THE BASEMENT AT THE NEIGHBORS' PLACE
With a witness of history, Mr. Ireneusz Lewandowski, son of Adam and Maria, we met to listen to the story of the help provided by Ireneusz’s neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Gorzelaks, people of Jewish origin.
– Mary, I was just at the Gorzelaks’, our friends, from Łokietka Street. We can take shelter in their basement and wait there until the front passes through Czestochowa – Mr. Adam announced his wife in a hurry. – Good people… Thank God that they agreed – the woman breathed a sigh of relief and immediately started preparing her family for the exit. – Irek and Zenobia, quickly! We go to the neighbors – the Lewandowski couple instructed their son and daughter. In a short time the whole four-person family found itself in a brick shelter. They were not alone there. Apart from them, an underground hiding place was also used by a Jewish family who escaped from a nearby factory employing forced labourers.
The January day of 1945 came to an end. The next morning a message came: „the situation is stabilizing, the streets are already quite calm, the front has moved on.” The tenants of the Gorzelaks could already leave the cellar. The Jews went in an unknown direction and the Lewandowski family returned to their apartment.
