Pobliska Skała near Ojców was densely inhabited by the Jewish population. On August 26, 1942, the Germans began the process of evicting the Jews from the local area. Sick and the ones unfit for transport were shot in their own homes. “Standing next to my family home in Przybysławice, I saw fifty-two wagons, which I personally counted, full of evicted Jews leaving in the direction of Słomnik”, recalls that day Józef Cyra, an AK soldier, whose brother secretly sheltered Jewish Meitele family. Some of the evicted Jews managed to escape and took refuge in the homes of locals and surrounding farmers. When the situation calmed down, they returned to their own houses. “That is how it was until November 10, 1942, when Skała was once again surrounded by Germans, Navy-Blue Police, and young man from the forced labour camps, Baudienst, so that none of the Jews from this town could escape”. They were gathered at the market and executed. Others were transported to Wolbrom.

Local populace still helped Jews and tried to save them from death. Tadeusz Cera along with his family – wife Marianna, children: Stanisław, Antonina, Danuta and Janina – lived in Zamłyń, which was still a hamlet of Przybysławice. They knew and were friends with Meiteles from Skały Cerowie from even before the war. When they bought 13 morgs of land in Zamłyń, it was Meiteles who bought their grain and dairy products as they ran a grocery store. Ceras prepared a hideout at their farm, inside the barn. That’s where they hid two brothers, Henocha and Joska. Stanisław, Tadeusz son, was a member of AK and often left his weapon to his brothers, so that they would feel safer. For their parents, Maria’s sister and one of Tadeusz’s brothers wife, he found a hideout at Feliks Hanarz’s, in the nearby Minoga. The entire Meitele family survived the occupation. The fact of the Jews being hidden by the Ceres was a great secret, one that he didn’t even share with his own brother, Józef Cyra, who lived nearby.

Those weren’t the only examples of the Jewish population being saved by the local population. Victims of war were also concealed in the village of Wielmoża ,by Antoni Kajca, and in Skała, at Wolbromka street, man called Korzonek hid the Kołatacz family.

Bibliography:

  1. FLV, List z 06.02.2014 r. [Relacja Józefa Cyry].
  2. FLV, M. Jałowiec, Mój stryj ratował Żydów, „Midrasz” 2007, nr 3.
  3. FLV, B. Wasztyl, Milczenie Josefa, „Dziennik Polski” z 02.11.2001 r.