Nadler Olga (Nanyniec)

Nowak-Nanyniec, Olga Olga Nanyniec was 22-years-old in 1941 and was working as a clerk at the Town Hall of Borysław, 7 km from Drohobycz (Lwów District). She was from a Greek Catholic family; her mother, Stefania, was a schoolteacher and her father, Vasiliy, a forester. Olga's parents lived nearby in Plawie, while her married, older sister, Dziunia, lived in Kalne, 120 km from Borysław. After the Germans occupied the area on July 1, 1941 and the systematic murder of the Jews began, Olga took to helping her Jewish neighbors and friends, risking her own life in the process. In August 1942, during a mass murder operation that went on for many days, she watched over the Wizer family, her neighbors, who were hidden in the cellar, providing them with water and removing their waste. Later that year she befriended Leszek Nadler, a 33-year-old Borysław Jew, who worked at the wax factory. Leszek was desperately looking for a hiding place for his widowed mother, Cyla, his 25-year-old sister, Alka, and for himself. Seeing their situation, Olga invited the three of them to hide in the apartment she was sharing with another Ukrainian, Stanislawa Sokolowska. When Alka obtained “Aryan” papers she was moved to the home of Dziunia, where she remained until the liberation. When neighbors started to become too curious about Olga's house guests, she took Leszek to her parents' house in Plawie, but she did not reveal to them that Leszek was Jewish. Cyla moved to stay with a certain Nastka, her former maid and a woman who was very devoted to the Nadlers. Later both Leszek and Cyla came back to stay with Olga who, in the meantime, had rented a larger apartment on the upper floor of an ice-cream plant. Olga also helped Gustaw and Aniela Szindelman, Nadlers' elderly relatives, a 13-year-old orphan named Adolf Stern, and Dolek Wekselberg, a Jew married to a Ukrainian woman. All of them, except Cyla, survived the Nazi occupation. Following the liberation of Borysław in August 1944, they all left for Poland and then moved to other countries. In 1945, Leszek married Olga, his rescuer, and the couple changed their family name to Nowak. They and Alka Nadler (by then Alicia Nadel) settled in Sidney, Australia. On March 31, 2003, Yad Vashem recognized Olga Nanyniec-Nowak as Righteous Among the Nations.