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2010-08-23

The Rightous from Katowice

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Henryk Sławik   

 A commemorative plaque to Henryk Sławik, a Silesian living in Hungary during the Second World War, who saved the lives of circa 5 thousand Jews and helped dozen thousand Polish refugees, was unveiled on Friday morning in Katowice.

The plaque is at a corner of the market square and Świętego Jana Street, where there was a house in which Henryk Sławik lived from 1928 to 1939. Henryk Kutermak, a grandson of Sławik, took part in the celebration of unveiling the plaque. He claimed that his grandfather had not been treated as a hero during his life. “My grandmother told me once that he had been honored for a very short period of time. One of the streets in Katowice was named after him, however, it did not last long from various reasons. Later nobody spoke about it.”

After the plaque had been unveiled, the very first motorcycle rally following Henryk Sławik’s and Jozsef Antall’s, his colleague, footsteps set off from Katowice to Hungary and Austria.

Henryk Sławik (1894-1944) came from a village Szeroka, today’s district of Jastrzębie Zdrój. He took part in three Silesian uprisings. After a part of Upper Silesia had been joined to Poland, he became a journalist in Katowice and the editor of “Gazeta Robotnicza”. He got through Romania to Hungary. He was chosen the chairman of the Citizen's Committee for Help for Polish Refugees (Komitet Obywatelski ds. Opieki na Uchodźcami Polskimi) in Hungary very soon. With the quite support of Hungarian government Sławik helped Poles join the Polish Army, which was created in France.

Pursuant to false baptismal certificates issued by priests, Sławik made false documents for circa 5 thousand Polish Jews from Hungary. He also organized, with the help of clergymen, an orphanage for Jewish children. Having been given away by a German informer, he was arrested in 1944 and investigated by the Gestapo in the prison in Budapest. The hero did not betray his colleague Jozsef Antall. He was sent to the Mauthausen Camp, where he was shot to death on August 25 or 26, 1944.

Sławik was posthumously honored with the title of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1990. A close colleague of Sławik from the Citizen’s Committee, Henryk Zvi Zimmerman, reminded about everything that Sławik had achieved. A book written by Grzegorz Łubczyk “Polski Wallenberg. Rzecz o Henryku Sławiku” (“Wallenberg of Poland. About Henryk Sławik”) reminded Poles about him. Now, there is also a documentary based on the book.

According to: “Dziennik Zachodni”, 20.08.2010

 

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