Miłowski Wacław & Miłowska Helena

Miłowski, Wacław Miłowska, Helena In autumn 1942, during the deportations from the Czestochowa ghetto, Yitzhak and Bela Horowitz managed to escape from the ghetto with their five-year-old son. With the help of acquaintances, they found a hiding place in a brick factory, but a gang of thieves happened onto the hiding place, and they beat the fugitives and stole all their money. After many long months of suffering and hardship, pursued and exhausted with nowhere to stay, the Horowitzes approached a relative that had fled from the ghetto before them and was hiding on the Aryan side of the city under an assumed identity. The relative referred them to the home of Wacław Miłowski, a factory worker, who, together with his wife Helena, agreed to provide refuge for the desperate refugees. Because of the overcrowded conditions in their apartment, the Miłowskis sent their own children to relatives in the country, keeping the Horowitzes and their son in their home, where a well-concealed hiding place was prepared for them in the cellar to hide in at times of danger. Despite their own impoverished circumstances, Wacław and Helena provided for all the fugitives’ needs, caring for them with devotion, and without asking for or receiving anything in return, motivated by humane values. The Horowitzes remained in the Miłowskis apartment until the liberation by the Red Army in January 1945. After the war, they immigrated to Israel, and in 1981, hosted their rescuers in their home. On January 24, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Helena Miłowska and her husband Wacław Miłowski as Righteous Among the Nations.