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Rescuers and Aid Providers: View Other Stories of Rescue in the Area

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The Iwanowski Family

Sabina Iwanowska Mother

Helena Skinderowa née Iwanowska

Anna Kornecka née Iwanowska Daughter
born 23 August 1917 in Vilnius / Vilne / Wilno (inne)

Adolf Danilewicz Neighbour

Recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations:

2001

  • Adolf Danilewicz
  • Sabina Iwanowska
  • Anna Kornecka née Iwanowska
  • Helena Skinderowa née Iwanowska

Help Was Extended to:

Emma Altberg
born 14 January 1889 in Płock (mazowieckie) – died 14 July 1983 in Warszawa (mazowieckie)

Maria Altberg- Arnoldowa
born 26 October 1893 in Płock (mazowieckie) – died 16 May 1995 in Warszawa (mazowieckie)

Story of Rescue

November 2008, Teresa Torańska

It happened all of a sudden. She went to Vilno to get some winter clothes. She met her father. He said two ladies needed to be taken from there, from the Altberg house. So she did. Just as the Germans were rounding up the Vilno Jews to be placed in the ghetto.

“I didn’t feel I was in any danger” – she says.

She asked the carter who took her to Vilno if he would take “her mom’s guests,” too – he would, certainly. He knew. “Their eyes are so dark” -  he told her.

“We were driving for three days, because the horse could only make some 40 kilometers a day, and Rohaczowszczyzna was 120 km from Vilno. Quite often the carter and I would walk by the cart, with only the two elderly ladies, somewhere around 50, sitting on the cart. The carter was great! His name was Adolf Danilewicz, he was a lessee of ours. When we were halfway, in Ejszyszki, he walked up to me and said: ‘Mistress, them folks are sayin’ them’s makin’ a ghetto in Ejszyszki. What do you want we should do?’ So I said: ‘Dolphy, maybe we should go around through the forest.’ And we made it.”

Rohaczowszczyzna was a small village, never visited by people from outside the family. But food was scarce. They bought a cow and a pig, and the lessees were giving them potatoes and grain. And later they would make moonshine for sale. One time the Germans caught her for it.

“The next cell was counting how many times I got clubbed – I have no idea. They’ve pulverized my backside. I only survived because my family bought me out. The Germans didn’t know we were keeping Jews in the house.”

After the war Emma Altberg was the piano and harpsichord professor at the Music Academy in Łódź, and Maria Arnold – a doctor of philosophy and a teacher, worked at the Library of the Institute of General Chemistry in Warsaw.

An article from the album “Recalling Forgotten History for Poles who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust,“ Warsaw 2008
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