Ziobrowski Karol & Ziobrowska Paulina ; Son: Eugeniusz

Ziobrowski Karol Ziobrowska Paulina Ziobrowski Eugeniusz Karol Ziobrowski lived with his wife Paulina and their three sons: Eugeniusz, Kazimierz, and Włodzimierz in the Kontrowers forest, located in the hamlet of Muszkatówka (in the county of Borszczów, in the Tarnopol district). Before the war, the Ziobrowskis had Jewish friends. After the establishment of the Borszczów ghetto, but prior to the ghetto being closed off, Karol took food and heating fuel to the inhabitants. In 1942, the Ziobrowskis agreed to hide a neighboring Jewish family. They built a shelter, working during the night so as not to be discovered. They covered the earth that they dug for the shelter with cow dung. The shelter was equipped with a plank bed, an oil lamp, buckets, and dishes. It was covered with wood and a layer of earth half a meter deep. The entrance to the shelter, using a ladder, was through an oven. In October 1942, the Ziobrowskis brought Motek and Rosa Messer and their four-year old son Issie (Izydor) to the shelter, where they stayed until the liberation in 1944. Two or three months later, after conditions had changed in the ghetto for the worse, Rosa asked the Ziobrowskis to accept her parents (Herszko and Mina Kawalek) as well. After partly rebuilding the shelter, Karol brought them out of the ghetto. During this period, another Jewish family, Srulko and Riwka Herszkowicz, who were familiar with the Ziobrowskis, turned to them for help. “Because of humanitarian and religious reasons my family could not, and did not know how to refuse these people,” wrote Eugeniusz in his testimony to Yad Vashem. The Ziobrowskis began digging another shelter in a service building that served as a storage place. Karol and Eugeniusz connected the two shelters with a tunnel so that in case one of the entrances was discovered, there would be a possibility for escape through the other tunnel. In the building above the shelter they put sheep; the feeding and watering devicesdisguised the entrance to the shelter perfectly. After building the shelter, Karol led the Herszkowiczes to his home. A few weeks later, Srulko became frightened for his mother who was left behind in Borszczów. His hysterical behavior jeopardized the whole plan. Karol and Paulina came to the conclusion that the only solution to the problem would be to bring Srulko’s mother to the shelter. This dangerous task was entrusted to the oldest son, Eugeniusz, who was then seventeen years old. He went to the address given and brought the elderly lady back with him. In June 1943, the final liquidation of the Borszczów ghetto took place. Hersz Rozenwald and his two children, Munio and Niusia, managed to escape during the night. They managed to get to the Ziobrowskis’ home; they had known the family since earlier times and asked for help. Karol and Paulina agreed, reasoning that the discovery of one or several Jews would result in the same punishment anyway. The Ziobrowskis did not tell the Rozenwalds that they were hiding other Jews as well. They put them up for the time being in the attic and decided to build a third shelter, this time in the cowshed. The Rozenwalds promptly moved in once it was completed. In the fall of 1943, there was a roundup of Jews in Muszkatowka. During the roundup, the Ajzners and their daughter were shot. Three of the Ajzner boys, however, managed to escape to the woods near where the Ziobrowskis lived. One night when Karol and Eugeniusz went out for a walk in the woods, they heard the sobbing of a child. Upon closer inspection they found three boys: sixteen-year old Izio Ajzner who had gone to school with Eugeniusz, and his two younger brothers, nine-year-old Munio and six-year-old Jos. The Ziobrowskis took the three orphans with them and hid them in the barn. When the frosts began setting in, they moved the boys to the first two shelters, where they stayed until the liberation. In the late fall of 1943, Maier Kawalek, Hershko’s son,along with his daughter, Hanka Rozenwald, arrived at the Ziobrowski home. The newcomers were welcomed into the shelter, where they stayed until liberation. In the winter of 1943/44, Ukrainian nationalists started troubling the Ziobrowskis. Out of fear, they began spending nights in the forest. After some time they returned home. “My father and I went everyday for walks, trying to get information,” wrote Eugeniusz in his testimony. “We often walked separately since it was a big area. My father set out in the direction of the forester who lived some three-kilometers away. The forester’s house was empty but my father noticed tracks from the house to the well and from the well to the woods. He followed the tracks to where they stopped and he began listening. He heard a quiet conversation and he understood that Jews were hiding there.” The voices were that of Max Frisz (whom Karol already knew), his sister, her husband, Meir Gotesman, and their daughter. That evening, Karol led Frisz and Gotesman to his house to feed them. After a few days, when it became very cold, the Ziobrowskis decided to bring the four of them to the shelter. Three months before liberation, the Kawaleks turned to Paulina and requested that they take in their daughter, Klara. Paulina agreed. All together, the Ziobrowskis gave shelter to 21 people over the course of the war. “What can I say?” wrote Eugineusz. “Only this: that God watched over us. These people were under our care, we had grain hidden in boxes and buried so that the Germans would not find it.” In his testimony, Eugineusz also described how he and his family ran the house day-by-day: “Around 3:00 a.m. mother would make breakfast and I went to the shelters and collected human waste (it was poured in a specially disguised pit). Later, I carried clean water in buckets for drinking or washing. Then, my father and I took the breakfast to the shelter. Lunch was served according to the situation, if someone (a stranger) came we did notcreate any situations that might raise his suspicions that people were being hidden here... Supper was also given out according to the situation. There were such days when we could not serve meals, but they understood.” The Ziobrowskis had hidden supplies of grain. They could not, however, take the grain to be ground in a mill because such a large amount would have raised suspicions. That was why they had to grind the grain manually with home grinders. If a large amount of food was already cooked for the hiding Jews and someone unfamiliar arrived, on a number of occasions the food had to be fed to the pigs lest the guest become suspicious. To ensure safety, the Ziobrowskis insisted that those hiding in one bunker would not know about those hiding in the other bunkers. Karol didn’t even admit to his family that he was hiding Jews. Eugeniusz emphasized at the end of his testimony: “My family, before and during the war, tried to live in peace with and to respect all other nations.” All 21 people hidden by the Ziobrowskis survived the war. After the war, contact was maintained between the Ziobrowskis and some of their former charges. Karol and Eugeniusz were invited by the Messers and the Friszes to visit Canada and the United States. On July 26, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Karol Ziobrowski, his wife, Paulina Ziobrowska, and their son, Eugeniusz Ziobrowski, as Righteous Among the Nations. File 5330