Zawer Florjan & Kazimiera

ZAWER, FLORJAN ZAWER, KAZIMIERA Florjan and Kazimiera Zawer lived in the small town of Bialy Kamien, near Zloczow, with their two young children and Florjan’s father and brother. Florjan worked as the manager of the local power station. On June 30, 1943, two Jews, Samuel Drix and Itzik Hoch, knocked on the Zawers’ front door. They had both escaped from a camp on Janowska Street in Lwow (the Lwow-Janowska camp). Michael Pfeffer had also escaped with them but was shot soon afterwards. Samuel and Itzik managed to get to Bialy Kamien, where they turned to a friend of Itzik’s for help. Their request was refused. They then arrived at the Zawers’ home. The Zawers immediately decided to give them help, although the Jews were total strangers to them. The Zawers fed them and then handed Itzik a set of keys for an unused mill, and took them to it, warning them on the way about the danger that faced them and how to avoid it. The biggest danger of all was the Ukrainian population, which constituted the majority of the town’s population. With the onset of winter, the Soviet front drew closer and the Germans took over a part of the Zawers’ home. Contact between the hidden Jews and the Zawers became almost impossible but from time to time, the Zawers nevertheless invited the fugitives to move from the mill to the cellar, attic or barn. At one point, a Ukrainian woman saw one of the fugitives and threatened to report them to the Germans. The Zawers became frightened and they asked Samuel and Itzik to leave. However, they later returned to the Zawers and Florjan again hid them in the stable. On July 25, 1944, Bialy Kamien was taken over by the Red Army. After the liberation, Ukrainians murdered Florjan, his father, and his brother; Kazimiera and the children were forced to leave the family home and move to Lower Silesia. After the war, following intense efforts by Samuel, he succeeded, with the help of the Polish embassy in Washington, in locating Kazimiera and herchildren. “Even though she was a widow with two children, she first (in 1956) refused my proposal to help her, and said that I don’t owe her a thing, as they (she and her husband) performed the only human duty,” wrote Samuel Drix in his testimony to Yad Vashem. On May 3, 1989, Yad Vashem recognized Florjan Zawer and his wife, Kazimiera Zawer, as Righteous Among the Nations.