Nikodem and Zofia Miśkiewicz, together with their daughters, had a farm in Brańsk, in the Podlasie region. They had friendly relations with Jews who lived in the neighborhood. One of them had taught Nikodem and his brother the shoemaking craft. Another one – named Golde – employed Nikodem to bring in wood from the forest. Nikodem was good friends with Golde and knew his children, Ewa and Wolf.
In 1941 Germans created ghetto in Brańsk. It was liquidated in November next year. The Miśkiewicz family watched the carts filled with people passing by their house. The Nazis took the Brańsk Jews to a ghetto in Bielsko Podlaskie, and later on to Treblinka concentration camp.
Ewa and Wolf Golde survived the liquidation. Both of them – although separately and at different times – asked the Miśkiewicz’s for help. Wolf reached their house as soon as he managed to safely leave his hiding place in the ghetto. Ewa came after a few months spent in the fields with a group of other fugitives. She thought about them when her companions decided to go to the Białystok ghetto, which she did not want to do.
Neither of the siblings expected to meet the other at Nikodem’s. They both stayed there until 1944, when Germans built near-by a dairy. Nikodem decided that their presence so close to the shelter was too risky, so he took his charges into the forest to join a group of Jews who were hiding there.
The Miśkiewicz family helped also another Jew, named Mulek Rachelson. He was hiding in various places close to the village. From time to time he appeared at Nikodem’s farm and he could always count on getting food and clothing.
All three of them lived to see the end of the war. Soon after they emigrated from Poland.
