Barylak Aniela

Barylak, Aniela During the Nazi occupation, Aniela Barylak was living in Nadwórna, Poland, with her husband Jan and their two children: two-year-old Bolesław Andrzej and baby Teresa. In the fall of 1941, on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the Germans held a raid to arrest all of the Jews in the area. Many Jews died in the raid, including the entire Einhorn family with the exception of eight-year-old Jafa Einhorn (later Kurz). Jafa spoke no Polish and very little Ukrainian, but Aniela Barylak, a mother herself, could not abandon a child who’d been left alone. She took the girl in, bathed and fed her, and gave her a place to sleep. The Barylaks decided to keep Jafa, but Jan’s relatives, the Schmidts, were antisemitic Volksdeutsche who insisted on turning her over to the police. To appease them, Jafa was promptly baptized and given the name Stefania, or Stefcia, as she became affectionately known. This calmed the Schmidts down somewhat, but Jafa remembers that there were still many arguments in the household when the Schmidts threatened to call the police. At this point, the little girl always cried, and Aniela firmly stood her ground. The danger to the family was clear: in the event of their discovery by the authorities they would all have been killed. Despite this, and the lack of any possible compensation for their kindness, Aniela resisted their family and friends’ pressure and kept Jafa-Stefania safe until the end of the war. After liberation, Jafa went to Wrocław to complete her studies, where she made many Jewish acquaintances. Together with her new husband and child, she later immigrated to Israel. The Barylaks’ daughter Teresa later testified that many friends warned her mother of her reckless behavior, but Aniela claimed she would have done the same thing again. On her deathbed, Aniela Barylak asked Teresa to stay in touch with Jafa, explaining that she was all Teresa had left in the world. On July 16, 2007 Yad Vashem recognized AnielaBarylak as Righteous Among the Nations.