Bajak Aleksander & Teofilia (Harasim)

Files 5489 and 5489a Bajak, Aleksander Bajak, Teofila Kuron, Czesław Kuron, Helena In early summer 1943 an 11-year-old boy appeared at the home of the Bajak family in the village of Białowola near Lublin (Zamość District). He introduced himself as Grzegoz Pawłowski, as written in the Christian birth certificate in his possession. He claimed to be a Polish orphan. He was looking for work – as a shepherd or doing household tasks – in exchange for room and board. Aleksander and Teofila Bajak, parents of a two-year-old child, were a poor farming family. They had only one cow on their small farm and did not really need another cowherd at the time. However, they took pity on the orphan and decided to take him in. In truth, the Bajaks suspected that the boy was really Jewish when they heard him speak in his imperfect Polish. Indeed, his real name was Jakub Hersz Griner, a Jewish boy from a religious home in Zamość, who had fled from the ghetto after his parents and two sisters were murdered by the Germans. He had been wandering through the villages from one farmhouse to another until he came upon their home. What reinforced their suspicion of him was his unnatural and nervous behavior. In the crowded and intimate living conditions in the Bajak family farmhouse, the fact that Grzegoz was Jewish could not remain a secret for long and the couple quickly discovered that he was circumcised. However, they decided not to embarrass him and did not tell him that they knew that he was Jewish. He remained with them for nearly a year. Subsequently he went to work for the Kuron family in the same village. When his new employers, Czesław and Helena Kuron, decided to hire Grzegoz, they already knew that he was Jewish. Gossip in the village had long spread word that the cowherd working for the Bajaks was Jewish. However, no one openly mentioned his Jewish origins. Grzegoz remained with theKurons until the liberation in the summer of 1944. At the end of the war, he was placed in a Catholic orphanage. In time, he converted to Christianity and became a priest. Eventually he immigrated to Israel and became head of the church in Jaffa. On July 12, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Aleksander and Teofila Bajak and Czesław and Helena Kuron as Righteous Among the Nations.