Helena Lakomy () (20 November 1917 – 21 November 2010) was a survivor of
Nazi concentration camps. She was posthumously recognised as a
British Hero of the Holocaust
The British Hero of the Holocaust award is a special national award given by the government of the United Kingdom in recognition of British citizens who assisted in rescuing victims of the Holocaust. On 9 March 2010, it was awarded to 25 individ ...
in 2013.
[ ]
Early life
Lena Bankier came from a well-off Jewish family in Warsaw. In the German
occupation of Poland during the
Second World War, Lena and her family were moved into the
Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. She married Symcha Mańkowski there and, shortly afterwards, they were transported to
Białystok Ghetto. They were deported to
Auschwitz concentration camp
Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...
in February 1943 and her husband was sent to his death on arrival. At Auschwitz she gave her name as Lena Hankwoska and thanks to risks taken by Polish prisoners during the registration procedure, they convinced the German officers that she had been wrongly registered as a Jewish prisoner. Due to her ‘
Aryan
Aryan or Arya (, Indo-Iranian *''arya'') is a term originally used as an ethnocultural self-designation by Indo-Iranians in ancient times, in contrast to the nearby outsiders known as 'non-Aryan' (*''an-arya''). In Ancient India, the term ' ...
looks’ she was re-categorised as a non-Jewish Polish political prisoner and sent to the Polish block. Lena was assigned to work as a nurse at the camp hospital. In this role she saved another prisoner, Hela Frank,
from selection to the gas chambers.
Lena herself was saved by a Polish political prisoner,
Maria Kotarba
Maria Kotarba (4 September 1907 — 30 December 1956) was a courier in the Polish resistance movement, smuggling clandestine messages and supplies among the local partisan groups. She was arrested, tortured and interrogated by the Gestapo as a ...
. Lena came to call her ''Mateczka'' ('Mother'). Kotarba looked after Lena when she was ill, bringing her extra food and medicine. Kotarba also managed to arrange lighter work for Lena through bribing a guard. In January 1945, Lena, along with the other surviving Auschwitz prisoners were sent on a
death march to
Ravensbrück concentration camp
Ravensbrück () was a German concentration camp exclusively for women from 1939 to 1945, located in northern Germany, north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). The camp memorial's estimated figure o ...
. Kotarba found her almost dead in the snow and carried her to her own
barracks
Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are u ...
.
[McDonough, Chri]
"Maria Kotarba, Poland"
International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation In February 1945, the SS again moved the prisoners to the
Neustadt-Glewe sub-camp, where the
Red Army liberated the women in May 1945.
Post-war
After the camp was liberated, Lena met a Polish army officer, Wladyslaw Łakomy, whom she married in Paris. They settled in the UK under the
Polish Resettlement Act 1947
The Polish Resettlement Act 1947 was the first ever mass immigration legislation of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It offered British citizenship to over 250,000 displaced Polish troops on British soil who had fought against Nazi Germany an ...
. Wladyslaw, a former lawyer, worked in the docks in
Middlesbrough.
In the 1960s, the couple and their three children moved to London. She became a British citizen.
In the 1960s she began looking for Maria Kotarba and in 1997 discovered that she had died in Poland in December 1956. Lena pushed for Kotarba to be recognised by Yad Vashem as a
Righteous Among the Nations, with the title being granted to Kotarba on 18 September 2005.
[Yad Vashem Remembrance Authority, Maria Kotarba]
/ref>
Her memories were recorded by the Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military ...
in 2002.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lakomy, Lena
1917 births
2010 deaths
20th-century Polish Jews
Auschwitz concentration camp survivors
Ravensbrück concentration camp survivors
Polish women in World War II
People from Warsaw
Warsaw Ghetto inmates