Eighty years ago, Peter Jablonski saved a 13-year-old Jewish orphan by hiding him in a crawl space underneath a washroom in Warsaw, Poland. Jablonski was 23. The orphan, Walter Saltzberg, was badly injured by falling German bombs that destroyed his first hiding place; Jablonski treated the boy’s wounds and protected him from other Jews in hiding, who wanted to kill him when his moans risked giving away their location. After five months, they were liberated, and Jablonski even helped arrange leg surgery for Saltzberg, helping him recover enough to move to Canada, where Jablonski would also later immigrate.
It’s a touching story that Yad Vashem, the organization in charge of Holocaust remembrance for the State of Israel, would normally have paid tribute to by now. But while there are more than 28,000 people who have been granted the title of “Righteous Among the Nations”, the prestige is reserved for non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. Jablonski, as it happens, was Jewish—and therefore ineligible to be honoured that way by the pre-eminent organization.
But this week, for Yom Hashoah on April 24, Jablonski’s herosim will be acknowledged in the Holy Land. B’nai Brith International and the KKL-Jewish National Fund are holding a gathering in the Martyrs’ Forest in Jerusalem, as part of an decades-old tradition that honours Jews who rescued fellow Jews.
On today’s The CJN Daily, we speak to George Saltzberg, the son of the late Walter Saltzberg, who is currently in Israel to accept the citation on behalf of his father’s rescuer. He explains why he made it his mission to make sure Jablonski’s selfless acts aren’t forgotten.
Transcript
Ellin Bessner: That’s the voice of the late Walter Saltzberg of Winnipeg, a hidden child Holocaust survivor from Poland giving his testimony to the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation many years ago. Saltzberg made it to Winnipeg where he anglicized his name from Wacek to Walter. He raised a family, had a successful career as a civil engineer in Manitoba, and lived a long life.
It couldn’t have happened without Peter Jablonski, the Polish Jew he credits for saving his life. Walter’s family arranged to have him smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto on his own when the war broke out, and he hid at the home of a non-Jewish doctor for two years. But by late 1944, his hiding place was no longer safe. So Walter wandered the streets of Warsaw, which is where he met Peter Jablonski, a blue-eyed Jew whose real name was Nachman Fryszberg, age 23, just 10 years older than Walter. By then, Peter had escaped two labour camps and two death camps and had joined a local Polish resistance group in Warsaw. Like Walter, Jablonski was the only survivor in his immediate family.
The two hid in a building for a few days while Polish resistance troops fought the Nazis. When the Germans bombed this hiding place, Peter dug Walter out of the rubble, and he spent the next five months caring for the badly wounded teen, hiding with him and several other Jews in a cramped, lice-infested crawl space which Peter built under a wooden bathhouse. They drank rainwater and lived off a bag of rotten onions Peter scavenged, until the Russians liberated the city.
Afterwards, Peter continued caring for Walter, arranging for surgery to fix his broken leg and eventually placing him in a children’s home in Warsaw, from where Walter would eventually make it to Winnipeg and join distant relatives who lived there. Peter and his new bride, Sabina, first went to Israel, and then moved to Canada too, where the two fugitives would find each other again years later. Ever since, Walter’s family made it their mission to care for Peter, who never had children of his own, and to ensure that his wartime actions were honoured. This week, after 80 years, Walter’s son, George Saltzberg, is in Israel to attend a special Yom HaShoah ceremony in Jerusalem on Thursday night. Not at Yad Vashem, but in the city where B’nai B’rith International and Israel’s Jewish National Fund will bestow a posthumous Jewish Rescuers Citation on Peter Jablonski and 13 other heroic Jews who saved Jewish lives.
George Saltzberg: I believe that it is part of the story of the Shoah, and because it’s such an important part of the story of the Shoah, it belongs with the entire story of the Shoah.
Ellin Bessner: I’m Ellin Bessner, and this is what Jewish Canada sounds like for Wednesday, April 23, 2024. Welcome to The CJN Daily, a podcast of The Canadian Jewish News, and made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Peter Jablonski: Your father was almost buried in the rubbish. I went out, there was a dog with another friend, and a few minutes later, once the dust settled a bit, you could see it was almost dark, bricks falling down, you know, I could hear voices, and I could see only one hand of your father sticking out from the rubbish on the bricks.
Ellin Bessner: The controversial issue of why Jews who rescue Jews, like Peter Jablonski did, and whose voice you just heard telling his story to Walter’s family, but haven’t been honoured by Yad Vashem, has long been debated. Yad Vashem says non-Jews had a choice whether to help Jews or not. But the Nazis gave the Jews no choice, and so it would be unfair to judge or reward any Jew for what they did during the Holocaust. Although Yad Vashem does highlight heroic Jewish rescuers in its museum, at conferences and in research, especially Jewish resistance fighters and partisans, B’nai B’rith began lobbying to honour Jewish rescuers more than 20 years ago, and so far over 600 people have received these alternate official citations. In 2020, Yad Vashem did make Jews who rescued Jews the central theme of that year’s state Yom Hashoah ceremonies. Walter’s son, George, has been practising his Hebrew as he prepares to deliver remarks Thursday when Peter Jablonski gets his citation posthumously. George Saltzberg joins me now. Welcome to The CJN Daily.
George Saltzberg: Thank you so much, Ellin. It is really amazing to be here in Israel, I think, especially now with all that’s happened since October 7th, to come to the country, to show support, to be with my family, and especially to honour this incredible man who played a huge role in saving my father’s life. And the reason that I’m able to speak with you here today, you’ve basically.
Ellin Bessner: Made it your life’s mission to honour Peter Jablonski. And so this is kind of the culmination, but it took a long time. Tell us a bit about what the challenge was.
George Saltzberg: Yeah, so I actually had the chance to honour him once with Yad Vashem and the Government of Ontario in Toronto. That was several years ago. I had heard about a recognition, you know, for Holocaust survivors in Toronto. And I, at that time, sort of made a recommendation. I can’t remember if I filled out an application or what I did. And he was one chosen, and it was really beautiful because my dad came, George Mandelbaum, his first cousin, who Peter also saved. And we were all there, together to really celebrate Peter. So we gave him a little bit of, you know, honour, kavod, you know, during his lifetime, which was really, really something that I really wanted to do and I was pleased to be able to do that.
Ellin Bessner: Okay, so then how did this next sort of Israeli-based honour come about and why was it such a challenge?
George Saltzberg: So a distant cousin of Peter’s found me once because of all the articles that were written online, you know, about Peter, and then reached out to me. His name is Doron, and we stayed in contact, and really it was Doron who actually knew Avraham Hooley, who really is behind this Jewish Rescuer Citation Award.
One of the founders of this recognition, the first man who saved my father, Dr. Kazimierz WĘCKOWSKI was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations a long, long time ago. And at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, there is a plaque with his name. My father also put his name in Winnipeg at the Jewish campus in Winnipeg.
The issue was that there was never really an official recognition for Jews who saved Jews. It was really through Doron who gave my name to Avraham, who called me and told me about this recognition that was really started in 2011. And, you know, there was, you know, when you talk about Jews saving Jews, you know, some people would say, well, you know, it’s expected, it’s for people, you know, you expect it. But then they realized that there were Jews who saved other Jews who were not related, they weren’t family, they weren’t friends, they were complete strangers. And that’s where this criteria came. And really, you know, when you take Peter, who was 23, saving the life of a 13-year-old boy who he didn’t know, when it was really every man for himself. You know, this is really something to be honoured and to be celebrated.
Ellin Bessner: Our listeners will know now that Yad Vashem has, as you said, maybe 28,000 names that it’s honoured of Righteous Among the Nations who were not Jewish. Speaker A: But there’s no similar place or even program through Yad Vashem to honour Jews like this man, Peter Jablonski, who, at great personal risk, saved not only your dad and his cousin, but a couple of other guys too, for five months in a cellar eating rotten onions. Yad Vashem doesn’t do that. How does that sit with you, that you have to have a separate award that’s kind of like not in the mainstream, if you know what I mean?
George Saltzberg: Yeah, interesting. And maybe I just don’t necessarily look at it that way. You know, I look at them as different organizations. Yad Vashem really kind of recognizes the Gentiles who saved Jews. B’nai Brith is actually taking the responsibility of recognizing the Jews who saved Jews. If you look at the Martyrs’ Forest, there are 6 million trees planted there in honour of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Shoah. There will be his name going on a plaque, I believe, and, you know, a certificate and everything. In my mind, it is at the same level of recognition as that of Yad Vashem, but just in a different place, also close to Jerusalem, in the state of Israel. And that, to me, is really important.
Ellin Bessner: Would you advocate for Yad Vashem to change their policy?
George Saltzberg: I agree. It definitely is something that I would hope Yad Vashem would reconsider because I would love one day when I visit Yad Vashem to go by the plaque of the gentile Dr. WĘCKOWSKI, who really took enormous risks to save my father, and at the same time, go by a plaque recognizing Peter Jablonski. I was lucky because I got to know Peter in my life. Although both are incredibly meaningful to me, when you know someone, and Peter was more like a grandfather to me, it would be incredible for me to see him in Yad Vashem.
Ellin Bessner: How did your family reunite with Peter after the war? How did that sort of random thing happen?
George Saltzberg: So when I used to ask both of them how they found each other, it was really my father who found Peter. Neither could remember exactly how they knew that. My dad couldn’t say how he knew that Peter was there. I was born in ’58, and my dad came here, to Toronto, on business in ’59. Somehow someone or something had told him that Peter was perhaps in Toronto.
In those days, you had to go through telephone books and all kinds of things. Jablonski was a very common Polish name, so there were quite a few of them, and he found them. They lived on Wychwood Street in Toronto, and Peter would tell the story of how my father showed up with some gifts, and Peter said to him, “You take all of those gifts back and don’t you ever bring me another gift.”
That’s the way he was, Ellin. He used to say to me all the time, “I don’t want glorification for what I did.” I’m not sure he’d be that happy with everything I did after he passed. On his gravestone in Pardes Shalom, I made sure to write a little story about how he saved people. I ensured that on his stone, at the back, we put a memorial for his parents, his uncle, and his beloved sister. Also at Shaare Zedek Hospital in all the ambulances, because we had one intensive care unit, two ambulances, and the star above Nursery Dalet at Shaare Zedek Hospital, all has the same thing in memory of both him and his beloved wife Sabina, and their love for Israel and love for children.
Ellin Bessner: You said you never had a grandfather because your father lost his whole immediate family. We don’t know what happened to your uncle, his brother, do we? We know his parents were murdered with gas in the trucks that they put the tailpipe in. Did you ever find out where they are buried, or what happened to his brother?
George Saltzberg: This I do not know. There was some thought that they went to Majdanek. We had some paper here in Israel that said they were taken to Majdanek. I went there with my father, my cousins, and a reporter from CBC many years ago. We went through the drawers with names and tried different spellings, but they explained to us that if they were gassed immediately upon arrival at Majdanek, there would be no record, only if they were slave labourers.
Ellin Bessner: What are you going to say at the ceremony in the Martyrs’ Forest outside the Scroll of Fire? It’s a very evocative place, which I’m sure you’ve already checked out and seen.
George Saltzberg: Absolutely, absolutely.
Ellin Bessner: You did a little reconnoitre, right?
George Saltzberg: Absolutely. First of all, I’m going to speak in Hebrew. They asked me if I wanted to do the speech in English, and I said, no, I’m in Israel, so I’m going to do the speech in Hebrew. I’m speaking to soldiers and students about the story. It’s important to me to say it in Hebrew. I’m going to tell a little about the story and talk about what Peter did, at a time when one would think every man for himself.
We asked Peter all the time, “Why did you do it?” He said, “I didn’t think about it.” But he said to all of us, even in front of my father, “I thought we’d be in the hole for two weeks. If I would have known it was five months, I’m not sure I would have made the same decision.”
Nevertheless, he heard my father’s cries and didn’t want to leave him.
One thing not in my story is that the other men in that hole wanted my father not to live. One time when Peter left the hole and came back, he found them choking him. He told them that if they wanted to eat, they had to leave my father and not hurt him. The agreement was made to do the portions or rations into four, not five. Peter shared not only his space, which was meant for his legs, but his food too. He decided to look after my father through the entire time, until they were liberated and even after, until he heard about the Jewish orphanage, or children’s home as they preferred. I’ve been helping with a documentary on the children’s home. I met with the producers because they wanted to show it as a true home. There were tablecloths on the table, fitted clothes, good food, music therapy, drama therapy, sports therapy, and psychology, everything founded by Holocaust survivors who lost their own children. It really is a story that hasn’t been told yet. My father was there, but unlike the other children, he couldn’t play. He was really suffering because of his leg.
Ellin Bessner: Tell us the story of how the leg happened.
George Saltzberg: So he got up and went into Dr. WĘCKOWSKI’s apartment, and he remained there for two years without walking outside, without looking outside a window, because you would get 2 kilos of sugar if they found you. There were risky times when the Gestapo raided the unit, and my father hid underneath the bathtub. The bathtubs in those days had feet at the bottom. They would raid, but only the doctor’s sister was at home. She wasn’t happy about my father being there. She actually tried to convert him to Catholicism or something, you know. One day, Dr. WĘCKOWSKI was out of the house. It was during the Polish uprising of 1944, with the Russians on the other side of the river, and Warsaw was really being bombed. The sister gave my father two cans of sardines. My father went out in the street for the first time. He walked like a duck because he didn’t have any muscular tone in his legs. The bombs were going off, and the Polish underground found him. My father used to always say he’ll never forget the sound of that bomb; he was covered in rubble.
Peter was near the stairs, so he made it out kind of unscathed, but there were no longer stairs, just a hole in the ground from a bomb. Once the bomb hit, my dad was covered. He began to scream, terrified and in pain. Peter said, “I’ll hide you if you keep quiet.” With a broken leg, my father, a 13-year-old boy, had to get out of this hole. He then meandered into a small entrance underneath the public washroom, where he built another hiding space, very close to where that house was. He remained there for five months. Peter tied off the wound using urine as a disinfectant because Peter knew the ammonia in urine is essentially the best disinfectant. He had seen farmers do that to animals with wounds before the Shoah, which is how he knew about it. He was an exceptional human being.
Ellin Bessner: Now, your dad made it to Winnipeg, as you said. How he got there is a long story. He couldn’t get into the States as a visa wasn’t given. So they made it after surgery on his leg in Sweden. They made it to Canada in Winnipeg. Your dad did a lot of speaking about his experiences, I’m told, through, like, kids and Holocaust speakers. When did he start telling you and your siblings his story?
George Saltzberg: You know, it’s interesting. I’m trying to remember when it was on television, but there was a TV series called The Holocaust. And so, you know, it was one of those things I should actually check because that’s when it all started. I knew I didn’t have grandparents. I knew that my dad wore a big shoe because of that. I remember kids staring, and I would be really angry when they’d stare at his shoe. But my dad used to say, “So I could kick a soccer ball further,” you know, that’s who he was, you know.
Ellin Bessner: What happened to the other men after the war? Did they survive?
George Saltzberg: Yeah, you know, that’s a great question. One of them was actually a Jew whose family had converted to Christianity several generations before. As we all know, the Nazis went back four generations. So, you know, it’s something I want to tell some of these protesters sometimes, these “Jews against genocide” and quote, unquote, you know, want to tell them that, you know, when they come for us, they’re going to come for you too. The way that the world looks at us, you know, it’s the same thing. One of them spoke Russian, which was, in the end, a miracle because when they were liberated, finally, the Russian Red Army had guns pointed at them, thinking they were Nazis. He was able to explain to them that they were Jews. But I don’t know anything else about those men.
Ellin Bessner: I’m getting this feeling that you don’t really want to because of how mean they were to your father. They tried to kill him.
George Saltzberg: Yeah. You know, Ellin, it’s always, always hard to say what if it was me. My father was in and out of consciousness. They were terrified that he would yell out in the middle of the night and alert the Nazis, and they would all be finished. And so, you know, he was a burden to all of them, and he was a burden to Peter. Peter could not stretch his legs because my father needed to.
Ellin Bessner: So you’ve been to the house where this hiding place was in Poland or outside on the street? Have you been there?
George Saltzberg: I went there with my dad. I have the pictures. We stood there. It was a very emotional time. Peter, before I went to Poland with my dad, drew all of this for us and told us exactly where everything was. That’s how we found all that stuff. If I didn’t have Peter in my life, I wouldn’t be able to complete a lot of the story that I’m telling you today.
Ellin Bessner: You said he was like your grandfather because yours were killed. Can you tell our listeners now if there are any surviving children or…
George Saltzberg: They loved children. You know, they were street… What do they call those parents, you know, on the street? They would sign in case the kids need to…
Ellin Bessner: Neighbourhood Watch. Yeah.
George Saltzberg: Yeah, that was them. So loving and so incredible. You know, I first met him when I was 13 years old. It was my bar mitzvah present to go to Toronto and Montreal, and you know when I moved here to Toronto in 1987 at the beginning, you know, I was young, I wanted to party. I wasn’t so interested in my weekends going from Toronto to Thornhill to visit…
Ellin Bessner: Where Peter and Sabina lived.
George Saltzberg: Yeah, I guess I matured, you know, and I used to go all the time. I would sit with him, and he would sit with me, and then really also with my husband, Tim, who’s not Jewish. Jewish by osmosis, he always says. Tim wears the chai that Peter had given him before he died. Peter would tell Tim all kinds of stories as well. So we both had the incredible honour, together with Sabina’s niece, of looking after them until they took their last breath. It was an honour to be able to do that for someone who’d given my family so much.
Ellin Bessner: It’s an amazing story and an amazing thing you’ve done. We’ll be watching. I know there’s a live stream that people can watch. We’ll put the link. Thank you so much. It’s been an honour to talk to you.
George Saltzberg: Thank you so much, Ellin.
Ellin Bessner: And that’s what Jewish Canada sounds like for this episode of the CJN Daily, made possible in part thanks to the generous support of the Ira Gluskin and Maxine Granovsky Gluskin Charitable Foundation.
Peter Jablonski died in Toronto in 2011, just a couple of years after the Ontario government honoured him.
Our show is produced by Zachary Judah Kaufman and Andrea Varsany. Our executive producer is Michael Fraiman. Editorial director is Marc Weisblott. And the music is by Dov Beck Levine. Thanks for listening.
Show Notes
Related links
- Watch the B’nai Brith International ceremony honouring the heroism of the late Peter Jablonski live from Israel on Thursday April 24, 2025.
- Read more about Peter Jablonski’s Holocaust story, and buy the book written by the young cousin he also saved.
- Watch the Yad Vashem national ceremony live broadcast from Israel on Wednesday April 23, 2025.
Credits
- Host and writer: Ellin Bessner (@ebessner)
- Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Andrea Varsany (producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Marc Weisblott (editorial director)
- Music: Dov Beck-Levine
Support our show
- Subscribe to The CJN newsletter
- Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt)
- Subscribe to The CJN Daily (Not sure how? Click here)
