Raczkowski Jan

Sydry, Zofia Dietrich, Czesława Serafin, Antoni Raczkowski, Jan Hanna Pinkert was born in Warsaw in 1927 to Sima-Ella and Zygmunt, and they lived intermittently in Warsaw and Otwock, a nearby resort town, because Sima-Ella had tuberculosis and needed the good air, and Hanna’s grandfather had a large house there. They were not a religious family, but Hanna was sent to a Jewish school where the instruction was in Polish. Shortly before the war, Sima-Ella had to move permanently to Otwock, together with her parents and Hanna. The girl was placed in the house of a local teacher charged with her education, and Zygmunt came down from Warsaw frequently to see his family. This continued for a while even after the occupation. Soon after the Nazi invasion, however, the teacher took his family and fled, and Sima-Ella and her parents were expelled from the house and moved into the teacher’s now vacant apartment with Hanna. When the grandparents returned to Warsaw, Sima-Ella was left in the care of Hannah and the housekeeper. A ghetto was established in Otwock, and Zygmunt came down from Warsaw to stay. When he sometimes needed to go back to visit his parents or sell some possessions, he did so by bribing and joining the driver of the local insane asylum, who ferried patients back and forth. In December 1940 Sima-Ella passed away. Zygmunt decided to take Hanna back to Warsaw and rejoin his parents. They were secure enough that they did not fear starvation. The conditions, however, deteriorated quickly. Again Zygmunt and Hanna prepared to move, returning to the Otwock Ghetto. There, two sisters Zygmunt had known before the war, Zofia Sydry and Czesława Dietrich, visited them often. When Germans came into the grandparents’ house in Warsaw and murdered many of the family members living there, the surviving grandmother, aunt, and her little son escaped Warsaw and with the aid of Sydry and Dietrich found refuge in the house of a Polish man named Antoni Serafin. A number of further misfortunes befell the Pinkerts in the Otwock Ghetto, until finally they were told in no uncertain terms that it was time to flee, for the ghetto was soon to be liquidated. Dietrich and Sydry came to their aid again, getting Serafin to add Hanna to the number of Jews already hiding in his house, and later they convinced him to take Zygmunt in as well. Their stay was not peaceful: one day a German soldier walked in and discovered them, and only a bribe drove him away. When Serafin found out, he was terrified and ran to the local priest, Jan Raczkowski, for advice. Raczkowski was a figure of authority and renown in the area, and he had aided many Jews. He helped indirectly by influencing his parishioners to be merciful, even instructing them directly to help Jews; he also assisted people like Joanna Kaltman, who was hiding in the area under the guise of being a Catholic, and whom he instructed discreetly as to Catholic rituals and the things she was to say and do in church so as not to be discovered. Furthermore, he handed out fake baptism and birth certificates and did not fear the danger that was all the greater for him because he was such a public person. Raczkowski told Antoni Serafin to continue hiding the Jews despite the danger, and he even offered his own home to one of the women and her child. In this way the families survived until the liberation in 1944. Zygmunt then remarried and remained in Poland, and Hanna studied medicine, married, and immigrated to Israel in 1968. On June 26, 2012, Yad Vashem recognized Zofia Sydry and Czesława Dietrich, as well as Antoni Serafin and Jan Raczkowski, as Righteous Among the Nations.