Family spent 2½ years in trench to escape Nazis

Press, 10 November 1986, Page 10

Family spent 2½ years in trench to escape Nazis

NZPA-AP New York

An elderly Catholic couple from a small town in Poland were reunited yesterday with a Jewish family they saved from the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp by hiding them for 2% years in a trench under their home.

At an emotional reunion at Kennedy International Airport, Jozef and Stephania Macugowski, in their mid-70s, were tearfully embraced by members of the Radza family, whom they had not seen for 40 years.

Although Louis and Gitia Radza have since died, their four daughters and a cousin were present at the airport reunion.

The family was hidden in a coffin-like trench beneath the Macugowski’s home in Nowy Korczyn, Poland, the night in 1942 that the family was ordered to the train station for relocation.

Zahava Burack, aged 53, Sarah Weiner, aged 54, and Miriam Ogininski, aged 48, presented Mrs Macugowskl with a bouquet of roses. Their cousin, Sarah Bak, flew in from Israel for the reunion. The fourth sister, Rita Nussbaum, of Brooklyn, who also was at the airport, was separated from the family in Poland and spent the war years in a

concentration camp. The Polish couple will be honoured on November 16 by Israeli officials as Righteous Among The Nations — gentiles who put their lives on the line for Jews in peril. Before ' the reunion, Mrs Burack, who was nine years old when her family was taken in by the Macugowskis, said, “if the Nazis had caught them saving us, they would have killed them before killing us.”

The Radza sisters said that one night in 1942, Jews in Nowy Korczyn were told to leave their homes and march to the railroad station for relocation, a euphemism for a trip to a concentration camp.

Mr Radza, recalled that Mr Jozef Macugowski, an acquaintance, had casually offered his help if needed. Mr Radza, his wife and three daughters left the line for the. transports and sought refuge with the Macugowskis. That night, they and the Radzas dug a trench under the floorboards of a storage room. The ditch, 1.55 m wide, 2.17 m long and 50cm deep, became the Jews’ home for 2y 2 years. They recalled that during that time, they never stood up, never spoke in voices louder than a whisper and never saw the light of day. At one point, the family begged Mr and

Mrs Macugowski to kill them.

“No,” said the Macugowskis. “One day the war will be over. As long as we live, you will live. We will never let you die.”

Later, the hiding place grew even more crowded. A cousin was thrown off a transport by her doomed family, and somehow made it to the house. A desperate partisan knocked on the macugowskis door. Two others sought refuge. Eventually, nine people shared the bunker. The Macugowskis told no-one what they were doing, not even their young children. Late at night, they would knock on the floor three times. The floor boards would open, and the couple would pass down bread and water.

When German troops took over the house to use as headquarters, the couple persuaded the Germans to keep them on as caretakers and they continued to help the family. Finally freed at the end of the war, the family found that their vocal chords had atrophied and their legs were wobbly, Mrs Burack said.

Six months later, the family was reunited with Rita, who had survived the camp at Bergen-Bel-sen. Eventually all settled in the New York area.