Laxander Walenty

Laxander Walenty Walenty Laxander, a Polish engineer of German origin, was in charge of the construction work in which the Jewish forced laborers from the Czystyłów camp, in the Tarnopol district, Eastern Galicia, were employed. Laxander came to the aid of many of the Jewish forced laborers, among them a recently married couple, Szymon Ginsberg and Zofia (nee Distenfeld). Zofia managed to conceal her pregnancy in the camp and, on April 17, 1943, she secretly gave birth to a baby girl, which they named Gizela. At the parents’ request, Laxander agreed to rescue the newborn infant. He smuggled her from the camp and registered her under an assumed name Anna Zofia Darmont as a German baby. After the war, Laxander legally adopted her, raised her and they resettled within Poland’s new borders. Years later he traced the girl’s relatives in Israel and took her there for a visit in 1957, but they subsequently returned to live in Poland. Even after her adoptive father’s death in 1961, Anna (later Zeissel) remained in Poland. On September 2, 1996, Yad Vashem recognized Walenty Laxander as Righteous Among the Nations. File 7211