In his recently published book, entitled “The House of Three Generations” Grzegorz Sztoler presents the story of the Godziek family, who had been living in the same house in Brzeźce near Pszczyna for a hundred years. The background of this story is the difficult history of Silesia and Europe in the last two centuries. We read about events taking place during both World Wars. One of the subjects described in Sztoler’s book is the rescue of Jews. In 1945 the house – central element of the book – becomes a shelter for three women, all of them Jewish inmates of Auschwitz. For their selfless help given to Jews Zofia and Augustyn Godziek have received the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

In January 1945 Olga Lengyel together with two other women of Jewish origin coming from Hungary – Magda and Lojzika – managed to escape during the so-called “death march” of over ten thousand inmates of the Auschwitz camp. They arrived at the house of Zofia and Augustyn Godziek, who hid them in their barn. They spent the nights in one of the rooms of the house, where they slept on palliasses together with the whole family. The women did not speak Polish, so they talked with their hosts in broken German. They remained in the Godzieks’ house until the area was taken over by the Soviet army. Olga Lengyel is the author of the famous book “Five chimneys”, published in the US in 1947. It was one of the first books describing the terrible mechanics of Nazi camps and the experiments of Josef Mengele. The author started to write it when she was hiding at the house of Zofia and Augustyn Godziek.

Through a portrait of a single family the book of Grzegorz Sztoler portrays the dramatic turns of the 20^th century history. This panorama had to bring such subjects as the extermination of Jews in Poland, Poles saving Jews during the Second World War and Polish-Jewish relations, as well as the Soviet and Nazi occupation, that determined these events.