E4 Victim und rescuer

After the invasion of Poland by the German Wehrmacht in 1939, Alfreda (“Nocia”) Markowska's family went into hiding - as Roma, they were persecuted as so-called “Zigeuner”. In 1941, German soldiers discovered the family's hiding place and murdered everyone present. Only fifteen-year-old Alfreda escaped the massacre. She had gone outside the hiding place to get food. When she was later caught, she managed to escape. With a forged ID, she found work on the railroad, where she had to maintain the tracks and carry the dead out of the deportation trains. One day, a woman on a train to Auschwitz secretly gave her her four-year-old son, Karol Parno Gierlinski, asking her to save him. Alfreda managed to place him with a family. Karol survived and later became a famous artist. Alfreda Markowska rescued many other persecuted children by organizing hiding places and forged papers for them. The number of people she rescued is uncertain, but there are estimates of up to 50 children.