Grutsch Lambert

Grutsch, Lambert Lambert Grutsch, b.1914, lived in the village of Jerzens, in Austria’s Tyrol region. Because he was an invalid, he was not drafted into the army and was assigned instead to work for STUAG, a company that built roads, carried out excavations, and laid rail lines. In 1943, while working for the company in the Polish city of Biezanów, near Kraków, he met Julia Sypek, who worked in the company’s kitchen. “Julia” was actually Helena Horwitz, a Jew from Dębica, Poland, who had been incarcerated with her family in the city’s ghetto. In December 1942, a former employer of hers, aided by two women friends of the family and a Polish policeman, had enabled her to leave the ghetto and illicitly join a group of young Polish women who were being sent to Germany to do forced labor. The group was taken by train to Kraków, where departures for Germany took place. Having no papers, Helena was in constant danger. On one occasion, when a roll call was taken, she noticed that no one responded to the name Julia Sypek. She decided on the spot to reply in that name. In line with the German army’s need to improve transportation in the Kraków area, some of the young woman remained at the site, Julia/Helena among them. She was scheduled to work in the Plaszów labor camp, and to avoid this took the advice of some of the other women and submitted a request to work for STUAG. She began to work there in January 1943, initially as a cleaner and afterward in the kitchen, where she met Lambert Grutsch. With the aid of Jews from the Biezanów labor camp and some money she made by selling vodka and cigarettes, Helena Horwitz was able to obtain an ID card and a work permit. However, having witnessed the atrocities perpetrated by the Germans she was afraid to remain in Poland. When she found out that Lambert Grutsch and his family owned farmland in the Tyrol region of Austria, she asked him to help her get there, offering to working in the house and the fields. Her hope was that the American forces, which had landed in Italy in 1943, would soon reach the Tyrol region. At the beginning of 1944, Lambert informed her that he would be going on home leave early in February and would take her with him. In one of their discussions about the plan, Helena asked him if a Gestapo unit was stationed in his village, and he told her that he knew she was a Jew. He had learned this from his superior, an Austrian, who had helped another Jewish woman, from whom he had learned about “Julia’s” secret. However, he did not divulge this to his family, introducing “Julia” as a Pole. She helped the women of the family – now on their own after the men were mobilized – with the household and farming chores. It was only after the war that she revealed to them her true identity. When Lambert returned to Biezanów, he was called in for a clarification about the disappearance of Julia Sypek, as some of the employees had seen the two of them together at the railway station. He denied all knowledge of her whereabouts. After the war and some time in DP camps, Helena Horwitz moved to Paris. One of her uncles found out that she had worked for Lambert Grutsch, wrote to him in Austria, and received from him her address in Paris. Later she immigrated to the United States, where she married and raised a family. Lambert returned to his village, where he died in 1995. Lambert Grutsch risked his life by hiding a Jew in his home illegally, after helping smuggle her out of Poland, an offense, which was punishable by death. He received no material recompense for his deeds. On June 30, 2002, Yad Vashem recognized Lambert Grutsch as Righteous Among the Nations.