Frank Dobia, born in 1926

Run away, son!

A reportage of Katarzyna Meloch

On November 28, 2001, the Day of Young Israel was celebrated for the first time at the University of Warsaw. It was sponsored by the rector of the university, Professor Piotr Węgleński. Mrs. Bat Aden, chargé d’affaires of the State of Israel, awarded Israeli medals to a few Poles distinguished by having saved Polish Jews during the Holocaust. The ceremony took place in the Kazimierz Palace, in the auditorium named after Józef Piłsudski.

The medal ceremony was attended by a visitor from Australia. He spoke to us in an old-fashioned Polish. Frank Dobia, the survivor, came to Poland to personally pay tribute to “The Righteous Among the Nations.” He addressed them directly, saying: “The words about your humane deeds at a time which was so difficult for us are insufficient. Even medals are insufficient, because your hands should hold scepters and your heads should wear crowns. Yours wasn’t only a brave fight to save people, but it was a fight for human dignity, a fight of those who believed in the primacy of good over evil. We Poles and Jews have more in common than not.”

He added a few words about himself: “I became an orphan at a critical age for a child, and instead of the care of parents and a familial ambience, I was raised by the street, by ghettos and camps. The war taught me to separate people into good and bad.”

Later, the Australian told a story about a Jewish 13-year-old boy during the war: “Two months after the war broke out, I was already homeless and hungry, forced out of my family home to Płock. The period after the second displacement from Płock to Chmielnik, in the Kielce district, was even worse. The poverty, hunger, and filth were horrific, and, right at the end, there was also typhoid.

“One of the peasants offered me a job in Kargów. I immediately took it. One evening the village head turned up and ordered me to go back to Chmielnik. I went back the next morning. It happened to be the market day there. Peasants were sitting on carts at the outskirts of the town, but they weren’t let into the city because the ghetto had already been surrounded and the roundups for the displacement action (to Treblinka) were underway. We didn’t know what was happening in Treblinka.

“My wish was to be with my family. I tried to sneak into the ghetto. I failed because the guards opened fire on me and I quickly retreated, blending with the peasants at the turnpikes. It was the middle of the night by the time I returned to Kargów and slept, as always, in the barn. And in the morning, the village head was already at the barn, yelling for me to come out. I burst out of the barn, and the village head chased me and caught me. He gave me a beating, tied me up, and took me to his home. He harnessed the horse, brought me (tied up) to the town hall, and threw me in jail.

“After sixty years is there a point in recounting one event in the small village of Tuczępy? Yes. I shall tell everyone and repeat, and not only in Poland, who a Righteous Man can be. I tell this to my grandsons and granddaughters so they will tell their children about a man from Tuczępy, who is etched so deeply in my memory. I tell about this clerk, who at dusk of the same day that I was arrested left the door of the municipal jail ajar and whispered: ‘Run away, son, and may God have mercy on you.’

“Please forgive me, dear clerk, for forgetting your honorable name and not awarding you the medal of ‘The Righteous Among the Nations,’ which you deserve. I swear that I tried to find you but I failed. Your chest may not wear the badge of ‘The Righteous’ but I am remembering you here, at this ceremony, among ‘The Righteous’ because you are one of them. I keep pondering when and how, or perhaps if, another person might have prodded you to act so nobly and open those iron doors of the municipal jail so that I could live on, survive, and talk about this event.

We shall never know if anyone else took part in it…

“What I do know for sure is that you waited until dusk so that no one would notice you opening the jail door, because the next morning I was going to be delivered to the Gestapo, and then my plight would have been different. I also wish for you to know that today’s ceremony is attended by the present representative of your municipality, the village head Łabęcki. The village head did not know you, clerk, but I told him about your nobility and that I had tried to find you a long time ago.

“Rest in peace, dear clerk, knowing that I keep thinking about you, and I remember you but I cannot pay you back for saving my life. I ask of you, ‘The Righteous’ present here, to let this clerk unknown to you from the former municipality of Tuczępy, be part of today’s ceremony.”