Jadwiga Rodau

Jadwiga Broniatowska Rodau was a Polish dentist. During the second world war, she, and her husband, disguised themselves as Polish gentiles using the names Boleslaw and Jadwiga Marcinkiewicz. As a result, Jadwiga was able to enter and leave the Warsaw Ghetto with impunity.

In the words of Leszek Klewicki (a Polish gentile who sheltered Jadwiga):

“A postcard came,” he says, “with the words: I've fallen ill, signed ‘Jadzia’. It was addressed to Józefów, near Warszawa, with no street name. The post office didn't know what to do with it, so they gave it to alderman Sulkowski, a good friend of ours, whose sons were in the underground. Mom read it and noticed the stamp that said Czestochowa and then she immediately knew it was Jadzia, the dentist she had been childhood friends with.“
Leszek was living with his mother in a two-storey villa in Radosc near Warszawa. His father had died during the bombing of Warszawa. Mom went to Czestochowa right away. First she brought Jadzia Broniatowska and her sister-in-law, Adela Mitelman, and later Jadzia’s husband, Natan Rodau, with papers in the name Boleslaw Marcinkiewicz, and his sister Natalia Frydrych with her five-year-old Julian. In mid-1943 they were joined by doctor Waclaw Konar and his son Jerzy, also from the Czestochowa ghetto. “Jadzia had ‘good looks,’ Aryan papers in the name of Maria Helena Pelikant and as the only one she could go out. She and mom were working at the Central Welfare Council (Rada Glówna Opiekuncza). I was in charge of the house. I was 15 at the time. The hardest part was keeping them together and away from the windows.”
There was a shelter in the landing, for emergencies. The alderman of Radosc would often tip them off about German raids. He knew the mother was part of the underground. “Their fear was greatest when the soldiers were searching the houses in our street. They wanted to run for the forest, but mom stood in their way and said whatever their fate was, ours would be the same. Everybody made it and we remained friends.”