Antoni Gawryłkiewicz (1922-2007) was a Polish farm laborer. He was awarded the title of

Righteous among the Nations Righteous Among the Nations ( he, חֲסִידֵי אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם, ; "righteous (plural) of the world's nations") is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to sav ...

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

from

Jerusalem Jerusalem (; he, יְרוּשָׁלַיִם ; ar, القُدس ) (combining the Biblical and common usage Arabic names); grc, Ἱερουσαλήμ/Ἰεροσόλυμα, Hierousalḗm/Hierosóluma; hy, Երուսաղեմ, Erusałēm. i ...

in July 1999, for saving the lives of 16 Polish Jews during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

, between May 1942 and July 1944, at the time of the

Nazi German Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

occupation of Poland Occupation commonly refers to: *Occupation (human activity), or job, one's role in society, often a regular activity performed for payment *Occupation (protest), political demonstration by holding public or symbolic spaces *Military occupation, th ...

.Yad Vashem, 2008,
Featured Stories: Antoni Gawrylkiewicz, Poland
The Righteous Among the Nations at The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority

Biography

During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, 18-year-old Gawryłkiewicz lived in the village of Korkuciany in

Eastern Poland Eastern Poland is a macroregion in Poland comprising the Lublin, Podkarpackie, Podlaskie, Świętokrzyskie, and Warmian-Masurian voivodeships. The make-up of the distinct macroregion is based not only of geographical criteria, but also econo ...

where he worked as laborer on a farm of Kazimierz Korkucz and his mother. In 1942 Kazimierz Korkucz was approached by a Jewish family-man Moshe Sonenson with a plea for help following the 1941 Ejszyszki massacre, which he escaped with his wife Zipporah, 10-year-old son Yitzhak and 6-year-old daughter Sonia (Scheinele). Their baby brother, Shaul, did not survive. Kazimierz Korkucz agreed to hide the Sonensons around his house as well as the other two families who came along: Kabaczniks and Solominanskys. Antoni Gawryłkiewicz, a shepherd employed by Korkucz, took it upon himself to do most of the caring. "To him," states Yitzhak Sonenson, "we all owe our lives," for he was the person most intimately involved with the care of the 16 Jews in hiding, including digging underground shelters, preparing food, removing bodily wastes, transfer from one locality to another, and no-less – warning them of approaching danger." Zipporah Sonenson, while in hiding, gave birth to her fourth child, Hayyim, in June 1944. According to one account, at one point during the war Gawryłkiewicz's family was brutally interrogated by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators, who killed his father and brother, demanding information on hidden Jews. Antoni Gawryłkiewicz refused to give the refugees up. According to another account, quoting Gawryłkiewicz himself, his father and brother died after the war, in 1948, through he confirms they were killed by Lithuanians as a "revenge on friends of the Jews". After the war the village of Ejszyszki became annexed by the Soviet Union, and many local Poles were resettled west to Poland. Gawryłkiewicz moved to

Płock Płock (pronounced ) is a city in central Poland, on the Vistula river, in the Masovian Voivodeship. According to the data provided by GUS on 31 December 2021, there were 116,962 inhabitants in the city. Its full ceremonial name, according to the ...

in 1957 during the second repatriation. In 1999 he received the

recognition from

. He died in 2007.

Conflicting accounts

The members of the Sonenson family, who survived the war thanks to Gawryłkiewicz and his employer as well as their numerous neighbors, emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

. Sonia Sonenson became Professor

Yaffa Eliach Yaffa Eliach (May 31, 1935 – November 8, 2016) was an American historian, author, and scholar of Judaic studies and the Holocaust. In 1974, she founded the Center for Holocaust Studies, Documentation and Research in Brooklyn, New York, which ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

Brooklyn College Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn, Brooklyn, New York. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls about 15,000 undergraduate and 2,800 graduate students on a 35-acre campus. Being New York City's first publ ...

. She collaborated with the

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust. Adjacent to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the USHMM provides for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust hi ...

Washington, DC ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan ...

, and in 1998 published a book ''There Once Was A World'', tracing the history of Jews from Ejszyszki. She also successfully appealed to Yad Vashem to grant its medal of honor to Antoni Gawryłkiewicz, which he received in 1999. However, in a 2000 interview Gawryłkiewicz disputed some details of Eliach's account, expressing surprise at some of the events she described, noting that he remembers them differently or considers them very unlikely. In 2003, historian

Marek Jan Chodakiewicz Marek Jan Chodakiewicz (born July 15, 1962) is a Polish-American historian specializing in Central European history of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Last Rising in the Eastern Borderlands: The Ejszyszki Epilogue in its Historical Context
English translation by Polish American Congress. As of 2018, 15 years after Chodakiewicz pointed it out as a possible error, one of his two biographical entries at the Yad Vashem pages still contains the claim that "Antoni was apprehended by a Polish underground unit, and sustained severe beatings for refusing to disclose the presence of the hidden Jews", omitting any mention of the murder of his father and brother by Lithuanian collaborators, despite Antoni mentioning the loss of his two closest family members in his speech at Yad Vashem in 1999. (The other biography of the subject available at Yad Vashem states instead "One day, Gawryłkiewicz and Korkuć were arrested but, despite being brutally interrogated, did not betray their friends, and were released." without clarifying who carried out the arrest). Neither biography as of 2018 has been updated with the Gawryłkiewicz's date of death.

References

;Notes ;Bibliography * Lena Szatkowska

DWSP ''AKAPIT'' Tygodnik Płocki (weekly) 31-05-2001. * Dr. Mordecai Paldiel

The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority, 2004. {{DEFAULTSORT:Gawrylkiewicz, Antoni Polish Righteous Among the Nations 1922 births 2007 deaths People from Płock 20th-century Polish farmers