The Drozdowski Family
Leon Drozdowski Father
died 1977
Józef Drozdowski Son
in Gródek (podlaskie)
Jadwiga Maliszewska née Drozdowska Daughter
born 5 August 1926 in Gródek (podlaskie)
Help Was Extended to:
Apolonia Szyper
Story of Rescue
November 2010, Tomasz Czajkowski
During the war, Jadwiga Maliszewska and her family lived in Zemborzyce, then a village located near Lublin (nowadays it’s a southern district of Lublin). Jadwiga recalls how her father Leon Drozdowski and other members of the family were hiding a Jewish orphan Apolonia Fajraizen from 1941 till the end of the war. Mrs. Drozdowska's parents called the girl Teresa.
At first, they were planning to hide Apolonia only for a few days. After they found out that the Nazis had deported and killed the girl's parents, they decided to keep helping her.
After the war, Teresa lived with the Drozdowski family for two more years and they wanted her to stay with them on a permanent basis. However, the authorities would not allow this, and the girl ended up in Radom, and then she emigrated in the West – first in France, and from there she went to the United States. For some time they kept in touch.
The Drozdowskis learned about Mrs. Fajraizen’s death of cancer from her husband. They tried to get more information, regarding the course of her studies and about her successes, yet her husband didn’t write back.
The relation was recorded in the framework of the project "Lights In The Darkness – The Righteous Among The Nations", courtesy of the "Ośrodek Brama Grodzka – Teatr NN" in Lublin
