Marysia Rosenszajn holds the hand of her rescuer's sister, Marysia Pawlowska.
Overview
- Caption
- Marysia Rosenszajn holds the hand of her rescuer's sister, Marysia Pawlowska.
- Date
-
Circa 1944
- Locale
- Tykocin, [Bialystok] Poland
- Photo Credit
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Marysia Rozenszajn Dworzecka
Rights & Restrictions
- Photo Source
-
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Copyright: United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumProvenance: Marysia Rozenszajn DworzeckaSource Record ID: Collections: 2002.273.1
Keywords & Subjects
Administrative Notes
- Biography
- Marysia Rozenszajn (now Dworzecka) is the daughter of Izak (Wlodek) Rozenszajn and Bela Kaufman Rozenszajn. Bela was born on 1909 in Pinsk. She had been active in the communist party since 1929. She moved to Warsaw where she met Izak. After the start of World War II, they fled to Bialystok which was in the Soviet sector. Marysia was born in Bialystok on June 19, 1941. Three days later, Germany launched a surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. Izak was killed during the bombing of Bialystok ghetto on June 23. In February 1943 Bela escaped with Marysia from the ghetto, with false identification papers in the name of Paulina Pakulska. They settled in Tykocin, where Bela worked as a cleaning woman for two Polish communist women. In November 1943 the two Polish women were killed by members of the Narodowe Sily Zbrojne, a nationalist and antisemitic underground military organization. After Bela was subsequently arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz as a Polish political prisoner, Marysia was left by herself in Tykocin. She was picked up while wandering in the street by Lucyna and Waclaw Bialowarczuk, who immediately realized that she was an orphaned Jewish child. They took her in and cared for her for the remainder of the war. Bela survived imprisonment in Auschwitz and Ravensbrueck. In April 1945 she was transferred from Ravensbrueck to Goteborg, Sweden through the Bernadotte initiative. After recuperating in Sweden, she returned to Tykocin in February 1946, where she was reunited with her daughter. In May 1946 they moved to Warsaw. Two years later Bela was killed in a traffic accident. Marysia was then adopted by Alicja Dworzecka (formerly Sala Herszkowicz) and her husband, Arkadiusz Dworzecki. Her wartime rescuers, Lucyna and Waclaw Bialowarczuk, were subsequently recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous among the Nations. Marysia stayed in Poland until 1968 and then immigrated to the United States.
- Record last modified:
- 2013-09-24 00:00:00
- This page:
- https://collections.ushmm.org/search/catalog/pa1163511
