberation by the Red Army, except for our mother, who had heart sickness and died (in March 1944), and we had to bury her under the floor,” wrote Herman and Klara Wolfinger. Giving shelter to Jews was all the more dangerous for Julia because the house next to hers was actually the local office of the Kripo, and in the yard there was a German library which the Gestapoand other Germans came to visit regularly. In fact, Julia’s neighbors suspected that she was hiding Jews and extorted large sums of money from her in return for their silence. After the war, Józef married Julia and together they immigrated to the United States. The rest of the family immigrated to Israel. On October 13, 1964, Yad Vashem recognized Julia Markus Wolfinger as Righteous Among the Nations.