Stefania and her younger sister Helena.
United States Memorial Holocaust Museum
IF STEFANIA PODGORSKA hadn’t hated farm life so much, she might never have become a rescuer of Jews. After visiting some of her older sisters who lived in Przemysl, a bustling Polish city near the Russian border, Stefania was determined to stay there instead of returning to the family farm with her mother.
Her mother didn’t want to leave her 14-year-old daughter in the city, but she finally relented. Within a week Stefania found a job in a grocery store owned by a Jewish woman named Lea Adler Diamant. Stefania became such good friends with Mrs. Diamant and her sons that she eventually moved into their apartment above the store, helping Mrs. Diamant with the household chores.
GERMAN-SOVIET RELATIONS Before Hitler’s troops invaded Poland in September 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, which contained a secret clause in which they agreed to divide Poland. Germany began its assault on Poland from the west on September 1, and on September 17 the Soviet Union invaded from the east. But in June 1941, less than two years later, Germany attacked the Soviet Union and pushed the Soviets out of Poland.
The 1939 German invasion of Poland caused few initial changes for Stefania and the Diamants. German soldiers were stationed there. Then they were gone. Then Russian soldiers replaced them. Then they also left.
But when the Germans returned to Przemysl in 1941, strict anti-Jewish laws were enacted, and a Jewish ghetto was created in the city, right behind the Diamant’s grocery store and apartment. The 20,000 Jews of Przemysl were forced to leave their homes and possessions and squeeze into the tiny area.
The Diamants were also forced into the ghetto. They begged Stefania to keep their apartment. She agreed and lived on the first floor while another girl lived on the second.
One night Stefania was woken by piercing screams. When she asked the ghetto guard about it the next day, he shrugged and told her that there had been an aktion in the ghetto.
A few nights later Stefania was again woken by screams from another aktion. This time, she could clearly hear Mrs. Diamant’s voice screaming above the rest. “I can’t leave my children!” she cried. “What will happen to my children?” The next morning Stefania learned that Mrs. Diamant had been shipped to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
One night a short while later, Stefania heard a knock at the door. She answered it to find a young man wearing torn clothes stained with dirt and blood.
“It’s Joseph,” he said, as Stefania stared at him.
“Joseph who?” Stefania asked. It was Mrs. Diamant’s son. He was so dirty and bloody that Stefania hadn’t recognized him. As she dressed his wounds he told her how he had jumped off a train that was headed for a concentration camp and come back to the city. None of his former Polish friends in Przemysl would hide him, so he finally came back to the apartment that had once been his home.
Joseph was very ill, but when he recovered he fetched his brother’s fiancée, Danuta, who was still trapped in the ghetto, and brought her to the apartment. The ghetto would be closed soon, and all the Jews would be either killed or sent to a concentration camp. Joseph and Danuta had many friends left in the ghetto, more than could be hidden in the Diamant apartment. Stefania wondered how she could help. Stefania’s six-year-old sister, Helena, had also come to live with her because their mother had been forced to leave Poland to work in a German munitions factory. Stefania needed to find a place that would be large enough for herself, her younger sister, Joseph, Danuta, and as many of their friends as possible. But where was that house?
AKTION Aktion is the German word for “action.” In the context of the Jewish ghettos of World War II, it came to mean either an outright killing of Jews in a ghetto or a mass deportation to a concentration or death camp.
Stefania had never been particularly religious, although she had attended church with her family while growing up. But now she felt a tremendous urge to pray. She went outside and wandered through an empty section of town that had once been bustling with Jewish people. She began to pray that God would show her a new place to live. Then, as she recounted years later, she suddenly heard a voice. It told her that when she turned the next corner, there would be two women standing in the street with brooms. They would tell her where to find an apartment.
When Stefania turned the corner, there were the two women with their brooms. When she asked them about a house, they pointed to one that had front and rear entrances and, best of all, a very large attic. It was perfect! Joseph and Danuta quickly took their friends out of the ghetto and brought them to Stefania’s new home. She and Joseph built a hidden room in the attic.
Among Stefania’s new “tenants” were two Jewish children who had escaped from the ghetto. Their fathers, wanting to join their children in Stefania’s new home, made a plan: they would bribe the local postman to hide them in his mail cart and take them from the ghetto to Stefania’s new house.
Stefania and Joseph waited at the window of the house at the appointed time, but the postman didn’t come. Then after about 10 minutes, four men began to walk back and forth directly in front of the house: two Polish policemen and two German soldiers.
After about three hours of extremely tense waiting, Stefania finally went outside and casually asked one of the Polish police officers what was going on. Had someone been killed?
“Maybe someone will be,” the Polish officer replied.
“So you’re protecting us?” Stefania asked, probing for answers. “Maybe Hitler and Stalin are coming to this very street to fight it out between themselves, and you’re going to protect me and my little sister?”
The policeman laughed, but he finally told Stefania why they were there. Two Jews were supposedly going to sneak out of the ghetto that day, and they were headed to her street. The Polish officer didn’t believe the story, but orders were orders, and they had to stay and keep watch.
Stefania’s heart sank, but she smiled at the policeman and said that she couldn’t imagine that any Jew would be foolish enough to risk death to escape the ghetto. Then she headed straight for a nearby church, where she prayed very hard that the Germans and Polish policemen would leave before the postman came with the Jews so that the children would not have to grow up as orphans.
When she got home, the policemen and soldiers had gone, and the fathers had just arrived in the postman’s cart. The postman had gotten lost on the way to Stefania’s house and had driven the fathers all over town before finally finding the correct address.
Stefania had a job in a factory, and there she met a handsome Polish boy who would often visit her. Stefania liked the boy very much, but she was afraid. How could she possibly know ahead of time how he would respond to her secret? Would he help her hide the 13 Jews who were now living with her? Or would he turn them all in, Stefania included? Stefania had no way of knowing, so although she really liked him, she made a desperate plan to end his visits.
She obtained a photograph of a handsome German officer in a distinctive SS uniform and hung it over her bed. The next time the boy from the factory came to call, he saw the photo and asked Stefania who it was.
“That is my new boyfriend,” she said. “I am dating him, and I will stay with him.”
The boy was shocked. “You and an SS man?” he asked.
Stefania nodded. The boy stood there for several minutes without saying anything. Then he walked slowly out of the house. As Stefania watched him from the window, she wanted desperately to run after him, to tell him everything, but she didn’t. Her heart was broken.
During the final months of the war, an empty building directly across from Stefania’s house was converted into a German hospital, and soon the formerly quiet street was swarming with German soldiers, doctors, and nurses. One day, two German soldiers knocked on Stefania’s door and read to her from an official-looking document. They said she had been commanded to vacate her home within two hours, as the house was required by the Third Reich. If she didn’t comply, she would be killed.
Two hours! How could Stefania possibly find a new home for them all in two hours? There was nothing available anymore, and even if there was, how could 13 Jews possibly leave the house in daylight without anyone noticing?
The Jews pleaded with Stefania to save herself and her sister and leave them to their fate. Stefania refused. She did the only thing she could think of. She prayed. She asked everyone to join her. Each of them followed Stefania’s example and knelt down in silent prayer.
Suddenly, Stefania heard the voice again. The voice told her not to leave, that everything would be all right if she stayed. She was told to send the Jews to the hidden room in the attic and then to open the door and the windows and clean her apartment. And she was to sing. Stefania relayed what she had heard to the Jews. They thought she had lost her mind. But since there was no alternative, they did as she asked. Stefania opened the door and the windows and cleaned the house while singing loudly. Neighbors came by, urging her to leave, telling her that “she was too nice, too young, to be dead,” but she ignored their warnings.
Right on schedule, an SS man came to the house and found Stefania singing and cleaning. He smiled and told her that she could stay since the Germans only needed part of her house anyway. For the next eight months, two nurses from the hospital and their German boyfriends lived in Stefania’s house directly underneath the 13 Jews. The Germans became suspicious once, but the secret room was solidly built, and the Jews remained undetected. Soon, the hospital closed down, and the nurses followed the German army, which was being pushed out of Poland and back into Germany by the Russians.
One day, two Russian soldiers knocked on Stefania’s door and asked her if she had any vodka to exchange for chocolate. They told her that the war was nearly over, that the Russians had pushed the Germans back into Germany.
The Jews overheard the conversation and burst into the room, weeping with joy. They were finally free.
After the war, Mrs. Diamant’s son Joseph asked Stefania to marry him, and the couple eventually moved to the United States. Stefania received a Righteous Among the Nations medal from Yad Vashem.
Stefania (front row, center), Helena (front row, left), and some of the Jews they hid, including Stefania’s future husband, Joseph (back row, left).
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
LEARN MORE Conscience and Courage by Eva Fogelman (Random House, 1994) contains a lengthy section on Stefania’s story.
Hidden in Silence (Lifetime Television, 1996) is a made-for-TV movie about Stefania’s rescuing activities.
Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust by Gay Block and Malka Drucker (Holmes & Meier, 1992) contains an interview chapter on Stefania.