Olga: Holocaust Survivor, Rescued Child, and Witness to Righteous Courage

Czesława: Righteous Among the Nations, Rescuer, and March of the Living Witness

Olga Kost’s Holocaust survival story is inseparable from the courage of Czesława Żak z”l and the Żak family, Polish Catholics in Warsaw who risked their lives to hide Jews during the Nazi occupation of Poland. Their intertwined story is one of persecution, rescue, silence, memory, and reunion.

During the Second World War, Czesława Żak was a teenager living with her family in Warsaw. According to POLIN Museum’s Polish Righteous account, Czesława, her parents Stanisław and Teresa, her younger sister Stanisława, and her uncle Czesław helped rescue fourteen Jews in their apartment at Plac Grzybowski 1, close to the border of the Warsaw Ghetto. Hidden in a small room built between two apartments were three Jewish families: the Trefler family, the Grynberg family, and Mietek Lipski with his mother.

Olga Kost was connected to the Trefler family, one of the families sheltered by the Żaks. For those in hiding, survival depended on secrecy, courage, food, and the Żak family’s constant willingness to risk their own lives. In occupied Poland, helping Jews could bring death not only to the rescuer, but also to the rescuer’s family.

The danger was immediate and repeated. Czesława later recalled that blackmailers came to the apartment and searched for Jews. On one occasion, when she was only sixteen years old and her parents were away, she improvised under pressure, pretending that a closed room contained rabbits rather than people in hiding. Her actions helped protect the Jews hidden inside.

After the war, the Żak family’s rescue was not immediately widely known. Like many rescuers, they lived for decades with the memory of what they had done, while the survivors rebuilt their lives elsewhere. In recognition of their wartime courage, the Żak family was honoured by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations on September 12, 1993.