Antoni Gawryłkiewicz

Who was Antoni Gawryłkiewicz?

Antoni Gawryłkiewicz, was awarded the title of Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem from Jerusalem in July 1999, for saving the lives of 16 Polish Jews during the Holocaust, between May 1942 and July 1944, at the time of the Nazi German occupation of Poland.

During World War II, 18-year-old Gawryłkiewicz lived in the village of Korkuciany in Eastern Poland where he worked as laborer on a farm of Kazimierz Korkucz and his mother. In 1942 Kazimierz Korkucz was approached by a Jewish family-man Moshe Sonenson with a plea for help following the 1941 Ejszyszki massacre, which he escaped with his wife Zipporah, 10-year-old son Yitzhak and 6-year-old daughter Sonia. Their baby brother, Shaul, did not survive. Kazimierz Korkucz agreed to hide the Sonensons around his house as well as the other two families who came along: Kabaczniks and Solominanskys. Antoni Gawrylkiewicz, a shepherd employed by Korkucz, took it upon himself to do most of the caring.