New Jersey Jewish News
Monmouth County Feature
A ‘righteous’ choice to help others survive
In August 1942, German soldiers began to round up the Jews in Janowiec, Poland. Some were killed outright; some were denounced by their neighbors; others simply
disappeared.
But some were saved by the righteous.
Stefan and Valeria Andzelm, their two sons, and their 15-year-old daughter, Maria, hid two Jewish men, Israel Szwarcwort and Moses Kershenbaum, on their property for two years.
For Maria, there was a happy ending; she eventually married Kershenbaum and the couple moved to Red Bank in 1968. She and her husband, now deceased, operated a stationery store in town for many years.
Maria Andzelm Kershenbaum received the Yad Vashem Medal and Certificate of Honor in November 1994 and was designated as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” by the Israeli government (the distinction is awarded to a non-Jewish person who risked his or her life, freedom, and safety to save Jews from the threat of deportation or death).
As an honored guest at the community-wide Yom Hashoa observance at the Ruth Hyman JCC in Deal on April 24, Kershenbaum, who now lives in Red Bank, explained her family’s wartime decision.
“There was great danger,” said Kershenbaum in an interview with NJ Jewish News. “You had to choose what side you were on. We made a choice to try and help others survive. It was the right choice. I’d do it again.”
Ensuring the survival of her future husband and Szwarcwort was a perilous undertaking. The Andzelms dug a hole, roughly the size of a grave, in the floor of a stable that adjoined their home. The two men lay there while their hiding place was covered with manure from the livestock that stood nearby. Young Maria passed them food through a small opening in the floor.
Maria and her brothers kept watch day and night; they were on the lookout for curious neighbors as well as German soldiers, she recalled.
On Saturday nights, the men would leave their hiding place and climb to an attic in the stable, where they would bathe and change clothes before returning to their underground refuge.
Two years later, Russian forces arrived in Janowiec, and the two men came out of hiding. But Stefan Andzelm was killed by crossfire when the Russian army liberated the town, and the surviving members of the family were scorned by their neighbors because they had provided a safety net for the two Jewish men.
“We were driven from our home,” Maria Kershenbaum said quietly. “People hated us because of what we did.”
Valeria Andzelm and her two sons eventually settled in Lublin. Maria chose to spend her life with Moses Kershenbaum. Throughout the years, she has shared her story with audiences at schools and synagogues in Monmouth County.
“I have to tell the next generation what happened back then,” she said. “Young people must know what happened to their grandparents and other family members. It’s why I live.”
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