Stanisław and Stefania Pyrcak did something that took remarkable courage: They hid seventeen Jews on their farm in Prusiek, Poland for 22 months during WWII

The Jews had come to Stanisław Pyrcak after Stanisław’s brother, Michał—who had originally helped hide the Jews with his friend, Maria Kuśmierczyk—was arrested and sent to Mauthausen concentration camp. Stanisław and Stefania agreed to take them in, and kept the Jews hidden on their farm until their village was liberated by Soviet soldiers in August 1944. In the meantime, Michał had been transferred to Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was murdered on February 25, 1945.

Although the main events of this history took place during the Second World War, the repercussions of the Pyrcaks’ actions went well beyond the war.

Zofia Gadomska Paluch is Stanisław and Stefania’s youngest child (and a friend of the Spungen Family Foundation). She was born in 1953, well after the conclusion of the Second World War. Zofia remembers her family being ostracized by their neighbors as she was growing up, though she didn’t understand why until she was 17 years old and her parents finally told her of their rescue of the group of Jews during WWII. In Poland, even in 1970, the taboo surrounding having helped Jews during the Second World War was still very much entrenched.

The Pyrcaks did not tell their story officially until many years later, when Jacob Lieberman—one of the seventeen Jews who had hid on their Prycaks’ farm—took the initiative to have the Pyrcaks honored by Yad Vashem, and Stanisław Pyrcak subsequently gave an official account of what had happened some forty years in the past. In 1984, Stanisław, Stefania, and Michał Pyrcak and Maria Kuśmierczyk were officially honored by Yad Vashem in Israel as Righteous Among the Nations.

You can read the full story of the Pyrcak’s rescue of the Jews and Zofia’s recollections of her parents bravery in the article by Kevin Ostoyich titled, Zofia Gadomska Paluch and The Legacy of Kindness: Honoring the Righteous Memory of Stanisław and Stefania Pyrcak.

Click HERE to read the full article.