Ceremony at Yad Vashem Honoring Stanislaw and Jadwiga Schultz as Righteous Among the Nations

At a poignant ceremony at Yad Vashem on November 4, 2007, the title of Righteous Among the Nations was posthumously bestowed upon Stanislaw and Jadwiga Schultz, responsible for saving four Jews during the Holocaust. Stanislaw and Jadwiga Schultz’s daughter, Mrs. Stanislava Andryshchak, accepted the medal and certificate of honor of Righteous Among the Nations on her parents’ behalf.

Present at the ceremony was survivor Rabbi Meyer Lamet, one of the four Jews hidden by Stanislaw and Jadwiga Schultz. Others present were Dr. Mark Lamet, son of survivor Yitzchak Lamet, also hidden by the Schultz family, Mr. David Orlander, the son of Necha Orlander (nee Lamet), another survivor, and many members of the extended Lamet family. The ceremony began in the Hall of Remembrance and then proceeded to the Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations. Director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department, Ms. Irena Steinfeldt, presented Mrs. Stanislava Andryshchak with the medal and certificate of honor.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mrs. Stanislava Andryshchak said, “If my parents would be here today, they would be very happy to see what became of the Jewish people and what a wonderful, big and beautiful family the Lamets became.” Reflecting upon the inscription on the medal, "He who saves one human being is as if he saves an entire world," Rabbi Meyer Lamet proclaimed that the Schultz family “saved our lives and all the lives of our children and grandchildren.”

To date, Yad Vashem has recognized almost 22,000 individuals as Righteous Among the Nations, among them over 6,000 from Poland.

The Rescue Story

The Lamets lived in Sambor, in Eastern Galicia (today the district of Lviv, Ukraine), making a living from textile workshops.

In 1939 the Germans invaded the town, but soon retreated with the entry of the Soviet army. On June 22, 1941 Germany attacked the Soviet Union and on June 30, Sambor was occupied for a second time. At that time the town had approximately 8000 Jewish residents and another 1000 Jews who had fled earlier from German occupied Poland.

At the beginning of the occupation Mordechai Lamet, the head of the family, and his married son Yitzchak entrusted the inventory of their textile store to Stanislaw and Jadwiga Schultz, a Polish couple who lived in the suburbs of Sambor, with their two children, 11 year-old Stanislawa and nine year old Bronislaw. The Schultzes had been loyal clients going back to the pre-war period.

As things became worse, the Schulzes allowed their Jewish friends to build an underground shelter in the rear part of their house, equipped with beds and even electric light. When, in March 1942, the Jews were ordered to move to one quarter of Sambor, the Lamets and another Jewish couple went into hiding at the Schultzes. But after some time they all moved back to the Jewish quarter of Sambor that seemed to be a safe place at that point. It somehow became known in town that the Schultzes had helped the Jews. Their house was searched and the shelter found. Although it was empty, it bore signs of people’s presence, and consequently Jadwiga was arrested. After spending several days in prison, she was released but remained under suspicion.

In May 1943, the Germans started to liquidate the ghetto, and many Jews were deported to the Belzec extermination camp. The Lamets survived the “Aktionen” by hiding in a bunker inside the ghetto. Mordechai’s children, Meyer, who was a student at the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva, Yitzchak, their newly wed sister Necha, and Necha’s friend (whose name has since been forgotten) managed to escape from the ghetto and again found refuge with the Schultzes.

The Schultz family started to provide the hiding Jews with food, water and sanitary facilities. After approximately six weeks, when the situation got much more dangerous in the area, Stanislaw prepared another hiding place for them. In the barn that was actually part of a house, there was a stack of bricks, bought for building the stables. Stanislaw hollowed that stack and made a space inside it, which was about 70 centimeters high, 2.5 meters long and 1.2 meters wide. It was in this tiny shelter that the four Jews spent approximately 13 months. Food and drink were given to them through a hole concealed by loose bricks. The Schultzes fully realized the extreme risk to their own lives and that of their family by hiding the Jews. The danger was especially great in their particular area, which was steeped in antisemitism, where the local population eagerly and actively helped the Germans to annihilate the Jews.   

In August 1944, when the Red Army liberated Sambor only 150 Jews had survived, among them the four that owed their lives to the Schultz family. Other members of the Lamet family were not so lucky: the parents Mordechai and Frida Lamet perished, as did another daughter, Sura, Yitzchak’s wife and two young sons, Necha’s husband and other relatives.