Szawłowska Maria

Maria Szawłowska Romana Iżycka-Fedorska When war broke out, 12-year-old Sophie Schorr was living with her parents, Otto (a physician) and Mary, in the town of Załoszce. The first two years of the war passed under Soviet rule – a difficult, yet relatively safe and normal life. Sophie continued to attend school, and her father maintained his medical practice. In 1941, the Nazis invaded Poland and the Schorrs were forced to move into a small apartment in the "old town." Their landlady was Maria Szawłowska. As the situation steadily worsened, the Schorrs decided to send Sophie away to safety. With the help of his friend Franciszek Bajer, a young Catholic priest, Otto managed to obtain Christian birth certificates for Sophie and Mary. Sophie Schorr-Reiner later wrote that Bajer became the family’s "guardian angel," helping them continually throughout their trials. The Schorrs then approached their acquaintance Artur Bukartyk, a local district attorney, to help them find a family that would agree to shelter Sophie, who was now 15 years old. Bukartyk himself had been adopted into a family as an infant, and his sister, Romana (Roma) Iżycka-Fedorska, agreed to take in Sophie. Roma lived in Lwów, and as a social worker before the war was now deprived of work. She was in her late forties, newly married to Witold Fedorski and supporting both her daughter and her mother. Fearing the antisemitism of some of her family members, Roma told them that Sophie was the daughter of an imprisoned Polish officer, and that her mother had been threatened by Ukrainians and had sent Sophie away. A few months later, Mary appeared at the Fedorskis’ doorstep. Sheltering both Mary and Sophie would have been tremendously risky, because despite the similarities in their looks, they had different names according to their "Aryan papers," and the Germans often carried out surprise checks in the area. Roma decided to find Sophie another place to stay. She placed her on a train to Kraków,then to Ojców, where the daughter of Romana’s friends, Joanna Morawska, lived. Sophie was presented to Morawska as a Catholic girl, and remained with her until late 1944. Meanwhile, Otto was in a labor camp in Załoszce, but his job as a physician gained him permission to treat patients outside the camp because of the shortage of medical professionals in town. During such a trip one day in 1942, someone told him that the camp was to be liquidated, and warned him not to return. He escaped to the woods and made contact with Bajer, who prevailed upon Maria Szawłowska, the Schorrs’ former landlady, to harbor him. Schorr was hidden in Szawłowska's attic, a small triangular space where Schorr could only sit or lie down. He stayed there for a year, with Szawłowska bringing him food twice a day and changing the slop bucket every day. Bajer provided Schorr with constant moral support, and encouraged Szawłowska to continue her good "Christian deeds." At the end of the war, Otto had to learn to walk anew as the severely constricted space had damaged his legs. After liberation, the family reunited and left Poland, first for Munich, where Sophie obtained a degree in medicine, and then to the US, where they settled in upstate New York. They stayed in touch with the Fedorskis, and Roma’s daughter visited them in their new home. On May 14, 2006, Yad Vashem recognized Maria Szawłowska and Romana Iżycka-Fedorska as Righteous Among the Nations.