Sixty one years ago

By The Associated Press

Ha'aretz
26/11/2005

www.haaretz.com/

New York City, U.S. - Sixty-one years ago, Joanna Zalucka hid a young Jewish girl in her bedroom for eight months, saving the child from the Nazi killing spree in their native Poland.

The girl survived, was reunited with her parents, and moved to Brooklyn in 1953.

On Friday, Ruth Gruener - now 72 with two grown sons - was reunited with her old friend from Poland, finally returning a lifesaving favor by hosting her World War II benefactor for two weeks.

"It is just so wonderful that no words can describe how I feel," said Gruener, who was sobbing as she and Zalucka hugged in an emotional encounter before reporters, camera crews and photographers. Although the two have corresponded over the decades, they hadn't seen one another since 1944.

"It's a miracle," Zalucka said in Polish shortly after arriving at Kennedy International Airport from her homeland. The flight was only the second time she had been on an airplane.

Gruener's survival in their hometown of Lvov, Poland, was a miracle as well; she and her parents were the only ones from an extended family of 300 who survived the Holocaust.

Her father smuggled her out of the ghetto under his overcoat and placed her with Zalucka's family because he expected to be slaughtered.

Ukrainian nationalists had already begun ransacking Jewish homes at night. Families disappeared in waves, presumably taken away to concentration camps.

"I heard screams every evening," Gruener said. "To a child's ears, it was just horrible."

Ruth spent most of her eight months at Zalucka's home just sitting in a chair, afraid to even look out the window from Joanna's bedroom. Joanna, then 18, was in charge of keeping an eye on the girl.

When visitors came, the 8-year-old would hide under Joanna's bed or duck into a trunk. Ruth spent so much time silent and immobilized that she had to relearn how to walk and speak normally. After eight months, Ruth was brought to the home of another Christian family that hid her parents for another two years.

Once World War II was over, Ruth and her family went to Munich and then to Brooklyn. Ruth eventually married another Holocaust survivor, Jack Gruener, and started a family.

Jack's path to freedom was more traumatic. His parents were murdered in the Krakow ghetto when he was 13. He then spent time in a series of concentration camps before being liberated at Dachau in 1945. None of his other relatives lived.

"To this day, I can't figure out how I survived," he said.

For the next two weeks, Zalucka will spend time with Gruener and her family, a turnabout that was a long time coming.

She cried and embraced Gruener when they met on Friday.

"You look so young," she said.

Zalucka would likely have faced the death penalty if she had been caught harboring a Jew during the war. The family was never found out, but Zalucka herself was later imprisoned, first by the Germans, then by the Soviets, as a suspected member of the Polish underground.

The pair were reunited by The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, which was created in 1986 to provide assistance to non-Jews who risked their lives to rescue Jews during the Holocaust.

The foundation has been providing Zalucka with a pension and helping her pay for medical care.