Nursemaids

They were young girls of very modest or poor background, who had to leave their parents’ home at an early age and go to work taking care of other people’s households and children. When the war broke out the situation often changed overnight and a reversal of fortunes took place: the Jewish employers were stripped of their status, assets and rights and became helpless victims to persecution and murder, and it was the nursemaids who, despite the danger, their young age and lack of education, took charge and assumed full responsibility for the Jewish families’ survival.

Jan and Yekaterina Karijev

Jan and Yekaterina (Katya) Karijev were and elderly and poor couple who lived with their children in the village of Losonsna in the Grodno District. In the 1920's Yekaterina had been hired to care for the children of the Jewish Zhukovsky family in Grodno. Since then she had remained in contact with the family, and was especially close to Solomon, one of the children she had raised. Although Solomon had become a teacher and a convinced Marxist, he was very much attached to his former nanny. When... Continue reading

Ida Brunelli-Lenti

A Mother's Deathbed Confession Yuzzi Galambos, a beautiful Jewish dancer, was 17 years old when she fell in love with the 35-year-old Hungarian non-Jewish singer, Kalman Toth. In 1930 she joined him on a tour in Italy. They lived the life of wandering artists, going from place to place, from performance to performance. By 1935 the couple had three children. In 1940, the Italian authorities forced Kalman to leave the country, and he returned to Hungary, where he enlisted in the Hungarian army. ... Continue reading

Gertruda Babilińska

The Nanny That Kept Her Promise Gertruda Babilińska was born in 1902 in Starograd, near Gdansk. Her father worked at the post office and she was the eldest of eight children. When she was 19 years old, she went to Warsaw to seek work. She found a position with a Jewish family, taking care of their two children. When the family decided to leave for Palestine, they offered to take the nanny along, but Babilińska wanted to stay in Poland. She was then engaged as nanny by the Stolowickis, a... Continue reading

François and Berthe Bousson

François and Berthe Bousson owned a grocery store in Boissy Saint-Léger, in metropolitan Paris. In 1938, Hillel and Nacha Rutkowsky, a Jewish couple from Paris, put their son Jacques into the couple’s care. Nacha was convalescing from tuberculosis and would visit her son every Tuesday. In 1941, Hillel Rutkowsky was arrested and imprisoned in Drancy. He remained in detention until his deportation to the east in June 1942. His wife Nacha was arrested in the great Vel d’Hiv roundup of the... Continue reading

Erzsebet Fajo

The Maid Who Became A Rescuer This is the story of Erzsebet Fajo who worked as a nursemaid for a Jewish family – a young woman of very modest circumstances, who, when the tides changed and the Jews became victims of brutal persecution, decided to fight for the survival of her employers, and demonstrated enormous courage and resourcefulness. Erzsebet Fajo from Bekescsaba was only 13 years old when she had to leave school and go to work for the Abonyi family as a live-in nursemaid. Laszlo... Continue reading

Elisabeth Hedwig Leja Gessler

Edward and Dora Gessler, a Jewish couple, lived with their children, a cook and a housekeeper in the city of Beilsko Biala in Southern Poland. In 1938, Elisabeth Hedwig Leja, a Polish Catholic woman of ethnic German origin (Volksdeutsche) joined the family as a nanny and caretaker of the family’s three young children, Elek, 11, Lili, 4, and Roman, 1. At the outbreak of the war, rather than join her family in safety, Elisabeth chose to remain with the Gesslers and help them as they fled from... Continue reading

Domicele Pagojute

Domicele Pagojute had been the nanny of the Shohat family's children: Haim, born 1932 and Joshua, born 1933. Their mother, Reizl Shohat, was a widow and ran a little inn in the town of Telsiai (Telse or Telz), in the Siauliai District, Lithuania. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union, Domicele had already left the family's service and worked for an ophthalmologist whose office was in the same building as the Shohat's place. Domicele had a small room in the building, and it was there that she... Continue reading

Karolina Sapeta

Karolina Sapeta worked as a live-in domestic for the Hochhauser family in Kraków and served as nanny for their children, whom she gave warm and devoted care. When the Germans occupied Poland and the Jews of Krakow were put in a ghetto, Sapeta came to the family’s aid and illegally provided them with food and clothing. In March 1943, when the Kraków ghetto experienced its final Aktion, Sapeta decided to at least rescue the Hochheisers’ children. She removed ten-year-old Samuel... Continue reading

Maria Tykva

Maria Tykva was Leonid Dinkevich' nanny of in Kiev and took care of the child while his parents were at work. When the war broke out, Leonid's father, Josef, joined the Red Army and went to the front. The child's mother asked Maria to take the five-year-old boy to her village Kolokhovo, in the Dnepropetrovsk District. Even in the distant village, the little boy was not safe. When writing to Yad Vashem, he remembered the Germans arrival – a German soldier shooting the hen in the yard and... Continue reading