Somienek Olucia

Somienek, Olucia Loncia Zweig was born in 1938 in Ottynia, Poland, to Isak and Elke Zweig, who already had three daughters: Bronia, Sala, and Chana. Isak grew produce for sale and was a successful merchant. His success in business earned him a good reputation and many non-Jewish friends. In 1941 the Germans arrived in Ottynia, and brutal Aktionen (mass executions) immediately began. The Gestapo came to the Zweigs’ house looking for Isak, who was in hiding by then. Instead they took Elke and her three older daughters, only missing Loncia because she was very small and hid under the bed, having been pushed there by her mother. Loncia’s entire family perished. Soon after the child was left by herself in the apartment, the Zweigs’ young and faithful housekeeper, Olucia Somienek, showed up. Olucia was in her 20s and lived with her mother in a nearby village. She took Loncia home with her and kept her for about two years. The village was full of unfriendly non-Jews, who, as Loncia’s cousin wrote in her testimony to Yad Vashem, “would have turned a Jew in to the Gestapo for a pound of sugar.” There were regular raids at the house because neighbors kept informing the Gestapo that there seemed to be a Jewish child hidden there. Olucia hid Loncia, once in the doghouse with the dog, another time in a mattress, a third time in a garbage bin. The little girl was never discovered. In early 1944, after two years of hiding with Olucia and her mother, Loncia joined her 22-year-old cousin, Mania Kleinberg, who took her to Romania, then Poland, and after the war, to Germany. There, Loncia’s cousin placed her in a Jewish orphanage because that was a way to get her adopted in the United States. That was exactly what transpired: Loncia was adopted by Pauline and Harry Bernholtz, her father’s distant relatives, who had seen her story in a Yiddish newspaper. She became an American in 1947. For her benefit the Bernholtzes never spoke to Loncia about her wartime experiences, and they did not want her to meet her cousins when they came to America. Only much later, as an adult, did Loncia find out what had happened to her during those years. On May 27, 2014, Yad Vashem recognized Olucia Somienek as Righteous Among the Nations.