Sisters Reunited with the Jews They Saved From the Nazis

http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9501b&L=poland-l&T=0&P=13577

Cesia Miller looked at the pages of Reader's Digest and realized almost immediately that the story in front of her was about the two sisters who had saved her life all those years ago.

There were the names, Stefania and Helena Podgorska, and the story of how the young girls had saved so many during the German occupation of Poland. It told of how they had hidden 13 Polish Jews for two years in a single room and a cramped attic, of how they had scrounged for food and risked their lives so often to keep them all alive.

It had to be them, Miller thought, the ones she had been seeking for almost 50 years -- the teen-ager and her 7-year-old sister who somehow hid the 13 until the Russian army arrived near the end of World War II.

"It has been like trying to find a rock in the ocean," Miller said. "But it was a thrilling end. I read the story on Sunday
and couldn't wait for Monday so I could call Reader's Digest."

Miller read the story of the Podgorska sisters late last summer. What has happened since then is a story of reunion, joy, memories and tears.

The culmination of all this will occur today when the two sisters -- one now living in a Boston suburb, the other a doctor in Poland -- will be honored at a luncheon sponsored by the Martyrs Memorial of the Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles.

It will mark the first time the sisters have been honored together, the first time Helena has ever been to any kind of
ceremony dedicated to her. And it will bring together six of the 15 people who for two years were crammed into the sisters' tiny apartment with no running water.

The story of the Podgorska sisters is well known to Holocaust scholars. In the late 1950s, a tree was planted in Israel in their honor. Stefania, the older sister, last year shared a podium with President Clinton at the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

The story begins in 1942 during the German occupation. Stefania, then 16, found herself working in the Polish city of
Przemysl. Her father had died before the war began, and her mother and brother had been pressed into German labor camps.

Stefania started by smuggling food into the city's Jewish ghetto to the family that had once been her employer. Then came the day she decided to hide the first of the Jews, a young man who had escaped from a train headed for the death camps. His name was Max Diamant. In later years, he would change his name to Josef Burzminski and he would become Stefania's husband of 50 years.

As time passed, Diamant asked Stefania to hide others, and still others heard about the haven and showed up at the doorstep. German nurses were in the apartment next door, and there were long periods of absolute silence among those hiding in the cramped attic. Each knock at the door brought another surge of fear.

Stefania's task each day was to gather enough food for her wards without arousing suspicion. Helena often acted as a courier because a young child was less likely to draw attention to herself.

When money ran out, Stefania and others took to knitting sweaters as a way of raising cash. When the Russians finally entered Poland near the war's end, all 13 left their hiding place for the first time and scattered to points around the globe.

In 1957, Stefania and Josef immigrated to Israel, where he opened a dental practice in Tel Aviv, while Helena remained in Poland to study medicine. In 1961, the couple moved to New York and later to the Boston suburb of Brookline, raising two children along the way.

Cesia Miller went in another direction but eventually found her way to New York, and then Los Angeles. Though a child at the time of the German occupation, she never forgot the two sisters. When she traveled to Israel in 1970, she tried to find them there. But Diamant was by then Burzminski and there was no trail to follow.

When she was in Poland a decade ago, Miller again launched a search, but found nothing. Helena by then was married and working as a radiologist in Warsaw.

There were two times when Miller, who lives in West Los Angeles, could have have seen Stefania on television. The first was at the dedication of the Holocaust museum; the second was an appearance by Stefania and Josef last year on Oprah Winfrey's TV show. Miller missed the first event and never watches daytime television.

Ironically, her daughter, Sharon, did see the "Oprah" show but did not make the connection. Neither the town nor the number who had been saved were mentioned, so she had no reason to think the people on the screen had anything to do with her mother.

Meanwhile, in Brookline, Stefania began working on her memoirs, which would eventually grow to 350 typed pages.

"I wanted people to know about helping one another, not to kill but just to be human beings," said Stefania in recalling why she began writing the memoir. "People should learn to live together."

On the Monday after Miller saw the article in Reader's Digest, she did, indeed, find Stefania in Brookline.

"That's you, really you?" asked Miller.

"Yes," Stefania replied.

"I found you," said Miller.

"You found me and I found you," she replied.

Since that time, one thing has led to another. An anonymous benefactor donated a round-trip ticket from Poland to the United States, and Helena has been here for the last three weeks.

The Burzminskis, both now retired, have been here as well. Their son, Ed, lives in Los Angeles and they will visit for the next two months.

Another of the group flew in over the weekend from Germany for the occasion.

On Monday, Stefania and Josef were having lunch, talking about the past. The only thing they didn't want to discuss was the actual time of hiding. They had done it enough, including telling their story in detail as part of research for a proposed movie about the sisters.

Then Josef spoke fondly of Stefania, of all the years they had spent together.

"She put her life in jeopardy to save my life. That was a good test," he said. "She's not only a good wife, she's a friend."

A Girl and a Half

Stefania’s Story:
For the last sixteen months of the war in Nazi occupied Poland, 17-year-old Stefania Podgorska and her seven-year-old sister Helena hid 13 Jews in their apartment's attic. It began with sheltering Max Diamant (he later changed his name to Joseph after the war due to prejudice) and later invited his brother and his brother's girlfriend, Danuta. But as time passed, the group multiplied. Despite the constant threat of imprisonment and execution if her thirteen Jewish friends were discovered, Stefania continued to provide them a safe haven. Not only that, she fed, clothed and disposed of their waste the entire time. Even when a young suitor attempted to court her, she turned him away. Towards the end of the war, an empty building from across the street was converted into a makeshift hospital.

One afternoon, two SS soldiers knocked on her door. “You have been ordered to vacate the premises within two hours.” They read to her from an official-looking sheet of paper.

“This residence has been commandeered by the Third Reich. The penalty for noncompliance is death.”

“Two hours! How will I find a place for my sister and me in just two hours?” she cried, but the soldiers merely repeated the orders and left.

For the next hour and a half Stefania ran through every street in town - but she could find nothing that would shelter all fifteen of them. After three years of looting and deprivation, the buildings were in worse shape than ever. There were doorways but no doors; houses without ceilings; rooms filled with the rubble of loose masonry and roofing material.

[In a 1990’s interview Stefania recalls] “Just ruins, nothing more. Almost two hours had gone already. So I came home. I started to cry. I said, ‘How can I leave thirteen people to certain death? I can run out, but these people will be dead…’ There was nothing available, nothing. Only twenty minutes left. I came home. I said nothing. All my thirteen came down to me, with the three children. The pressed against me, so tightly, they looked at me. My decision. Will I leave? My decision. Will I leave them or not?

“All thirteen of them said to me, ‘Run away. You don't have to die with us. We have to, but you don't have to die with us. You cannot help us anymore. Save your life and your little sister and run away, because you still have 10 minutes.’ Joseph pushed me. They said, ‘Run away. Don’t die with us. You cannot help us anymore. What you could do you did, but not now. Save your life and Helena. Go. Run away.’

“And all these people watched me, the children pressed so close I could hear their breathing, my sister too. So I really, I didn't know what to do. I said to them, ‘Well, first of all, come on. We will pray. We will ask God.’ You see, I had a picture which I bought as a little girl, of Jesus and his mother, and it always hung on my wall. And I said, ‘Come on - we will pray. We will ask God.’

“First I knelt, then my sister and all the thirteen after, behind me. And I prayed, and I turned to look. All thirteen were in deep, deep prayer. And I asked God not to let us be killed. Help, somehow. I cannot leave this apartment. I cannot leave thirteen people for certain death. I will be alive if I go, but thirteen lives will be finished - children too, and young people. I asked God, ‘Help, somehow.’

“And again I heard a voice, a woman’s voice. It was so beautiful, so nice, so quiet. She said to me, ‘Don’t worry. Everything will be all right. You will not leave your apartment. You will stay here, and they will take only one room. Everything will be all right. I am with you.’ And she told me, ‘Be quiet. I’ll tell you what to do.’ She said, ‘Send your people to the bunker. Open the door. Open the windows. Clean your apartment and sing.’

“I was like hypnotized. My head was bent down, and I was listening, I was listening and the voice said again, ‘Everything will be all right.’ Then it disappeared. I listened a few minutes more, but nothing more came.

“So I got up and said to my people, ‘Go the attic,’ exactly like the lady told me. I said, ‘I will not move from my apartment. I will stay here, so go to the attic and be quiet, very quiet.’

“And you see, I was completely different. My people looked at me, all my thirteen, and they thought something was wrong with my mind. But I said, ‘Okay now, go out, go to the bunker. Everything will be all right if you stay quiet over there.’

“And I opened the window and the doors, and I cleaned. I started to sing. I don't know how I became so happy. And all the neighbors came, and they said, ‘Miss Podgorska, what happened? Why haven't you moved? The Gestapo, the SS will come. They will kill you. This is war, this is the military. They have no mercy for the enemy - and they are our enemy. Go out. We don't want to see you killed. You're too nice, too young to be dead.’

“I said, ‘I have no place to go.’ They said, ‘Don't you have a friend? Go stay with her.’ I said, ‘No, I will not leave my apartment.’ And they also thought something was wrong with me.

“The janitor's husband came, and he said, ‘Miss Podgorska, I will throw you out. Go out, I don't want to see you be killed - I have no place to bury you.’ And he was serious. … I said, ‘No, I am sorry, I will not move from my apartment.’ And he said, ‘Something is wrong with you,’ but he left.

“I kept singing and cleaning my apartment, and exactly ten minutes past the two hours an SS man came. He was so friendly. He was laughing to me from a few yards away. He came closer to the window and he said - he spoke a little Polish, very broken but he spoke - and he said it was good that I hadn’t moved from my apartment because they would take only one room. This last room, they would take. He said, ‘Very well, you can stay.’”

However, two German nurses moved in, claiming one room as their own. But they were none the wiser of what was going on right over their heads. Months passed and the Russians conquered their village and for them the war was over. All thirteen Jews survived the persecution and were finally granted freedom. When the Russian soldiers realized what happened, they were amazed. Two girls, no, “a girl and a half” saved thirteen lives.

Max/Joseph and Stefania later married, immigrated to Israel and then eventually settled in America. Together they had one son. Stefania wrote down her inspirational story but it was rejected because according the publishers there are just too many holocaust stories out there. However, her story was adapted into a TV movie, called "Hidden in Silence" in 1996. It starred Kellie Martin as Stefania "Fusia" Podgorska, Tom Radcliffe as Max Diamant, Marian Ross as Mrs. Diamant, and Joss Ackland as a factory manager.

Max/Joseph has since passed away, but Stefania still lives in California.