Dudek Józefa ; Son: Józef ; Daughter: Szczepańska Janina (Dudek); Daughter: Hanus Maria (Dudek)

Dudek, Józefa Dudek, Józef Hanus-Dudek, Maria Szczepańska-Dudek, Janina Józefa Dudek, a widow, lived with her three children, Maria, Józef and Janina, in a small cottage in the village of Sonina, near the town of Zieniawa, in the Rzeszow district. During the occupation, Dudek looked after Basia Gurfein and later also her sister, Shila, and their four-year-old orphaned nephew, Jozek. Dudek also looked after Chiel Melon who escaped during the liquidation of the Sieniawa ghetto, and turned up on her doorstep, after wandering through fields and forests. Dudek hid the Gurfein sisters and their nephew in the attic, and Melon in the stable. The three Dudek children helped look after the refugees by bringing them food and keeping their hideouts clean. Despite their straitened circumstances, the Dudeks never expected any payment. In risking their lives to save the refugees, the Dudeks were guided by love and compassion, and a sense of gratitude toward Basia Gurfein, who had let them buy on credit from her grocery store before the war. Despite the danger, rendered more acute by the arrival of an anonymous letter threatening to inform on them to the authorities, the Dudeks sheltered the four Jewish refugees until the area was liberated by the Red Army in the summer of 1944. After the war, the refugees immigrated to the United States, after Melon gave the Dudeks the plot of land belonging to his family in the village, as a token of his gratitude. On May 29, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Józefa Dudek, her son, Józef Dudek, and her daughters, Maria Hanus-Dudek and Janina Szczepańska-Dudek, as Righteous Among the Nations.