Zawadzki Franciszek

Drygasiewicz, Stanisława Drygasiewicz, Aniela Jakubowska, Maria Zawadzki, Franciszek Before the war, Stanisława (Stasia) Drygasiewicz was working for the Caitungs in Warsaw: Marge, her husband, Seweryn, and their son, Ryszard, who was born in 1938. Stasia, then 54, looked after the little boy. She remained with the Caitungs in the ghetto. Marge and Seweryn wanted her to take the child and leave the ghetto but she refused to part from her employers. Later on, she agreed in order to save Ryszard, and took the child to her sister Aniela’s apartment in the Praga quarter of Warsaw. Not long after that, Stasia moved to the country where she worked for a Polish officer. Fair-haired, blue-eyed Ryszard was introduced to everyone as the child of her sister who was working in Germany as a forced laborer. However, sheltering a Jewish child was so dangerous that Stasia moved to seventeen different places to avoid suspicion. Just before the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Marge and Seweryn managed to escape and, with Aniela’s help, they - and Marge’s three sisters, Frania, Stefa and Maria - hid with Aniela’s friend Maria Jakubowska, also living in Praga. All five of them hid in the cellar under the kitchen. “Maria was a poor woman. When we ran out of money, she went to work to earn enough to get us food,” wrote Seweryn in his testimony. Marge missed her son a great deal. Using a deceased Polish woman’s papers, she forged documents permitting her to travel by train and visited him. To facilitate these short visits, it was necessary to find a place closer to Ryszard, and Aniela took Marge to her friends, Mr. and Mrs. Zawadzki, who lived in Pustelnik, near Warsaw, not far from where Stasia and Ryszard were living. Aniela explained to the Zawadzkis that Marge was her cousin’s wife, and asked them to let her stay. Franciszek Zawadzki agreed. From there, Marge could walk to the next village and meet Stasia and Ryszard in a church. Stasia moved house and changed jobsseveral times, and took Ryszard with her everywhere. In his testimony, Seweryn emphasized that all those who helped to rescue his family were motivated by religious convictions. When Warsaw was liberated, Ryszard was returned to his parents, and the whole family then emigrated to the United States. On February 11, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Stanisława Drygasiewicz, her sister, Aniela Drygasiewicz, and Maria Jakubowska and Franciszek Zawadzki as Righteous Among the Nations.