A CARD FROM THE CALENDAR - PELAGIA AND ADOLF BERGEL-OPAL
“They’re calling us in for another interrogation” – said Zbigniew Odrzywolski to Pelagia. They became neighbours in 1938, living on two different floors of the same Kraków tenement house. Zbigniew had a construction company and was married to a Jewish girl, daughter to the Jagiellonian University professor, Sternbach. They had two daughters, Julitta and Maria. When the occupation started, the wife and daughter had to go into hiding, and Zbigniew was regularly summoned for interrogations, often with his neighbour, Pelagia. “Let’s go. Don’t be afraid, we’ll make it this time as well” – answered Pelagia assuredly. She and her husband, Adolf, helped hide the Odrzywolskis. None of the German interrogators suspected that the girls and their mother could be hiding mere two floors up the stairs. They couldn’t mentally process that Poles were capable of such boldness and bravado. Thanks to the courage of the Bergel-Opals, three people were saved from inevitable death.
