Established by the Israeli Knesset. Since 1963 it has been awarding the title Righteous Among the Nations to those who during the Holocaust helped Jews doomed to extermination to survive.

Polish socialist activist; journalist from Silesia. He saved about 5,000 Jews in Hungary from extermination together with a Hungarian diplomat and friend, Józef Antall. He was murdered in the German Nazi concentration camp in Mauthausen-Gusen. Recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

Proclaimed by the European Parliament in 2008, on the anniversary of the signing of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany, which divided Europe into two totalitarian zones. The aim of the day is to preserve the memory of the victims of mass deportations and exterminations, and at the same time rooting democracy more firmly and reinforcing peace and stability in Europe.

Founder of the Lviv branch of the Żegota Council to Aid Jews in 1943. Recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

Sewage worker from Lviv; provided helped to 10 Jews for which he was posthumously recognised as a Righteous Among the Nations. Hero of the film In Darkness directed by Agnieszka Holland.

Julia, Józef and Janina (Czarnota) Bars from Markowa near Łańcut hid Józef, Ida, Joel, Mania and Genia Riesenbach during the German occupation.

The Barut and Urbański families from the Huta Polańska near Krosno helped Józef Strenger and his 10-year-old daughter Gołda.

During the Holocaust Anna and Ludwik Sambora, and Anna’s children Eugeniusz Walichnowski and Teresa Sokołowska-Walichnowska in Jodłowa near Jasło rescued Malka and Abram Fenichel as well as Lea Charasz.

On that day Nazi Germany attacked Poland beginning the 6-year-long occupation of the land of the Second Polish Republic. World War II claimed the lives of about 6,000,000 Polish citizens, including about 3,000,000 Polish Jews.

The first chief of the Krakow branch of the Żegota Council to Aid Jews; he also collaborated with the Central Welfare Council and provided hiding places and forged documents for Jews.

Retired railway worker from Przemyśl; hung by the Germans for helping Jews.

Anna, Andrzej and Ludwika (Janczura) Antonik from Lisie Jamy near Lubaczów saved Małka Stupp from the Holocaust. The family received the honour in September 2016 at the Museum of Poles Saving Jews.

During the Holocaust, the Kreicar couple from Dubiecko rescued Wilhelm Reyk together with his wife and brother; also, Szmul Goldsztajn with his wife and two children; David Frenkel and his son, and Bronisław Felsen.

Both were active in the Polish underground (Kazimierz fought in the Warsaw Uprising), collaborated with the Żegota Council to Aid Jews. In Warsaw they rescued, among others, Aleksander Artman and members of the Teichman family. After the war, Krzysztof became known as an outstanding historian and an expert on Warsaw.

During the Holocaust, Wiktoria and Józef gave shelter to 8 Jews from the Goldman, Grünfeld and Didner families. As a result of a denunciation, all of them were shot by German military policemen on 24th March 1944.

Orthodox Jew born in Ustrzyki Dolne. During the Holocaust he lived in Zurich and became involved in the activity of the so-called Ładoś Group. Together with Polish diplomats in Bern he saved many Jewish lives with false passports from Latin American countries.

The youngest of the children of Victoria and Józef Ulma from Markowa. Together with her siblings, pregnant mother and father, as well as the hidden Jews from the Goldman, Grünfeld and Didner families, she was executed by German military police on 24th March 1944.

On that day, Soviet troops invaded Poland, which had been attacked two weeks earlier by Nazi Germany, and occupied its eastern part. Thus, Poland was divided between two totalitarian systems, Hitler’s and Stalin’s.

During the Holocaust, he and his brother Czesław (an outstanding poet and Nobel Prize winner) established a transfer point for Jews hiding in Vilnius. Recognised as Righteous among the Nations.

The only organisation in Poland whose members are the Polish Righteous; it has its seat in Warsaw.

Helena and Jan Cwynar from Markowa, together with her husband Jan, took in Abraham Segal, a teenage Jew from Łańcut, who stayed with them until the end of the war.

During the German occupation, in Rzeszow, the teacher helped her friend Abraham Heinberg get out of the ghetto and go to forced labour in Germany. Heinberg, later known as Roman Harte, became a filmmaker after the war and collaborated with outstanding cinematographers in Poland and abroad.

‘24.IX.39. (Sunday)
It’s getting worse and worse. We are living in a warehouse now because the whole apartment was taken by two officers and servants. It was on the erev of Yom Kippur. We didn’t eat anymore. We had to move all the stuff into the warehouse. We have a bed and a couch here and we fit in somehow. Daddy’s sleeping on the ground (…)
Hope it doesn’t get any worse. Sadly, it looks like it might be.
They say the Russians have already occupied Polish land as far as Lviv and are going further. I hear there’s to be a border strip here, but you never know, everyone says differently.
Warsaw stands firm still and so does Lviv, they say (…)
We don’t know what’s going on right now. Apparently, Russia occupies Polish territory with the consent of Germany, at least that is what everyone is saying, but is it true…?
I hear terrible things are happening in Przemyśl. They shoot at Jews with no mercy. Many are taken away beyond the San without any provisions. In Jarosław, everyone must surrender the silver they have to the magistrate.
It’s a lot worse out there than at our place.
I just wish I could go to America.
The end.’

During the Holocaust, they hid Lejzor and Rubin Braten in Rudka near Jarosław.

During the German occupation they hid Jaffa and Natan Woloch (Wallach) in Lesko.

Its founders were Zofia Kossak and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. In December 1942 it was transformed into the Żegota Council to Aid Jews.

The largest Jewish ghetto in the General Government and in Nazi-occupied Europe, with as many as approx. 450,000 Jews. Eventually liquidated in May 1943.

One of the six children of Wiktoria and Józef Ulma from Markowa. Together with her siblings, pregnant mother and father, as well as the hidden Jews from the Goldman, Grünfeld and Didner families, she was murdered by the German military police on 24th March 1944.

Helena (Lena) Zelwerowicz, an actress and educator, and her father Aleksander Zelwerowicz, also an actor and educator, as well as a theatre director and manager, provided shelter to Jews. Those who survived the Holocaust thanks to them include Maria Nudel, Józef Orchoń (Nudel) and David Epstein.

Lawyer, attorney and judge; brother of Gustaw, writer and literary critic. During the war, he and his wife Felicia were involved in helping Jews. He collaborated with Żegota and founded the Felicja Cell by means of which he provided shelter to about 500 Jews in his house in Warsaw.

During the Holocaust she hid Ewa Margulies and Rózia Schabes in Długie near Sanok.

Social activist. During the German occupation she rescued Jewish children being active in Żegota and collaborating with Irena Sendler.

During the German occupation Marianna Krasnodębska, like her parents and siblings, was active in the resistance movement. The Germans murdered her four brothers for helping the partisans. The Jarosz family helped the local Jews inside the ghetto in the locality of Piaski supplying them with food, medicines and documents. They hid over dozen Jews at their homestead, including Józef Honig with his father and brother. Marianna, her brothers Aleksander and Maksymilian, and her parents Anna and Ignacy were recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

Lawyer, social and right-wing political activist. During the German occupation he was a soldier of the Home Army and the National Armed Forces. Together with his father Wojciech he collaborated with Żegota. One of those he helped was Anula Rosenthal for whom he got false documents.

Death penalty was introduced in the territory of the General Government for Jews who without permission moved away from the districts designated for them and for Poles who helped Jews.

Polish lawyer, columnist and activist of the folk movement; 1940-1942 prisoner of Pawiak, Auschwitz-Birkenau and Neuengamme, and since 1942 a collaborator Żegota. Recognised as Righteous among the Nations.

During the German occupation, they saved Blima Schif by hiding her in their house in Dynów.

Physician, anaesthesiologist and specialist in blood diseases in children; Warsaw insurgent. During the German occupation she and her husband Feliks Kanabus helped Jews by carrying out operations aimed at hiding the Semitic physiognomy.

In Gębiczyn near Pilzno, they saved Adela Wołek, and Leon and Mietek Schneps from extermination.

During the German occupation they saved Jeszuła and Józef Guzik in Cergowa near Dukla.

During the German occupation, in Odrzykon near Krosno, they took in Cipora Katz (Reem) and presented her as a Christian orphan adopted by them thus saving her from extermination.

During the German occupation Sis. Alfonsa (Eugenia Wąsowska Renot), Sis. Ligoria (Anna Grenda), Sis. Bernarda (Rozalia Sidełko) and Sis. Emilia (Leokadia Juśkiewicz) from the Congregation of Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus in Przemyśl saved Miriam Reinharz-Klein, Hedy Rosen, Julian Ostrowski, Zofia Horn, Beti Milczyn, Ahuva Lissn, Awiwa Fogelman, Edward Goldberg, Batia Fridman-Gortler, Hanki Rubin, Gabi Klein, Tzofi Fridman and Gabrieli Koren.

Lawyer who lived in Rzeszow, at 4 Krakowska Street, during the war and helped Jews. When one of them was arrested by the Gestapo and gave Boczar away, she fled to Warsaw. Having settled right next to the ghetto, she continued to help the Jews, this time the Rozenholc siblings. She fought in the Warsaw Uprising.

The tree in honour of Żegota, the only state organisation in occupied Europe established to save Jews, was planted by Maria Kann and Władysław Bartoszewski – members of the Żegota Council to Aid Jews and Righteous Among the Nations.

The Sołek couple lived in Przeworsk were they hid Jerachmiel Bergner.

Doctor of medicine, specialist in gynaecology. During the German occupation she was active in the underground and also collaborated with Żegota. She also helped a Gypsy family from Warsaw in hiding Jews. Years later she was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations together with that family.

Polish immigrant in France who helped members of the Jewish community in Paris together with his wife Maria. They helped Cywa Zylberberg, her mother Sylvana and David Zylberberg, who was Sylvana’s son. Maria and Czesław Szafraniec were recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

Established at the Government Delegation for Poland, Żegota was the only state organisation in all Europe under German occupation created in order to save Jews. The organisation included representatives of various social and political circles, both Poles and Jews. It is estimated that tens of thousands of people of Jewish descent were aided by Żegota.

Between March and December 1942 the Germans murdered about 450,000 people in the German death camp in Belzec, mainly Jews from Poland, but also from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Outstanding pianist and composer living in Warsaw. During the Holocaust, he lost his entire family. He himself was hidden by Poles, including Janina and Andrzej Bogucki, with the support of Witold Lutosławski. At a critical moment in his life Wehrmacht captain Wilm Hosenfeld spared him his life.

One of the six children of Wiktoria and Józef Ulma from Markowa. Together with his siblings and parents, as well as the hidden Jews from the Goldman, Grünfeld and Didner families, he murdered by the German military police on 24th March 1944.

During the German occupation, Katarzyna Szyfner and her son Eugeniusz Szyfner, who both lived at an estate in Chorzelów near Mielec, saved Jankiel Heller, Maksymilian Gross as well as Matilda and Dawid Zuckerbrot.

Diplomat and politician; Polish ambassador to Japan and the USSR. Minister of Foreign Affairs in Stanisław Mikołajczyk’s government. He arranged aid for Polish refugees of Jewish origin in Japan and Shanghai.

For helping Jews, the Germans shot 31 Poles, including the Kowalski family of seven as well as members of the Kosior, Obuchiewicz and Skoczylas families. Almost all of them were burned alive.

Politician, columnist, counterintelligence officer of the Home Army; from December 1942 in Żegota; member of the Department of Internal Affairs and head of the Jewish Section of the Government Delegation for Poland.

Over a dozen residents of Świesielice were murdered by the Germans for supporting the resistance movement and helping Jews in hiding.

Film and theatre actor; opera and popular singer. During the Holocaust, in Warsaw, he and his wife Janina rescued Władysław Szpilman, an outstanding pianist of Jewish descent.

Actress and educator. During the German occupation she and her parents helped Józef Ochroń, Helena and Hanna Caspari, Dawid Epstein, Leon Feiner, Maria Nudel and an unknown lawyer. Recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

Polish nun, Dominican sister who died at the age of 110. During the German occupation, together with other Dominican sisters, she hid several people of Jewish descent in a monastery in Vilnius. Recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

Poet, essayist and translator. During the German occupation, he and his wife, Maryna Zagórska, hid several Jews at home in Warsaw, including the poet Tadeusz Hollender, teenager Janek Wilk and the Tenenbaum family. Both spouses were recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

Sportsman, footballer, sports activist and publisher; co-owner of the bookshop and publishing house Gebethner and Wolff, soldier; Warsaw insurgent who died as a prisoner of war as a result of wounds sustained during the Warsaw Uprising. He helped, among others, the Abrahamer family whom he eventually managed to send to Hungary. Considered Righteous Among the Nations.

Visual artist and publisher. Co-founder of the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews which was later transformed into the Żegota Council to Aid Jews.

Doctor of surgery; during the war he arranged plastic surgery procedures to eliminate Semitic features in Jews. His wife Irena assisted in the operations as an anaesthesiologist. Both of them took part in the Warsaw Uprising. Both were recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

German military police murdered four people for providing food to Jews hiding in the forest.

Physician, officer of the Polish Army and resistance officer; Warsaw insurgent, commandant of women’s mine patrols. During the Holocaust, she helped Jews individually, hiding Anna Aszkenazy, among others, in her own home. At the same time she collaborated with the Żegota Council to Aid Jews providing medical care to Jews hiding in Warsaw.

Diplomat, counsellor and deputy head of the Polish Delegation in Bern in the years 1938-1945; member of the so-called Ładoś Group which rescued European Jews during the Holocaust using false passports of Latin American countries.

Journalist, Home Army soldier, participant in the Warsaw Uprising, veteran activist and author of war memoirs. During the German occupation he and his wife Barbara helped Anna Bajer Dratner and Irena Filozof as well as some others in Warsaw. After the war, both of them were recognised as Righteous Among the Nations.

On that day, the German occupation authorities of the General Government issued an ordinance on the obligatory wearing of Star of David armbands by Jews. The Nazi authorities intended this marking to facilitate racial identification but also to humiliate and isolate the Jews from the rest of the society.

Politician, diplomat, clerk and columnist. In Bern, where he was the Polish ambassador, he created an organisation, later known as the Ładoś Group, by bringing together several Polish diplomats and representatives of the local Jewish communities. The group saved Jews from all over occupied Europe by means of false passports from Latin American countries.

The first German extermination camp on Polish soil, Kulmhof in Chełmno nad Nerem, was a mass extermination centre for Jews in Reichsgau Wartheland. Already in December 1941, about 700 Jews were killed there, poisoned with car exhaust fumes. It is estimated that between 150,000 and 350,000 victims were murdered during the camp’s operation.

The wife of Józef Ulma and mother of six children. She was in an advanced stage of pregnancy when she was murdered by German military police, together with her husband and children, for hiding the Jewish family of Goldman, Grünfeld and Didner, on 24th March 1944.

The Jews captured in roundups the day before were stored for the night in the basement of one of the houses in Markowa. In the morning German military policemen led everyone onto the so-called trench, on the outskirts of Markowa, and shot about 30 people in total.

Letter addressed to the head of the Catholic Church in Vatican, in which the President of the Republic of Poland in exile asks for intervention concerning mass murders of Poles and Jews in German occupied Poland.

Jesuit, administrator of the sanctuary in Żyrowice and chaplain to the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception in the Słonim Convent. During the Holocaust, he called for helping Jews. He collected donations for their benefit, issued false christening certificates and repeatedly made his way to the ghetto. He also smuggled Jews outside and hid them in the rectory, in the nearby houses and in the monastery of the Immaculate Conception. Together with Sisters of the Immaculate Conception Ewa Noiszewska and Marta Wołowska he was arrested by the Germans and then killed. Several dozen other Poles lost their lives with them.

Doctor; professor of paediatrics. During the German occupation he worked in Rozwadów. He often got into the ghetto to treat the Jews who were gathered there. When another doctor and a friend of his, Stanisław Matulewicz, discovered that positive result of typhus test could be obtained using certain harmless bacteria, Łazowski started to use the vaccine to simulate an epidemic and thus keep the Germans away from the local population. Thereby he saved many inhabitants of Rozwadów and the surrounding area including many Jews from the nearby ghetto.

Mountain lovers – both Kazimiera (Romance philologist and translator) and her son Jerzy Wawrzyniec (musicologist, writer and composer) were climbing enthusiasts. During the German occupation they saved at least seven people by hiding them in their Warsaw flat.

Politician, diplomat, clerk and columnist. In Bern, where he was the Polish ambassador, he created an organisation, later known as the Ładoś Group, by bringing together several Polish diplomats and representatives of the local Jewish communities. The group saved Jews from all over occupied Europe by means of false passports from Latin American countries.

During the German occupation, she rescued Jakub Berger and Laura Bogaczewska in Przemyśl.

Writer, author of books for children, social activist and independence activist, member of Żegota. Together with Władysław Bartoszewski, in 1963 she planted a tree in honour of this organization in the Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem.