Ojrzanowska Maria ; Janina

Ojrzanowska-Poplewska, Janina Ojrzanowska, Maria In December 1942, after all the members of her family had been killed, Franciszka Tusk-Scheinwescher escaped from the Warsaw ghetto to the Aryan side of the city. At first friends and acquaintances from her university days helped her, but these were one-time gestures that did not really solve her problem. Scheinwescher’s life only changed after she encountered Janina and Maria Ojrzanowska, two young sisters she had never met before, on the outskirts of Warsaw. At the time, the Ojrzanowska sisters earned a living from growing flowers and vegetables on a small plot they leased in one of the city’s suburbs. They took in the Jewish fugitive, giving her refuge in their rooms, and until the liberation of the city, took care of all her needs. In 1944, the Gestapo suspected that Scheinwescher might be Jewish, so the Ojrzanowska sisters moved her into their home in the center of Warsaw, hiding her there for many months. Risking their own lives, they took care to provide her with food every day and constantly looked out for her safety, even during and after the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944. Everything the Ojrzanowska sisters did to save Scheinwescher was motivated by pure altruism, for which they neither asked for nor received anything in return. After the war, Scheinwescher stayed in Poland and remained in close contact with the Ojrzanowska sisters, who had saved her life. On June 6, 1981, Yad Vashem recognized Janina Ojrzanowska-Poplewska and Maria Ojrzanowska as Righteous Among the Nations. File 2098