Zugaj Eugenia

ZUGAJ EUGENIA Eugenia Zugaj, a deeply religious widow, lived together with her son, Julian, in Częstochowa. She supported herself from a small pension after her husband passed away and also from her son’s earnings. Because they had a three-room apartment, they began renting two of the rooms to two lone women. When the deportation from the Częstochowa ghetto began, Perla Schwarzbaum hid in a basement with her four-year old daughter, Halinka. After one week, when food and water had run out, Perla left the ghetto at night. For a few weeks she passed through an area of villages, looking for shelter for herself and her child. After not finding help anywhere, she returned to Częstochowa. There, on the street, Perla turned to a stranger, Eugenia Zugaj, and asked her to shelter her child. Eugenia agreed to do so. “Eugenia was not a rich woman,” emphasized Perla in her testimony to Yad Vashem. She added: “She took care of my daughter as if she were her own child. She risked her life twofold when she came to visit me in the labor camp.” Around the same time, Eugenia was approached with a request to take a three-year-old boy named Maciek Mekler under her care. “We agreed, since, as we understood it, the death penalty for hiding one child or two is the same, and for the two children it will be better,” wrote Juluisz, Eugenia’s son, and continues: “The children stayed in the big kitchen, which we divided with a curtain. We didn’t let anyone go into this space. For the children’s safety they were taught prayers and elementary facts about the Catholic religion.” Juliusz added that a few months later a seven-year old boy was brought to Eugenia. Eugenia was asked to give the fugitive child shelter for a short period until a family was found that would accept him. “What could we do, it was sad looking at the poor, skinny boy, so he stayed,” wrote Juliusz. Maciek and Helenka stayed with Eugenia until the liberation of Częstochowa. After the liberation, the parents came fortheir children. “We lived through many very moving scenes, we even cried, but this time from joy,” wrote Juliusz. Perla wrote in her testimony that her daughter, Halinka, did not recognize her and that it took several months before she got used to her. For some time she used to take her out for the day, but Halinka came back to spend the night with Eugenia, refusing to stay with her birth mother that she did not remember. “I will always be grateful to this woman and her son, Juliusz, for saving my child,” wrote Perla. Perla and Helenka later emigrated to the United States but kept in contact with Eugenia until her death in 1982. On April 28, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Eugenia Zugaj as Righteous Among the Nations. File 4181