Łaska Stanisław ; Mother: Marianna

Łaska Stanisław Łaska Marianna Miriam Finkelsztejn was born in 1932 to parents Baruch and Róźa. When the war broke out, the family moved to nearby Łowicz, and then to Warsaw. There, they ended up in the ghetto, where Miriam lost both her parents: her father in 1942 and her mother during the Uprising in 1943. Before her death, however, her mother managed to procure for her an I.D. with a Polish name (Irena Lewandowska), and gave her an address for a Polish family in a nearby village. Using her false papers, she managed to escape the ghetto and make her way to the Polish family, whose name was Bobotek. These transferred her to another family, and those in turn - to the house of Marianna Łaska who lived in Belchów. Marianna lived with her mother, two young daughters (Julka and Hela) and adult son Stanisław. The Łaskas took Miriam in and gave her the job of tending to the cows. They treated her with love and caring, as one of their own, although they seemed to have guessed she was Jewish and knew the dangers involved in harboring her. She, too, loved them and adhered to the Catholic rules of the house, attending church services and preparing with the two daughters for Holy Communion. Miriam ("Irena") stayed with the Łaskas until the liberation. After the war ended, a surviving aunt came to retrieve her, and, as was usual for Jewish children at the time, Miriam ended up part of a youth movement which eventually took her to Palestine, where she grew up all the while remembering her rescuers. Some time later, she reconnected with Stanisław. On 20/01/2009, Yad Vashem recognized Stanisław and Marianna Łaska as Righteous Among the Nations. #11432