“The young generation needs people like my father,” Julian Kulski, son of the mayor of the occupied Warsaw, Julian Spitoslaw Kulski, said during the award-giving ceremony organized by the From the Depths foundation, which honored Julian Spitoslaw Kulski, his wife Eugenia and Eugenia’s sister Zofia Zembrzuska.
For the third time, From the Depths bestowed the Edward Mosberg Righteous award to Poles who rescued Jews during World War II. This year, the award was presented posthumously to Julian Spitosław Kulski, Stefan Starzyński’s deputy and friend and a wartime mayor of Warsaw, his wife Eugenia Kulska née Solecka and her sister, Zofia Zembrzuska née Solecka.
The award-giving ceremony took place in Warsaw’s Kinoteka cinema located in the Palace of Culture and Science. The event was attended by the patron of the award, Holocaust survivor Edward Mosberg, representatives of the US Congress, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset Yehiel Hilik Bar, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Culture and National Heritage Piotr Gliński and the Head of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland Michał Dworczyk.
On behalf of the honored, the decorations were received by family members.
“It is a great honor to receive this award. I will treat it not only as a distinction for my father, but also for all the employees of the Warsaw City Hall who helped the Jewish community during those tragic times. I am extremely moved and touched,” said Julian Kulski, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Kulski.
He also expressed the hope that an initiative such as the Mosberg Award would allow more people to learn about his father, a man who was faced with an extraordinary mission during the war and will become, as Mr. Kulski put it, “a model of steadfastness and integrity for all Poles; a witness to the fact that you should never give up.” “The young generation needs people like my father,” Mr. Kulski added.
During the occupation, Julian Spitoslaw Kulski played a double role: he was Warsaw’s administrator reporting to the Germans and the city’s mayor, working with the resistance. Thanks to Kulski’s efforts, thousands of the city’s Jewish residents were given false identities and phoney jobs with municipal authorities. Julian Spitoslaw Kulski was the first city official who visited the leader of the Judenrat Council at the Warsaw Ghetto.
During the occupation, Kulski’s wife Eugenia (née Solecka), ran a gardening farm in Baniocha near Warsaw, where she gave shelter to Anna Katzner (Zofia Łozińska) and found a place for her daughter and son-in-law. Eugenia’s sister, Zofia Zembrzuska née Solecka, was a surgical nurse at the Praga Hospital of the Transfiguration in Warsaw. She hid a well-known Lvov doctor, Leon Katzner (Jan Łoziński), in her apartment and worked with him.
Asked by journalists about the significance of the From The Depths award, Deputy Prime Minister Gliński emphasized that the distinction “brings to light the history of those Poles who have not yet been recognized, for example, by the Yad Vashem Institute, but who not helped Polish Jews to survive the Holocaust and, importantly, did so in a systemic way.”
“Names of many Righteous are still unknown. The history of the Kulski family, the history of Polish heroes who prove their courage on a daily basis, is still to be told,” Prof. Gliński added.
“The awards that From the Depths has been presenting for three years, is my way of showing gratitude,” said the foundation’s Executive Director Jonny Daniels. “How can we thank those who sacrificed everything and risk of their own lives to save others?”, he asked. As Daniels pointed out, although in 2018 the awards will be given to three people, “this evening we will also express our gratitude to those whose stories we will never hear and whose names only God knows.”
“For the generations who did not experience wartime persecution, immense violence, fear and hatred, helping other people seems to be a simple reflex, an act of goodwill,” wrote Speaker of the Sejm Marek Kuchciński in a letter read out by parliamentarian Andrzej Melak. He noted that the people who saved Jews “never thought of themselves as heroes because for them helping was a heartfelt impulse, a result of their attachment to Christian and Humanist values.”
The ceremony was followed by the European premiere of Destination Unknown, a film presenting the story of the Holocaust survivor, a 92-year-old Jew from Krakow, Edward Mosberg.
Mr. Mosberg is one of the last survivors of Płaszów and Mauthausen camps. He has contributed to the deepening of the dialogue between Jews and Poles, he also works to promote education about the Holocaust globally, cultivating the memory of the Shoah. Edward Mosberg was 13 years old when World War II broke out. His family was sent to the Krakow ghetto; after its liquidation, his mother was sent to Auschwitz, where she was murdered, and his father had gone missing much earlier. Mosberg and his siblings were sent to the Płaszów concentration camp, and from there transferred to other Nazi camps, including Mauthausen. In 1951, he and his fiancée arrived in New York City; he currently lives in New Jersey.
In 2017, the awards, then named From The Depths Zabinski Awards, were given to the Franciscan Sisters of the Monastery of Mary, Natalia Jakoniuk together with her family and – posthumously – the family of Jan Kawczyński.
(PAP)
autorka: Nadia Senkowska
nak/ skr/
Źródło: Polska Agencja Prasowa
Fot. Tomasz Soliński