Brogowski Maciej & Brogowska Cecylia

Maciej & Cecylia Brogowski Irena Sznycer was just two years old when WWII began. Her father was soon lost to the family, and her mother and older sister Tosia were subsequently deported as well. Before her arrest, Irena's mother managed to send her little girl to Warsaw, to stay with her aunt's family who were in hiding on the Aryan side. However, Irena's "Jewish looks" were considered too dangerous, so her aunt sent her to an orphanage. The conditions at the institution were appalling, and Irena's aunt eventually took her back and arranged for her acquaintance, Ksawera Brogowska, who was working as a housekeeper in Warsaw, to help take Irena to a safe hideout. Aided by her friend Maria Leszczyńska, Brogowska managed to smuggle Irena to Belżec, where Irena, Leszczyńska, and Brogowska went to stay with Brogowska's brother, Maciej Brogowski, and his wife Cecylia. Maciej and Cecylia Brogowski already had three children, so the additional mouths to feed placed quite a strain on their scarce resources. Moreover, the risk to the entire family was enormous, given that the town housed a death camp, and Germans and collaborating Poles were constantly carrying out searches. During the raids, little Irena was hidden in the potato cellar. The cellar was dark and frightening, so one of the children would hide with her, bringing along the family cat. If there was no time to hide, the family presented Irena as a niece. Once, a Pole identified Irena as Jewish, but fortunately, Maciej and Ksawera managed to distract him by offering him food and alcohol. After this, they had to baptize Irena for her own protection. Despite all the hardships, the Brogowskis treated Irena very well. "My parents were bringing up three children, and Irena became their fourth," wrote Maria Jurczak, one of the Brogowskis's children. The children felt it was their duty to protect their little ward. "They hid me for three and a half years," Irena, later Rina Feinmesser, testified. "They were theonly family I had." After liberation, Irena was placed in a Bund orphanage for Jewish children. A few years later, she joined a group of children that departed for Czechoslovakia, then France, and finally, in 1949, Israel, where she ended up on a kibbutz. As she grew up in Israel, Irena was unable to restore contact with the Brogowskis having forgotten their family name, although she tried approaching an agency which located lost persons. Meanwhile, the Brogowskis kept searching for her by all conceivable means, and when they passed away, their daughter Maria continued the search. Finally, she advertised in a newspaper for her "little Jewish sister," attaching a photo. An acquaintance of Rina's recognized little Irena, and the two women were put in touch with each other. Rina took her children to Poland to see Maria and the house. After almost six decades of separation, the reunion, wrote Maria, was "happy and tearful beyond description," and Rina added that "it brought back many memories I'd worried might have only existed in my imagination." On June 11, 2006, Maciej and Cecylia Brogowski were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.