Boris Lozhkin: How we’re honoring those who saved Jews during the Holocaust
I’ve previously written on Medium about the Righteous Initiative, a major project, underway by the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine to honor those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
The Righteous Among the Nations is the honorary title given by Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, to people who risked their own lives and the lives of their loved ones to save Jews during the Holocaust.
Various Ukrainian cities have been naming streets, memorial signs and alleys after the Righteous Among the Nations. Already 16 streets have been renamed and more will follow.
Jan Chodorowski saved 26 Jews but was arrested himself. Thanks to our project, his heroism is commemorated in the title of one of the streets of dnipro.
This is his story:
Jan Chodorowski, a Polish national, saved 26 Jews during the Second World War. He was a student in Lviv and spoke German fluently, so with the beginning of the occupation he got a job in a German construction company as a student-engineer. In his role he was tasked with recruiting personnel for his construction team.
Realising the extent of Jewish persecution, he purposefully hired Jews to his team and helped fake their documents, passing them off as Ukrainians or Poles. Out of 35 team members he hired 26 Jews, who were all sent to Dnipro to complete construction works.
As the Soviet troops arrived, they rescued the Jewish members of the construction team, but Jan was arrested by German counterintelligence. He managed to escape a camp in Mykolaiv and return to Lviv, and from there to Poland. After the war, Jan became a professor at the Warsaw University of Technology.
In June 2019 a street in Dnipro was named after Jan. His street intersects with Mikhailo Hrushevsky street (formerly named after Karl Liebknecht). The Karl Liebknecht street was used during the Second World War as “the road of death” — the street along which Jews were taken for execution in the Botanical Garden.
Yad Vashem gave Jan Chodorowski the honorary title of Righteous Among the Nations of April 14th, 1993.
By Boris Lozhkin
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