Stępniewski Tadeusz

Stępniewski, Tadeusz Tadeusz Stępniewski (1905–1987), a physician of some renown in the city of Warsaw, was a pronounced democrat, famous for his views, whose enormous efforts during World War II helped save many lives. Not only did he participate in the Żegota council’s (Council for Aid to Jews known by its code-name “Żegota”) actions to save Jewish children by placing them in a variety of hiding places, such as private homes and monasteries, but he also provided medical aid to Jewish refugees, including circumcision reversal operations to hide their origins. He helped Jews obtain Aryan papers and assisted them in escaping the ghetto. At a certain point in 1942, he acted with the aid of a resistance worker, Polish policeman Marian Żebrowski, to rescue his brother-in-law Krzysztof Libin from the ghetto. Libin, Stępniewski’s sister Danuta’s husband, was Jewish. Danuta and Krzysztof’s little son, Jan, were living with their parents (spending time in Tadeusz’s apartment from time to time and supported by him financially), but Krzysztof was imprisoned in the ghetto. Tadeusz managed to get him out of the ghetto and into hiding. Unfortunately, Krzysztof was killed in the Uprising. Tadeusz also hid Jewish children in his own home (including Julek and Krysia Dziedzic) and helped provide Jews in hiding with money. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, he worked tirelessly to help the wounded and suffered a serious wound himself. He survived and lived until 1987. Throughout his life, he opposed any mention of his heroic deeds on the principle that he had not done anything out of the ordinary and that there were certainly others who had done more than he had for the persecuted. On March 15, 2016, Yad Vashem recognized Tadeusz Stępniewski as Righteous Among the Nations.