Gołębiowska Rozalia ; Daughter: Konarzewska Natalia (Gołębiowska)

Gołębiowska, Rozalia Konarzewska, Natalia In the autumn of 1942, with the onset of the Aktionen in Komarowka Podlaska in the Lublin district, Yitzhak Lerner obtained “Aryan” documents and escaped from the ghetto. After his arrival in Warsaw, Lerner, posing as a Polish officer, rented a room from Natalia Konarzewska who, after her husband’s arrest, lived with her elderly mother, Rozalia Gołębiowska, and her two children, in the Grochow suburb of Warsaw. Every day, Lerner “left for work,” and returned each evening. Although it was only a matter of weeks before Konarzewska and her mother realized that their tenant was Jewish, they allowed him to carry on living in their apartment as before. Some time later, Lerner’s relatives, who had stayed on in Komarowka Podlaska, offered an acquaintance all their fortune to find them a hiding place. The acquaintance agreed, but when the relatives turned up, he and his accomplices murdered them and took all their money. The assailants, who knew that Lerner was hiding in Warsaw, decided to get rid of him, too. Under some convincing pretext, they arranged to meet him, and then shot him in the head. Lerner, acting dead, was taken by his assailants to a field, where he was stripped naked, and covered with grass. At dead of night, Lerner, dripping with blood, dragged himself to Konarzewska’s apartment where Konarzewska and her mother looked after him until he recovered from his wounds. Lerner stayed with Konarzewska until the area was liberated by the Red Army in September 1944, after which he immigrated to Israel. In saving Lerner, Natalia Konarzewska and Rozalia Gołębiowska were guided by humanitarian motives and a sense of obligation to help the victims of a common enemy. On March 20, 1991, Yad Vashem recognized Natalia Konarzewska and her mother, Rozalia Gołębiowska, as Righteous Among the Nations.