Zdziejowski Zygmunt & Zdziejowska Lucyna

ZDZIEJOWSKI, ZYGMUNT ZDZIEJOWSKA, LUCYNA When the war broke out, Zygmunt and Lucyna Zdziejowski were living in Czortkow, Eastern Galicia. Zygmunt, a carpenter by trade, had been the apprentice of a Jewish carpenter prior to the war. Towards the end of 1942, he was working as the head of a carpenter’s team in the local ghetto. Beno Zellermayer, an inhabitant of the ghetto, was employed as an assistant to Zygmunt. Zygmunt, as well as his brother, would bring him a little food even though they themselves did not have much. “The entire Zdziejowski family was known for philo-Semitism,” wrote Beno in his testimony to Yad Vashem. On December 6, 1942, Zygmunt invited Beno to come to his house after work. “Everybody was saying then that the Germans were then already on the defense and were suffering heavy casualties and that the war would be over in a month or two, so [Zygmunt] decided to hide me for that period,” wrote Beno. Soon afterwards, Lucyna gave birth to a girl. Zygmunt built a hideout under the couple’s bed. It was a bunker of 90 centimeters by a meter. A straw mattress was laid across the floor. Beno could only lie or sit in the hideout. Zygmunt fitted a pipe through the cottage’s foundation, thus ensuring that the bunker was supplied with fresh air. Beno would come out of his hideout at night to briefly stretch his limbs. Not one of the Zdziejowskis family members, friends, or neighbors was aware that they were hiding a Jew - even though Beno was hidden for seventeen months, until April 1944. The Zdziejowskis shared their food with him, which included meals of black bread, potatoes with fried onions, potato soup with a piece of bread, and cherry tea. “Maybe 25 or 30 times I ate pork with grits or potatoes”, recalled Beno, who noted that the Zdziejowskis were not well to-do. From time to time, the Zdziejowskis were invited to their parents or sisters’ homes and received a little food and milk for the little girl. “I paid them nothing because I did nothave money,” wrote Beno, who added that he sent small packages of food to the Zdziejowski family from England after arriving there in 1945. Had it not been for the food control being enforced in England at that time, he would have sent more to his benefactors. “We did not demand any reward. We were guided only by feelings of charity according to the saying ‘Love those close to you like yourself’, which we could, thank God,” explained Zygmunt and Lucyna Zdziejowski. In 1950, Beno moved to the United States, and, in 1973, to Israel. On June 29, 1978, Yad Vashem recognized Zygmunt Zdziejowski and his wife, Lucyna Zdziejowska, as Righteous Among the Nations.