Okniański Antoni & Okniańska Marynia

Okniański, Antoni Okniańska, Marynia In 1942, 18-year-old Faiga Zankel fled with her mother from the Tlumacz ghetto, in the Stanislawow district, in Eastern Galicia. The two women wandered throughout the villages and forests of the area for almost a year before finding a permanent place to hide. In August 1943, they arrived at the farm of Antoni and Marynia Okniański of the village of Bohorodczany in the same district. Faiga had known the Okniański family when they were clients of her family before the war, and she also studied in the same school as their younger daughter. The Okniańskis prepared a hiding place in one of their farm buildings for the two fugitives, and in the same hiding place also hid other Jews – Sabina Blend and her daughter Lusia, and Bernard Abzug, a relative, after they too escaped from the Tlumacz ghetto. As members of the Polish intelligentsia, and knowing that the people they were hiding kept kosher, they were careful to cook the fugitives’ food in separate utensils. Everything they did to save the Jews was motivated by pure altruism, for which they neither asked for nor received anything in return. After the war, the survivors immigrated to the United States and the Okniańskis moved to an area within the new Polish borders. On March 25, 1981, Yad Vashem recognized Marynia Okniańska and her husband Antoni Okniański as Righteous Among the Nations.