It was a November day in 1942. In the small village of Koszyce, north-east of Krakow, Zbigniew Bolt, a soldier in the underground Polish Home Army, was walking past the railway tracks and, to his surprise, met there his pre-war friend Irena Landesdorfer and her mother Regina. The Jewish women were seeking shelter.

Bolt knew that Irena came from Krakow. After a short conversation, it turned out that the women had left the city in 1940, even before the Jewish ghetto was established. After the Germans had occupied parts of Poland, they created closed areas for Jews in many places. In these places there was oppression, pestilence and death. According to their account, Irena and her mother needed to find a new hideout. A Pole decided to help them.

In search of shelter

Zbigniew Bolt needed time to find a new shelter. He asked the woman who had been hiding Irena and Regina so far to keep them for a while. He found a transport to take the Jewish women to the village of Kalembina (Podkarpacie region) and placed them in the flat of his uncle, Stanisław Kwieciński, who worked in the district office in Strzyżów. Thanks to his job, Stanisław produced for Irena Landesdorfer a German identity document (kennkarte) with false data. Regina already had such a document.  With those cards, the women could feel safer. However, they had to pretend to be Catholic.

Help from Catholic priests

In the village where Irena and Regina lived, however, some people began suspect that they were Jewish. To deflect it, Regina volunteered for forced labour in the Third Reich. However, the situation was still tense. Eventually, Irena was arrested by the so-called “Blue police”, local police officers who were under German authority. The woman was taken into custody and there she was questioned about the truths of the Catholic faith. Fortunately, she managed to answer correctly.

Two Catholic priests in particular contributed to her rescue. They confirmed Irena’s false identity to the Blue police. Thanks to this, the woman survived the war safely. Happily, her mother, Regina, also returned to her. Together, they left for the USA in 1946.

Zbigniew Bolt and Stanisław Kwieciński were awarded the medal “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Yad Vashem Institute on 14 May 2000.