Tympalska Michalina

TYMPALSKA, MICHALINA KRYSTYNA During the war, Michalina Krystyna Tympalska lived with her family in Boryslaw in Eastern Galicia. After the Germans occupied the town and confined the Jews to the ghetto, Michalina helped her pre-war friend, Anna Rotenberg and her then fifteen-year-old son, Jerzy. She found a new apartment for them, helped them move, and kept the Rotenbergs’ piano and music library in her home for safekeeping during the period of hunger and typhus in the ghetto (during the winter of 1941 to the spring of 1942). She regularly brought them food and medicine without any compensation. In August 1942, during an Aktion in the Boryslaw ghetto, Michalina hid them at her friend’s house. Besides Anna, the apartment was a shelter for other Jews, including Amilia Basiuk, the Tenenbaum family (Lola Tenenbaum [Amilia’s aunt], her son Poldek and his wife Lusia) as well as the Schultz family. In February 1943, during the next Aktion, Anna and Jerzy escaped from the ghetto. Michalina helped them again and put them up, along with a few other Jews, in her friend’s cellar, and later on maintained contact with Anna and Jerzy as they moved from hideout to hideout, sending them food and clothing. After liberation in August 1944, she welcomed them warmheartedly into her home, helped them to find an apartment of their own, and returned to them all that she took from them for safekeeping. She even paid all of her transportation costs herself. On March 20, 1986, Yad Vashem recognized Michalina Krystyna Tympalska as Righteous Among the Nations.