31 May 2005
A ceremony posthumously honoring three Righteous Among the Nations will take place at Yad Vashem tomorrow, June 1, 2005 at 11:30 a.m. The awards will be bestowed upon Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska, who rescued three Jews in Poland during the Holocaust, and Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort from Holland who rescued six people during the war.
The ceremony will be conducted in Hebrew, Polish and Dutch. Kazimierz Laski, one of the survivors from Poland who is arriving from Austria, will be present, along with family and friends of the survivors and the rescuers. Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska’s and Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort’s children will receive the awards on behalf of their late parents, from Chairman of the Yad Vashem Council Professor Szewach Weiss.
The ceremony will take place in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.
Background Information:
Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska
From the Fall of 1940 until September 1942, Anna Wolfowicz and her daughter Irena lived in the house of Anna’s father, Dr. Tendler in the Ghetto of Zelechov, which is near Garvolin in Poland. In September 1942, at the time of the liquidation of the Zelechov Ghetto, the grandfather was murdered and Anna and Irena fled to Warsaw and found a hiding place in a Women’s Shelter with the aid of a school friend of Anna’s - Zofia Wroblewska-WieWiorowska from Czestochowa who worked at the shelter.
Zofia hid Anna and her daughter in the Women’s Shelter for two years and also helped Kazimierz Laski, Irena’s boyfriend - and eventual husband - to acquire forged Aryan papers and a hiding place in their basement in Warsaw.
In the Fall of 1944, with the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the Shelter was closed and Anna was moved to a forced Labor camp, and managed to survive the war. Her daughter Irena remained in Warsaw and was saved due to her forged papers. Kazimierz Laski, was wounded in the battle of Warsaw when he fought in the Ludova Army, yet he survived the war. According to his testimony, Zofia also helped other Jews.
Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort
Albertus and Margaretha Haverkort lived in the city of Sassenheim in the center of Holland. Albertus, who was a member of the local underground movement in Holland helped Jews in many ways including finding hiding places for them, and also hid six Jews in his family’s house and looked after their needs. In June 1943 Albertus was arrested for his underground activities and taken to the Vught concentration camp where he was tortured and killed in August 1944. Of the six Jews whom he hid, only three have been identified: Jo Karp, who stayed there until Albertus’ arrest, and Ida and Abraham Faerber who hid there until the end of the war.
Recently, the Haverkorts’ son Henk found a Certificate of Appreciation from Keren Kayemet L’Israel in his parents’ house which was awarded for a tree that was planted in the Land of Israel immediately after the war in the name of Albertus Haverkort by Abraham Faerber - dedicated to “the help that the Haverkorts provided in those dark days of the Nazi occupation.” Henk decided to try to locate the Faerber family, and with the help of Mrs. Ruth de Jong, placed an ad in the newspaper of the Dutch community in Israel. Alice Lieberman-Faerber, the daughter of Abraham and Ida Faerber read the advertisement and contacted the Haverkort family.
More information about the Righteous Among the Nations program >>>
