Kunz Adam & Stefania

Kunz, Adam Kunz, Stefania In August, 1942, 16-year-old Liliana Chuwis managed to flee the Lwow ghetto. With the help of her Polish acquaintances, she was able to obtain Aryan papers under a fictitious name and found work in Kopyczynce in the Tarnopol district. After she underwent many ordeals, Chuwis’s true identity was revealed, and, helped by the advice of one of the managers of the company in which she was employed, she succeeded in evading the Gestapo. When she arrived in the nearby village of Brzezany, again with the advice of her former boss, Chuwis contacted Adam Kunz, a senior employee of a Polish transport company who worked for the Germans. Kunz, who understood at once that Chuwis was a persecuted Jewish refugee, without revealing that knew, offered her a job and lodging in his small apartment, where he lived with his wife Stefania. After a short time, when the landlord, who suspected Chuwis was Jewish, threatened them, the Kunzes were forced to leave their home, together with Chuwis and move to a new dwelling. With the approach of the Red Army, and the Ukrainian nationalists molesting the Poles, the Kunzes decided to leave the town and move to Krakow. Before doing so, they found shelter for Chuwis with relatives living in Sambor, without telling them she was Jewish. Chuwis was liberated in Sambor by the Red Army in August 1944, and after the war, immigrated to Israel. The Kunzes received nothing in return for all they did for Chuwis, and were motivated solely by the belief that it was their moral duty to aid a girl persecuted by a common enemy. In 1980, Thau-Chuwis invited Stefania to visit her in her new home. On June 26, 1980, Yad Vashem recognized Adam Kunz and his wife Stefania Kunz as Righteous Among the Nations.