Film Collection
Helena Kowalewska née Gwozdowicz
Excerpts from an interview with Helena Kowalewska
Transkrypcja
Helena Gwozdowicz-Kowalewska, who was awarded with the medal of The Righteous among the Nations, is telling a story about hiding a Jewish girl – Lusia Rosen. In 1941, a family of the fourteen year old girl was sent to a ghetto in Bursztyn near Halicz. There, she was witness to murdering her little sister, parents and grandparents by the Germans. She managed to escaped from the ghetto. Her pre-war neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Gwozdowicz hid her in their flat. Thanks to them she survived. When the war was over she immigrated from Poland to France, and later with her husband, to Israel. Ever since they have been in touch with Helena [the daughter of Gwozdowicz’s]. Before the war Mr. Arnold Rosen was a barrister and handled many cases in the court. He also had professional contacts with my father. The Arnolds had two children, two daughters: Lusia who was the older one and the younger, a two-year old Rose. My sister Irene was at the same age as Lusia. They were both in the same school, sat at one desk and played together. When the war started… The Rosen family was taken to the ghetto. Before we left for Przemysl my mother had said to Lusia: “That’s our address in Przemysl. Come to us in case of danger.” When we sometimes visited a grave of our father, we always gave them [the Jewish family] some food, money and the address. And the Germans killed her [Lusia’s] father and mother, grandmother and grandfather in front of her eyes. She was only 14 and she saw a German killing her little sister. He took the two-year old Rosa, grabbed her by the legs, and with great strength he slammed her against a wall. She [Lusia] escaped from the ghetto. How did she manage to run away? God only knows. Anyway, a Polish priest gave her a birth certificate that had belonged to a 14-year-old girl who had died. The girl’s name had been Jozefa Bald. Since then Lusia Rosen hadn’t been Lusia any more. Her name was Jozia Bald. It took her 2 or 3 months to get to Przemy… from Bursztyn to Przemysl. It was on dreary, rainy night on November when she knocked on our door in Przemysl. She was dirty, ill and had a temperature of 40 degrees. She knelt on the threshold and begged my mother to let her in. We took her home, bathed, dressed and called a doctor. We told all the neighbors and everybody that she [Lusia] was a daughter of our maid, who was… who escaped from a transport, which… and the transport had been carrying all those people to… to Siberia. We had no problems doing so, they all believed us and Jozia stayed with us. And it was fine. Fragments of an interview recorded by Jacek Rajkowski in September 2009 for the project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History” of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.