Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Man Finds Jewish Girl His Family Hid During WWII

Brooklyn – A Polish man who now lives in Brooklyn has found the Jewish woman he and his family hid from the Nazis when she was just a young girl during WWII.

Edward Pieniak, 74, who had been searching for Teresa Wisniewska for years, finally found her with the help of various Jewish organizations and the Daily News, according to the media organization (http://bit.ly/1EOtZf0). Pieniak believes Teresa came to live with his family in 1942, when she was 10, he was a toddler and the Holocaust had just begun.

Pieniak grew up, married and raised two children. Before he left Poland to join his daughter in Brooklyn, he tried several times to find Pieniak. He didn’t find out her story until this year.

In an account given by Borensztajn to the Jewish orphanage she went to in 1947 in Bytom, Poland, she described how her father died in 1942, and how her brother suffocated in a crowded boxcar on the train to the Treblinka death camp. She said she and her mother jumped from the moving train, but only she survived. Polish police officers then captured her, but instead of turning her in to the Germans, they taught her to say, “praise Jesus” so that she might pass for a Catholic.

Borensztajn immigrated to Haifa, Israel, in 1949, became a nurse and met and married a Bulgarian Jewish man. They later had a daughter, according to an interview Borensztajn did with Polish radio reporter Marta Rebzda.

And although he found her with the help of Rebzda, Pieniak will not be able to meet Borensztajn – Rebzda told Pieniak via email that at first she was “enthusiastic” about having contact with him, but changed her mind a day later, stating that she has a bad heart and can’t handle the emotions that would go with talking to Pieniak.