Weinglas Maria (Kulczycka); Daughter: Gurba Kazimiera (Weinglas)

WEINGLAS, MARIA WEINGLAS, KAZIMIERA Maria Weinglas lived with her daughter Kazimiera (Gurba) in Monasteryzyska, near Buczacz in Eastern Galicia. Maria’s husband left for Argentina one year after Kazimiera was born and contact with him was lost. Maria worked in a tobacco plant. She lost her job in 1941 when the Germans destroyed the factory. One day in 1942, Maria told her daughter that they had to help a Jewish family. She explained that: “We cannot be indifferent to the suffering and injustice that the Germans cause the Jews; we need to save them and hide them,” wrote Kazimiera in her testimony to Yad Vashem. Maria and Kazimiera dug out two hideouts in their apartment, one beneath the floor in a room and the other under the porch. A third shelter, the entrance to which was located outside the house, was prepared in the cellar. In these hideouts, Maria and Kazimiera sheltered Nathan Fuchs and three of his relatives - Netta Gross, Nathan’s sister, her daughter, Willa, and Zygmunt Gross, Netta’s brother-in-law, - from 1942 until the liberation. Since Maria did not work, feeding the Jews constituted a problem. Initially, Maria sold everything she possessed and then, when she had nothing more to sell, she and her daughter began making soap to sell. Later, they made sweaters from wool that they obtained from unweaving carpets. When Maria and Kazimiera were faced with the possibility of being taken to Germany for forced labor, they decided to obtain tobacco plants. Part of the tobacco they gave as a levy; the rest they exchanged for food for themselves and their dependents. There were a few searches of Maria’s house and, after one of them, Kazimiera was ordered to report to the Gestapo. She then escaped to Stanislawow, where she hid until the liberation. After the liberation, she returned home and began talking with Maria about repatriation. In time, Maria and Kazimiera moved to Krakow. Netta and Nathan died soon after the war. Zygmunt Gross immigrated toItaly, and Willa Gross, after marrying, moved to Germany. On July 1, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Maria Weinglas and her daughter, Kazimiera Weinglas, as Righteous Among the Nations.