Ojak Józef & Sobkowiak Helena (Tymuś)

Ojak, Józef Ojak-Sobkowiak, Helena In March 1944, immediately after the Red Army entered Tłusty in Eastern Galicia, Dr. Baruch Milch and Dr. Jakub Weinloes, medical doctors who had been hiding in bunkers in the surrounding forests until then, came to the town. There they found a group of Jews who had survived the forced labor camp in the area and began treating the sick and wounded among them. After they arrived in the town, Milch and Weinloes stayed in the home of Józef and Helena Ojak. However, after a few days, the Red Army was forced to withdraw and the two Jewish doctors found themselves unable to leave together with the it. Because they had provided medical treatment to the members of the Ojak family, the Ojaks were willing to risk their lives to save them from the Germans, who had returned to take over the town. The situation in which the fugitives found themselves worsened after a group of German officers established themselves in the very apartment where they were hiding. However, Józef and Helena Ojak, who were determined to save the Jews, hurriedly removed them from their home and hid them in the stable. For two weeks, until the Red Army returned and the danger passed, the Ojaks took care of the two men’s needs, motivated by pure altruism, without asking for or receiving anything in return. After the war, Milch and Weinloes immigrated to Israel, and after her husband Józef died, Helena Ojak remarried and moved to Polish Silesia. On May 7, 1987, Yad Vashem recognized Helena Ojak-Sobkowiak and her husband Józef Ojak as Righteous Among the Nations.