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During the Holocaust, the last hiding place of the Morilas family in Poland was a pit dug inside a small barn, next to the dilapidated house of a very poor family. Nine people found refuge in that pit, for over a year.


In 2000, when I first heard the story of the almost impossible survival, it seemed that it would be very difficult to locate the brave Poles whose house was next to the pit. My grandfather, the key man, the one who brought and took the people out and the one who was the most significant factor in saving the inhabitants of the pit, was no longer alive. My aunt and father, who told as much as they remembered, could not say what the people's names were. Not a first name, not a last name, not the name of the village. Not even a hint of any of this...

From their stories it emerged that they were a married couple, it is not known whether they had children. Their house was built of mud and adobe, enriched with small stones. In the barn next to the house stood a single cow. The man had a cart pulled by a single horse, which was quite unusual, since it was common for two horses to pull such carts. I hoped that these few details would be enough to identify them, if only I could reach the right people, for example – those who lived in a nearby village. In this area everyone knew everyone. This is a book area dotted with small villages, about forty kilometers northeast of Krakow.


On November 1942, 1932, one day before the second deportation of the Jews of the town of Proszowice, my grandfather left it north with his two children, aged eight and four. My grandmother had died about two weeks earlier from pneumonia that had become very severe. A doctor and suitable medicine could have saved her, but these were not available to Jews. Until his marriage (XNUMX), when he moved to Proszowice, my grandfather lived in the small village where he was born, about fifteen kilometers north of Proszowice. His family was the only Jewish family there, and many of his friends and acquaintances lived in nearby villages. When he was forced to flee Proszowice, he turned to those village friends for help.

Signs were hung throughout the area warning its residents that anyone who helped Jews would be sentenced to death. The locals feared the Germans as well as their neighbors, as even false denunciations carried punishment – ​​immediate murder of anyone suspected of helping Jews. My grandfather and his children stayed for several weeks in a friend’s attic in one of the villages, but were asked to leave when denunciations and executions of locals suspected of having contact with Jews increased. They then lived in the attic of another acquaintance, were accidentally exposed to unwanted eyes, and were abruptly abandoned. Many nights were spent in barns and cowsheds, some without the owners’ knowledge. My grandfather had difficulty finding “permanent housing” for them.

Many of his friends helped with money and food given to him when he came to them for short nightly visits, but not with shelter. Finally, he found a solution – the pit mentioned. The pit is about one hundred and sixty centimeters wide and about two meters long. Its depth allowed a grown man to sit upright, with his head almost touching the boards. (From the book "Down from the Cow"). Having no other place to hide, they were joined by my grandfather's eldest sister and three of her children, as well as another sister and her husband.

All nine of them literally disappeared from the face of the earth. Very few people knew that my grandfather was alive – those whose homes he visited to buy or receive food. The remaining eight avoided leaving the hiding place (except for my aunt, a ten-year-old girl who was forced to go out to get food after my grandfather almost lost his life when he fell into the hands of the Polish AK underground, which prevented him from continuing his nightly forays).


After the war, my grandfather avoided revealing to the public any details that might reveal the identity or whereabouts of the people next to whose house the pit was. It is also clear that the hiders themselves were not interested in the matter becoming known. The Polish environment, for the most part, did not look favorably on helping Jews. If we add to this the many years that had passed since the events, so that even those who knew something and are still alive may not remember – an almost insurmountable obstacle was created on my path to locating the pit and the Polish family I was looking for.

Sometimes – coincidence, luck, everyone will choose how to explain or call it – and things become clear, unexpectedly.
__
Publishing the survival story and all the details that could have helped identify the wanted family on a website that deals with rescue stories, as well as contacting officials in the villages – did not yield any information. So did a tour of the area in 2010, in an attempt to talk to local residents who were old enough. The story is of course not known to museums like Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, or similar institutions. In 2016, on a return trip to Poland with my father, we were accompanied by a local woman (Katrina) who was interested in our story, and with her help we were able to talk to villagers whom we had actually tried to meet randomly and without success on our previous visit there.

The sequence of events is described in the last part of the book "Down from the Cow", but here I will be brief and say that we arrived by a winding road (the woman who joined us contacted the local priest, who referred us to a very elderly man, who sent us to talk to Mrs. Krakowska who lived in his village. Had Gadya). Mrs. Krakowska also knew the Moriles family, and even remembered the names of my grandfather's brothers and sisters.

It turned out that her father was a very close friend of Aaron, my grandfather's brother, who was murdered by the AK men in the same incident in which he and my grandfather fell into their hands, and my grandfather managed to escape. She said that her father took the risk and moved Aaron's bones from the makeshift grave near the place where he was murdered to an orderly burial in the cemetery in Mayachov. Of course, we also asked about the poor family in question ("a single horse harnessed to a cart," and everything that was known). To our surprise, she said that she knew the location of the house where they were hiding. The last hiding place. She explained that she didn't know this in real time, of course, but as a slightly older girl she had passed by that house many times with her friends, and everyone knew that Jews had been hidden there in the past...

She described, without being asked, its unique location: "It stands alone, with no nearby houses, far from the rest of the village houses.
During the war, people avoided passing there. They were afraid." (From "Down by the Cow") She agreed to our request to show us where the house stood in front of it, and joined our car for the short drive there. She even remembered the name of the hiding family – Skwarczynski – a name we had of course not heard before. We learned from her that the hiding family's son (his first name – Roman) lives in a nearby village, and the next day we went to look for him.

Here is a description of the moment of the encounter, from "Down from the Cow": Roman, if it was indeed him, wore a questioning expression. Katrina, cheerfully, as usual, explained to him what was going on. I stared at his face, expecting a moment of big smile and "ice-breaking," but it didn't happen. Katrina continued to talk to the man, who mostly listened, only occasionally saying something. Dad also spoke. I didn't understand a single word, but the man's body language didn't look promising. I waited curiously for an explanation.

"He says he knows nothing about everything we told him," my father shared with me. Roman claimed he didn't know what it was about. He said that if his family saved ours, he was happy about it, but he had nothing to do with it, and he had never heard of it. A very strange situation. The man remained quite cool, and was not interested in continuing the conversation. The next day we met with him again through the mediation of an old acquaintance of his. Although this time he hosted us and showed patience and goodwill, the result was the same. He insisted that he knew nothing. He explained that he was a year or two years old at the time of the events, his father died a year after the end of the war, and his mother never told him about any of this. Although we thought that he might not be interested in getting involved in saving Jews due to his fear of the reaction of his neighbors and acquaintances, we could not rule out the possibility that he knew nothing.


Another doubt crept into my mind – it is possible that the Skwarczynski family did indeed hide Jews, but I could not find clear and definitive proof that it was our family. Perhaps another Jewish family was hiding there? Several years earlier, I had spoken to David and Tzilla, two of the children of Masha, my grandfather’s eldest sister, who were also in the hiding hole, where they lived in the US. They also did not know the names of the hiders. After we learned the name Skwarczynski, I asked a family member who is in close contact with David and Tzilla to ask them both, separately, if they had ever heard the name. The answers they gave closed the circle – they both knew the name, and confirmed that it was the family name that “hosted” them in the hole…
__
Like this entire miraculous survival story, so too was the "miracle" of locating the Skwarczynski family and the location of the pit (marked by an arrow, in the photo) – against all odds, but it happened.


You are welcome to visitאתר accompanying the book.

The parents saved Jews, their son doesn't even know about it • Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025 (Photo: Eran Moriles)
The parents saved Jews, their son doesn't even know about it • Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025 (Photo: Eran Moriles)

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The system lives here - Haifa News
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