Polish home that hid Jews from Nazis to become museum

WARSAW — A private entrepreneur plans to establish a museum in a house in southeastern Poland in which Jews hid from the Nazis.

The house, located on Tatarska Street in Przemysl, hid 13 members of the Diamant family during the Holocaust. Beginning in 1942, the orphaned Catholic sisters Stefania and Helena Podgorski, ages 16 and 9, hid the Diamant family in the attic of their home. Stefania had worked in the Diamant family’s grocery store before the Nazi invasion of Poland.

The Diamants remained in the attic for two-and-a-half years and survived the Holocaust. In 1979, the Podgorski sisters were honored as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.

The 1996 film “Hidden in Silence,” directed by Richard A. Colli, was based on their story.

The house, which is in disrepair and poor condition, was recently purchased by Polish businessman Maciej Piorkowski.

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“You can call it a whim, but I wanted this historic building saved from death so I could show its history,”Piorkowski told the Virtual Shtetl portal, according to Polish Radio Rzeszow. “At this stage, I do not have of more specific plans. I would like the facility to be available for visitors, so that they can, for example, watch a movie about the history of the hiding.”