Gołąbek Paweł & Zofia

Gołąbek, Paweł Gołąbek, Zofia Bartczak, Jan During the occupation, Paweł Goląbek was serving as a policeman in the Polish “Blue Police” (named for the color of their uniform) in Warsaw that was obediently following the orders issued by the Germans against the Jews. Unlike most of his friends who collaborated with the Germans in abusing the Jews, Paweł treated them humanely. In 1942-1943, during the siege and the deportation of the Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to extermination, Paweł and his brother-in-law, Jan Bartczak, helped smuggle Jews, particularly children, out from the ghetto and over to the “Aryan” side of the city. They hid those Jews in their home, which served as a transit station. There, Paweł’s wife, Zofia, helped in caring for the fugitives until suitable “Aryan” papers and hiding places were arranged for them. Among those saved by the Goląbeks, some of them remaining in their home from as little as one and a half months to as much as four months were: Albina Krzewińska, her daughter, Izabella, and Renata and Hanka Skotnicki. In 1942, Ada Kołodziańska, an adolescent, who was hit and injured by a German, was smuggled by Paweł and Jan to their apartment on Kacza Street. There, they arranged for a doctor to care for her. They then moved her to Janina Szymanska, Jan’s sister-in-law, where she remained until the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in autumn 1944. In addition, the Gołąbeks hid two small Jewish children in their home: five-year-old Rysia Trokenhajm and four-year-old Józefa Lurje. These two hid in their home for more than a year, from April 1943 to the fall of 1944. After the Warsaw Uprising was suppressed in the fall of 1944, the Gołąbeks were deported to Auschwitz. They took the two Jewish children with them and looked after them as if they were their own. After the war, they returned them to their relatives. On December 24, 2001, Yad Vashem recognized Paweł and Zofia Gołąbek and Jan Bartczak as Righteous Among the Nations.