The address Warsaw, 52 app. 8 Narbutta Street – that is where the Średnicki family lived during the German occupation. They decided to hide Jews in their flat.

Stanisław Średnicki was a doctor before and during the Second World War. As he had graduated from the University of Warsaw, he knew well the Warsaw medical community from his student years. His wife’s sister Ewa and her spouse Ludwik Goryński, both of Jewish descent, were also doctors.

In 1940, when Warsaw was under German occupation, a friend of Średnicki’s from school knocked on the door at Narbutta street, asking for shelter. He turned out to be Kazimierz Brandys. At that time, the German anti-assistance law, according to which anyone who decided to support a Jewish person had to take the risk of being killed, was not yet in force. A brutal German decree aimed at breaking the chain of support from Poles came into force on 15 October 1941.

The Średnickis agreed to the Brandys’ request in 1940. Nor did they protest when the writer’s mother Eugenia came to them from the ghetto. The two stayed in hiding with the family until 1943, when, as a result of blackmail from outsiders, they were forced to change their shelter.

The unpleasant encounter with blackmailers did not cause the Średnicki family to give up helping Jews. In 1943, the doctor Celina Kwas and her mother stayed with them temporarily. Thanks to Średnicki’s contacts with the Home Army, it was possible to produce false documents for both women, and so they survived the occupation.

Stanisław also rescued Melania Waserman-Wisławska. She lived with the Średnicki family until her death in 1975.