Stolarska Balbina (Gajewska); Daughter: Grabowska Janina (Stolarska)

File 6315 GRABOWSKA, JANINA STOLARSKA, BALBINA During the war, Janina Grabowska lived with her husband and their young daughter in Warsaw. In early 1943, Regina Mikelberg, Janina’s pre-war friend, asked Janina to help her sister Irena escape from the ghetto. Janina had previously helped the Mikelberg sisters by supplying them with food and medicine. In February 1943, on the day that was appointed to help get Irena out from among the ranks of workers in the German Steyer factory, Janina’s husband was wounded. “I didn’t know what to do,” wrote Janina in her testimony to Yad Vashem. “Should I take my husband to the hospital or save Irena Mikelberg, whom I did not know? At the last moment, I made up my mind to go to the Steyer factory for Irena. I did it.” Janina had prepared her sister’s kennkarte for Irena’s use. She took Irena straight to her mother Balbina Stolarska’s home. Janina only took her husband to hospital the following day. “She [Balbina] accepted me like a member of the family,” wrote Irena. “I stayed with her for about six months. When the Nazis broke into her apartment, I had to leave.” Meanwhile, in May 1943, Regina found her way to Janina after escaping from a transport to Treblinka. Janina then obtained a kennkarte for Regina in the name of Stanislawa Kowalska. Using this document, Regina found employment as a domestic in Młociny, a northern suburb of Warsaw. In 1945, after the liberation, Regina married and moved to the United States; Irena married Stolarczyk and emigrated from Poland, settling in Belgium in 1969. On May 31, 1994, Yad Vashem recognized Janina Grabowska and her mother, Balbina Stolarska, as Righteous Among the Nations.