The Raszkiewicz Family
Recognized as the Righteous Among the Nations:
8 September 1996
- Helena Bąkała née Raszkiewicz
- Tadeusz Bąkała
- Julianna Raszkiewicz née Wikieł
Help Was Extended to:
Story of Rescue
August 2009, Anna Zawadzka
In 1942, Chaim Birenbaum’s mother and sister were transported from Umschlagplatz in the Warsaw ghetto to an extermination camp. During the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising a year later, Chaim was also put on a concentration camp transport but jumped out of the train.
“They shot at him, but missed-says Helena Bąkała. – He was taken in by a forester’s wife, who, while giving him food also winked at her husband to go and inform on the escapee. Chaim realized what was happening, ‘I left everything and fled’-he said. When they came for him, there were sounds of gunfire at the lodge.”
Exhausted after a few days of wandering, Chaim, then a teenager, reached Warsaw. He went to his neighbours from before the war: Helena Bąkała, her husband Tadeusz, and Helena’s mother Julianna Raszkiewicz. He stayed with them for three weeks. This was a restless and difficult time, since their apartment was next to the Warsaw ghetto. Ukrainian guards patrolled the streets and a self-appointed collaborator lived just across the landing. Helena used to smuggle food into the ghetto pretending to be a janitor.
“I used to take a broom, sweep the floor and acted like a janitor if I saw those Ukrainians hanging about. It’s all very difficult to describe what we went through. You, the young people, now live in good times, but we went through a lot then.”
Tadeusz Bąkała organized false documents for Chaim who signed up for forced labour in Germany under pretending to be Christian. In 1947 he emigrated to Israel. He lives in Haifa and keeps in touch with Helena Bąkała. Hesendsher pictures of his children and grandchildren. In 1994 he visited her in Warsaw.
An article from the album
“Poles who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust. Recalling Forgotten History", Łódź 2009
CLICK TO DOWNLOADExtermination
Shoah [Hebrew]
The planned genocide of European Jewry perpetrated by the Nazis and based on the racist doctrine was one of the pillars of German fascism. This ideology proclaimed the need to remove Jews and other "lower" races from the German Lebensraum.
The history of the Holocaust may be broken down into three phases: 1933-39, 1939-41 and 1941-44. After Hitler came(...)
Ghetto
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(...)
Ghetto
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(...)
Ghetto
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(...)
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
[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 Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: in Warsaw Ghetto were two conspiratorial armed organizations: the Jewish Combat Organization (Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, ŻOB) and the Jewish Military Union (Żydowski Związek Wojskowy, ŻZW), which had all together few hundreds of soldiers. They were buying the gun, making it by themselves or they received it from Home Army (Armia Krajowa, AK). The commandant of(...)
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