Shoshana and Stefan Raczyński
Stefan Raczyński, who lived with his family in the village of Wegelina, in the Vilna district, was superficially acquainted with Jews in the nearby town of Niemenczyn. In September 1941, after the massacre perpetrated by the Germans and Lithuanians against the local Jews, Jewish fugitives began turning up at Raczynski’s home, asking for help. Stefan and his family helped the Jewish refugees to the best of their ability, and provided them with food and a temporary hiding place. Stefan’s mother even looked after a baby which a Jewish woman had abandoned on her doorstep. Thanks to her rescue work, her home became known as “the home of Abraham, the patriarch.” In 1942, Raczyński became acquainted with Shoshana Dezent, a young Jewish woman from Vilna, who was hiding under an assumed identity in the surrounding villages, working in peasants’ homes as a casual laborer. Dezent, who had lived in a town all her life, found it hard to adapt to village life. Fearing for her safety, Raczyński decided to protect her, and whenever she was in difficulties, arranged for her to stay with acquaintances of his in the nearby villages. In the spring of 1944, armed Polish nationalists, suspecting Dezent of being Jewish, attacked her and beat her almost to death. Raczyński immediately summoned the local priest, who testified that Dezent was not Jewish, thereby saving her life. Following this incident, Raczyński took Dezent home and looked after her until the area was liberated.
After the war, Raczyński decided to tie in his lot with the Jews, and married Dezent. In 1960, the Raczyńskis immigrated to Israel with their two children. On June 28, 1966, Yad Vashem recognized Stefan Raczyński as Righteous Among the Nations.
From: Yad Vashem
Shoshana Raczyńska (Polish: Szoszana Raczyńska; 1921 - January 2, 2007) was an Israeli translator born in Vilna and a Holocaust survivor. She translated from Hebrew to Polish and from Polish to Hebrew, as well as from Yiddish to both languages
Shoshana was born in 1921 in the city of Vilna (Poland) (later the capital of Lithuania), in a traditional Zionist Jewish home. She was the youngest of two children of Chana (née Shablisky, and Nison Dezent. Both her parents were Hebrew teachers in the city. Her father studied in a heder and in a yeshiva, was ordained a rabbi, and after acquiring a general education and fluency in Hebrew as an external student, he devoted himself to education. During the German occupation and the deportations during World War I, her parents and her older brother moved to Vilna, where they joined progressive Jewish educators. Her father taught in one of the branches of the Torat Emet Torah School, and her mother, who had acquired a pedagogical education as a kindergarten teacher, opened a Hebrew kindergarten, and later taught Hebrew in the lower grades of the Gymnasium. Their house was a meeting place for the sages of Vilna and its teachers. During the crisis in Poland in the late 1920s, when teachers from all streams emigrated from the country, the family did not want to exchange one exile for another and preferred to wait to be allowed to make aliyah to Eretz Israel. The family's Zionism was mainly expressed through the Hebrew language. Her older brother, David Desent, was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair Youth Movement (together with Abba Kovner). After beginning his studies at the University of Vilna in 1933 and encountering manifestations of anti-Semitism that penetrated its walls, he made aliyah to Eretz Israel in 1934 with a certificate he received upon his enrolling in Technion studies. Shoshana studied at the Hebrew Gymnasium in her city. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in July 1941, her father was abducted in one of the Aktions and was murdered like tens of thousands of the city's Jews. When the Vilna Ghetto was created in September, Shoshana and her mother were detained there. She worked in a group of young people who would work outside the ghetto every day. The Aktions in the ghetto continued, and one day she returned home to find that her mother had disappeared. She subsequently left the ghetto with the help of Poles who obtained forged documents and transferred her to a village near Vilna. She hid in the house of Ivanitz, head of the village, where she worked as a maid and housekeeper. At the end of 1942, she met Stefan Raczynski, a 21-year-old farmer who lived with his family in the village of Wegelina near Nemenchin, in the Vilna District, where they owned a large agricultural farm. After the massacre of the Nemenchin Jews in September 1941, Jewish survivors began to arrive at the farm, and received help from family members, who for three years provided dozens of Jewish refugees with food and temporary hiding places while risking their lives. As a result, their house became known as the "House of Abraham Avinou"; the Christian neighbors called the house: "The Jewish Ghetto." For a while, Raczynski's mother even cared for a Jewish baby abandoned on the doorstep of their home, until his mother came to take him back. Raczynski's father was in prison, and was released after they failed to prove the allegations against him of helping Jews. Thanks to Stefan Raczynski, Shoshana came to a Pole who lived in a nearby village and worked in various jobs. After Lithuanian partisans burned down the man's house in late 1943, Raczynski came to her rescue and took her to his aunt in the village of Padolice. In the spring of 1944, Polish nationalists from the "Iron Wolf" group suspected her of being Jewish, and beat her up badly. Raczynski saved her once more with the help of a local priest, who testified that she was a Christian. As a result of the trauma, she lay unconscious for a week, and Raczynski took care of her until the area was liberated by the Soviets on June 22, 1944. Upon her release, she returned to Vilna, and with the help of Abba Kovner, contacted her brother in Eretz Israel. A love affair developed between Shoshana and Stefan, and they married immediately after the liberation. The couple had two children: Chana (Shamir) and Arieh. The family lived in Soviet Lithuania, but wanted to move to Poland to be able to make Aliyah to Eretz Israel. In May 1958, they emigrated to Poland, and lived in the southwestern city of Gliwice. Their efforts to obtain exit permits from the Polish authorities, which involved the waiver of their Polish citizenship, finally succeeded, and in 1960 the family made aliyah to Israel and settled there, first in Givat Shmuel, later in Beer Yaakov and Tel Aviv. In June 1966, Yad Vashem recognized Stefan Raczynski as a Righteous Among the Nations. Shoshana herself was active for the Righteous Among the Nations. She began her literary work after the war, when, among other things, she translated Ivan Krylov's Proverbs into Polish. Beginning in the mid-1980s, she published dozens of translations from Hebrew into Polish and from Polish to Hebrew, as well as several translations from Yiddish into Polish and Hebrew
Source: MICHLOL [The Jewish Encyclopedia -Hebrew]
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