Tyll Albin

Tyll, Albin Albin Tyll, a Pole of German origin, met Lola (Lotti) Sandberg while they were both working in the city hall in Kołomyja. The Sandbergs—father Zygmunt, mother Fanny, their two girls, Lotti and Mila (Amalia), and cousin Jasia—were a wealthy Jewish family from Zaleszczyki, a resort town on the shore of the Dniester River, then the border between Poland and Romania. In 1940, after the Russian occupation of eastern Poland, they moved to Kołomyja following the confiscation of the mills they owned and in fear of arrest and deportation to Siberia. Lola got a job at city hall to help support the family. There she met Albin, who soon became a close friend to the entire family. In 1941 the Germans occupied Kołomyja. Lola lost her job, leaving the family without its main source of income. Albin immediately took it upon himself to provide for them. He continued to do so even after the Sandbergs were forced to move to the ghetto in February 1942. His help was extended to other Jews as well. He would take clothing and household items from the residents of the ghetto to the villages of the surrounding Carpathian Mountains and barter them for food, which he would bring back to the ghetto. As rumors started to spread that the liquidation of the ghetto was approaching, Albin devised a plan to sneak the family over the border to Hungary, but he did not mange to implement it in time. On October 11, 1942, the Sandbergs, along with about 4,000 other Jews, were put on a train that would take them to their deaths in Belzec. During the ride Lola, Mila, and Jasia decided to jump off the train and try to escape. The elderly parents chose to stay behind, thinking the three young women would have a better chance of getting away without them. The three managed to land safely and made it to the Chodorów Ghetto, from where they contacted Albin. He arrived the next day with some clothes, money, and false papers, and from that moment on he did everything in his power to protectand care for the three women. “He said, ‘I am going to save you. If I am going to perish, I will perish with you,’” recalls Mila in her testimony, adding, “He took us under his wings. This is how we survived.” They moved to Lwów where Albin got a job in a German company managing confiscated properties in the area. With the job he received comfortable accommodations, and he brought the three women there, presenting them as his wife (Lola), her cousin (Mila), and their maid (Jasia). He also arranged for Mila to be employed by the same company. They lived together as one “family” in the Lwów area until it was liberated by the Red Army in August 1944. After the liberation the three survivors and their devoted rescuer moved back to Zaleszczyki for a while, later crossing the border to Romania. There their paths parted—Albin moved to Argentina, Jasia immigrated to Israel, and Mila and Lola eventually settled in Canada. On July 11, 2011, Yad Vashem recognized Albin Tyll as Righteous Among the Nations.