A CARD FROM THE CALENDAR - ANIELA AND JÓZEF PYĆ
Aniela and Józef Pyć loved each other very much. They had a farm in the Rataj Poduchowny village, near Janów Podlaski. If they lacked anything to be fully happy, it was having a child. From the beginning of the Second World War, the Jewish populace of Janów was persecuted by the two occupying forces. First, the town was taken by the Russians, and two years later, in 1941, by the Germans, who finished what the Russians started – the extermination of the Jews. When the Janów ghetto was being liquidated on 27 September 1942, Aniela Pyć left her house, like she did every day, to take a look about her farmstead. This time, however, she followed a characteristic wailing sound. Coming up to a bundle thrust into the expansive chokeberry bush, she had no way of knowing that what she’d see wrapped in dirty, dark rags would be a newborn baby. Aniela hugged the tiny girl to her bosom and returned inside. Beginning that day, she and Józef became parents and brought Leonka up as if she were their own child.
