Wojewoda Czesław & Maria (Szymkiewicz)

Wojewoda, Czesław Wojewoda, Maria Before the war, Czesław and Maria Wojewoda lived in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski. Maria was a teacher and Czesław was a school inspector. In 1940, Czeslaw was forced to run away from the Gestapo. He moved to his parents’ village of Lubcza, in the county of Jasło, with his eight-year-old son. Maria joined them soon afterward, leaving behind their apartment. In 1942, Lea Anmuth, who introduced herself as Helena Podgórska, an evacuee from Stanisławów, turned to them with a request for help and for a place to stay. “Since she aroused trust, she stayed with us, and after some time she grew so much accustomed to us and felt so much at home that we treated her like a member of the family,” wrote Maria in her testimony. She added that “when Helena got to know us better and got our full trust, she confided, in great secrecy, to me and my husband (even our parents-in-law did not know) that she was Jewish. This did not change our attitude, we only surrounded her with even greater care.” As the frontline was getting closer to Jasło and as more German soldiers were being encountered daily, it became dangerous for Helena and all people involved to stay together in Lubcza for any longer. Knowing that, Czesław talked to a friend of his, priest Franciszek Okoński, who lived in Luszowice (near Tarnów). Franciszek agreed to provide Helena (Lea) with a shelter. She started working as a maid in the parish house and awaited liberation there. Lea Anmuth emphasized in her testimony that the Wojewodas gave her material as well as spiritual help during the war and afterwards. “They implanted in me a belief in the existence of noble, fair-minded people.” After the war, Maria and Czesław worked as teachers in Jodłowa, in the county of Jasło, where Helena would often visit them and even lived with them for some time. She then moved to Western Poland and later immigrated to Israel. For a while, she has been writing letters to her benefactors, but laterthe contacts were broken off, “... and only the memory of a person who had to run and wander around the world only because she was Jewish, remained,” wrote Maria. On August 2, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Czesław Wojewoda and his wife, Maria Wojewoda, as Righteous Among the Nations File 4318