Grodzka- Guzkowska Magdalena
Magdalena Grodzka-Gużkowska née Rusinek
born 7 January 1925
Recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations:
2008
- Magdalena Grodzka-Gużkowska née Rusinek
Help Was Extended to:
Story of Rescue
November 2008, Jakub Beczek
“It is April 1943 – she wrote in the biographical work entitled ‘Lucky One’. – The ghetto is burning. The uprising…we are lying on a slanted roof. A few of us… We see the house across from us. On one of the iron balconies…an older man appears, a younger woman and two children. The older man puts his hand on each of their heads, then grabs one of the children and throws it over the railing. We lie there and stare. Helplessness. The second child flies down. The rest of the family jumps on their own.”
From the first days of the Uprising she operated underground. She was a messenger, she transferred conspiratorial press releases and primitive secret printing presses, she led people to contacts who would take them across the border, she ran secret radio taps. And she saved Jews. She was one of the people who “led out into the sun” grey faced Jewish children who had been pulled from dark corners. She took them to new hiding places. She brought them food. And she taught them how not to show the Germans and the civilians who worked with the German’s that they were Jews.
“I taught Jews the rosary and the sign of the cross. With the sign of the cross we always had trouble. Because Jews, both the old and the young, always did it with service, slowly, closing their eyes… God! Who’s ever seen such a thing? Every German would recognize right away that they were Jews. So I explained: ‘Wave your hand around quickly, without touching. One-two-three.’”
After the fall of the Warsaw Uprising she went through six camps. She left for England, and later went to Canada. In 1974 she returned to Poland. She began taking care of autistic children at a treatment center in Warsaw.
“I know that life is worth living if you help at least one family, one child – she wrote. – I have had that joy, that luck.”
She has not been awarded the Medal of the Righteous Among the Nations by the Yad Vashem Institute.
An article from the album
“Recalling Forgotten History for Poles who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust,“ Warsaw 2008
CLICK TO DOWNLOADGhetto
A designated area of a city in which Jews were permitted to live. Ghettos were sometimes surrounded by a wall and had gates that would be closed for the night, and were sometimes called "Jewish cities" or "Jewish quarters". The term "ghetto" probably was probably first used in the sixteenth century, though its origins are unclear. The most popular theory speculates(...)
Press
The origins of the Jewish press are linked to the Haskalah movement in the eighteenth century. In a short period, from 1800 to 1825, the first Jewish periodicals appeared in the Polish lands: Tsir neeman (Hebrew, Loyal Messenger, 1814), Olat shabat (Hebrew, Sabbath Offering, 1817-24), Bikurey ha-itim (Hebrew, Contemporary Review, 1820), Dostrzegacz Nadwislanski – Der Beobachter an der Weichsel (Polish(...)
Righteous Among the Nations
[Hebrew, Chasidei Umot Ha-olam]
A medal and honorary title established in 1953 by the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. It is awarded to individuals who saved Jews during the Holocaust.
In 1944-1950, the Central Committee of Jews in Poland (CKZP) was involved in honoring Poles who helped Jews during the Second World War. On the basis of testimony from someone who had been(...)
Warsaw
[Yiddish, Varshe, Varsha, Varshoy]
The earliest Jewish settlement in Warsaw dates back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the first half of the fifteenth century, Warsaw had a "Jewish Street", synagogue and cemetery. The first mention of Jews being expelled from the city dates back to 1483. In 1527, Sigismund I the Old confirmed Warsaw's de non tolerandis Judaeis privilege,(...)
Warsaw
[Yiddish, Varshe, Varsha, Varshoy]
The earliest Jewish settlement in Warsaw dates back to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In the first half of the fifteenth century, Warsaw had a "Jewish Street", synagogue and cemetery. The first mention of Jews being expelled from the city dates back to 1483. In 1527, Sigismund I the Old confirmed Warsaw's de non tolerandis Judaeis privilege,(...)
Warsaw Uprising
The Warsaw Uprising: insurrection that took place in Warsaw, which was occupied by Germans. It was organized as a part of operation “Tempest” (“Burza”) by Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). Militarily it was aimed at Germans, but it had far-reaching political goals: seizure of Polish capital by authorities of the Polish Underground State was supposed to show the existence of(...)
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