Wojnerowski Florek & Maria

WOJNEROWSKI, FLORIAN WOJNEROWSKA, MARIA Maria and Florian Wojnerowski lived in Kolomyja, in the Stanisławow district. Before the war, they became friends with a Jewish family, the Goldsteins, who had a glassware store in Kolomyja. After the ghetto was established in Kolomyja, the Wojnerowskis regularly smuggled food to the Goldsteins, thus saving them from starvation. On February 2, 1943, the liquidation of the ghetto began. Menek Goldstein, then a teenager, decided to escape in the hope of saving himself. While trying to escape, he was shot in the leg, yet he managed to reach the Wojnerowskis’ farm, where they hid him in the barn. He stayed hidden there for nine months, surviving solely due to the help of his benefactors, until the day when a thief entered the barn. Menek then decided to leave the hideout and to move in with Andrzej Sliwiak*, whom Menek knew was hiding Jews, including two members of his family. During the war, Menek’s aunt, Fanny Gitterman, also received help from the Wojnerowskis, who helped her to flee the ghetto with her young son Alex. They also came into contact with Menek’s other aunt, Maria Roosenblum, who had been hiding on the Aryan side. They kept the two women regularly informed about the wellbeing of their nephew. “To emphasize, I state the fact that even though this was a poor family, at no stage, even after the war, did they ask for any compensation,” wrote Maria Roosenblum in her testimony to Yad Vashem. Those saved by the Wojnerowskis immigrated to Israel and the United States. On September 17, 1984, Yad Vashem recognized Florian Wojnerowski and his wife, Maria Wojnerowska, as Righteous Among the Nations.