Karolina Juszczykowska (1 July 1898 – 9 January 1945) was a Polish worker in the kitchen division of

Organisation Todt Organisation Todt (OT; ) was a civil and military engineering organisation in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, named for its founder, Fritz Todt, an engineer and senior Nazi. The organisation was responsible for a huge range of engineering pr ...

who was executed for hiding two 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; ...

. She was posthumously recognized as

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 sa ...

in 2011.

Life

Karolina Juszczykowska was born on 1 July 1898 in Budkowo, Poland. She lived with her parents until she was 13, before moving to Germany where she worked for the next 5 years on a farm in

Mecklenburg Mecklenburg (; nds, label= Low German, Mękel(n)borg ) is a historical region in northern Germany comprising the western and larger part of the federal-state Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The largest cities of the region are Rostock, Schweri ...

. Five years later, she returned to Poland to live with her sister, staying with her until 1934. Before the start of World War II she was employed in road construction, afterwards she worked odd jobs throughout the war: first a laundress, then a maid and finally for the kitchen division of

Tomaszów Mazowiecki Tomaszów Mazowiecki (, yi, טאָמעשעוו or ''Tomashuv'') is a city in central Poland with 60,529 inhabitants (2021). The fourth most populous city in the Łódź Voivodeship and the second with free public transport. In Tomaszów Mazowi ...

''.'' Juszczykowska said that she had met two Jewish men, named Janek and Paweł, who asked her to shelter them. She agreed, and let them hide in her house from the Nazis, where they lived in the basement and slept on the floor to avoid being seen. Six weeks later a raid followed, the two men were killed and Juszczykowska was brought into custody. Her twenty-year-old daughter, Bronisława, was conscripted into forced labor and sent to Germany. In August 1944, she was sent to prison to await her trial. Two weeks later, her trial was held and the Piotrkow ''Sondergericht'' courts gave Juszczykowska a death sentence. The judges of the court believed that her sentence was pointless as all the Jews in the area had already been deported or killed. Recommending pardoning her they wrote, "It therefore seems to the court that the crime of the accused is not so grave as to justify her execution, especially in view of the fact that this sentence will not deter others.” The request from the judges was denied and she was executed on 9 January 1945 at the Preungesheim prison in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , " Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on it ...

, Germany. In May 2011, she was recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by

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 ...

and a plaque was dedicated to Juszczykowska near her apartment in 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Juszczykowska, Karolina Polish Righteous Among the Nations 20th-century Polish women 1898 births 1945 deaths People executed by Nazi Germany by guillotine Polish people executed by Nazi Germany for aiding Jews