Trybus Apolonia ; Son: Mieczysław

TRYBUS, APOLONIA TRYBUS, MIECZYSŁAW During the war, Apolonia Trybus and her five children lived in Zakopane. Her husband was in hiding from the Gestapo and so her eldest son, Mieczysław, acted as head of the household. He earned a living as a black market hawker. One day in October 1942, Mieczysław returned home from work when he saw a seven- to eight-month-old baby propped against a wall. The baby was Irena, and she had been brought to Apolonia by an acquaintance of her brother, Edward. The girl’s mother, Necha Weinert, had been arrested and murdered by the Germans. Thus, as the breadwinner, Apolonia told Mieczysław the little girl’s story and asked what to do. “You gave me such a childish and ingenuous look (I will never forget it), and you were such a beautiful child with curly hair, that only one answer could be given - whereas we were six persons to survive, there would be enough room for one more. Thus, you were accepted and adopted by the family,” wrote Mieczysław Trybus in a letter to Irena. With Irena a part of the family, Mieczysław left the house and moved to Nowy Targ in order to earn more money. He thought that a single woman with five children, one of them a cripple, would never attract the attention of the Germans. Now and then he would bring food and other goods for Apolonia to sell in the market. After the war, in the fall of 1946, representatives of Jewish organizations came and took Irena with them. In 1948, she was taken to Israel. In 1981, the Trybuses appeared in a Polish television program called The Witnesses in which they asked the producers to track down Irena. Thanks to the close cooperation between Polish and Israeli TV, the Trybuses and Irena (later Ariela Goldshmidt) found each other. On April 25, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Apolonia Trybus and her son, Mieczysław Trybus, as Righteous Among the Nations.