In September of 1942 a glazier named Goldman and his thirteen-year-old son Szaja fled from the Warsaw ghetto. After nearly three months of wandering, mostly in the cover of night, the two Jews arrived in Radziejowice, forty kilometres outside of Warsaw. Here, Goldman approached Władysław Rdzanowski and his family with a request for help, recalling the kindness the family had shown him in the inter-war period. He left Szaja in their care and himself intended to return to the ghetto.
Władysław, a teacher active in the underground, treated the Goldman boy as his own. Szaja was disguised so that he wouldn’t look like a Jew and the family started calling him Jurek. Together with the Rdzanowskis’ own sons, Jurek would herd the cows and accompany them when they played with other children. He ate at the family table, but he slept in an outbuilding, just to be safe, because there was a real threat from the Germans stationed in the nearby Krasiński Palace. The Krasińskis also feared denouncement by a nosy neighbour. On account of this, ultimately, the family made the decision to send the boy to another village, where Szaja Goldman survived the war. Later, he emigrated from Poland and settled in Israel.
