Krzynowy Karol & Tekla

Krzynowy, Karol Krzynowy, Tekla Zygmunt Gottlieb was born in 1923 in Kopyczyńce, Poland (now Ukraine), and was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family, going to both public and Hebrew school. His father was a prominent figure in town politics. The town had poor living conditions even before the war, and while most Jews were educated to some extent, most of the gentiles were not. When in 1941 the Germans arrived, they immediately began carrying out Aktionen (mass executions of Jews) and taking young men away for labor. Then, they took all of the surviving Jews from the area (only about 65 out of several thousand) to the Kamionka Ghetto in Poland. Zygmunt, his father, Emil (b. 1893), and his uncle, Munio, ended up in Kamionka, where they felt they might be killed at any time. During the second Aktion in Kamionka, in autumn 1943, the three Gottliebs escaped the ghetto. They went out into the fields and looked for a way to survive. Eventually, they saw a house belonging to Karol Krzynowy (b. 1911), a young Polish man, formerly an officer, who lived with his wife, Tekla (b. 1916), and their two children. It was very frightening for the young family to take in Jews, but the Gottliebs’ desperate state convinced Karol to try to help them. Karol built an underground hideout in his barn, where Zygmunt, Emil, and Munio could stay. His wife brought them food and did their laundry. Despite constant raids in the area, the Gottliebs stayed in the barn until the liberation in 1944. Once liberated by the Russians, Zygmunt was taken to serve in the Russian Army, after which he went to the United States via Vienna and Munich. He met his wife in Cuba and raised a family with her. He tried to get in touch with the Krzynowys via newspaper advertisements but was unable to find them. On September 30, 2015, Yad Vashem recognized Karol and Tekla Krzynowy as Righteous Among the Nations.