Tadeusz Pankiewicz, a Polish
pharmacist, bribed the German authorities in Krakow to allow him to keep his
pharmacy open inside the ghetto and to continue to operate it. In his
capacity as druggist, Pankiewicz placed himself at the disposal of the Jews
of the ghetto, and in addition to providing those in need with medications,
he turned his pharmacy into a meeting place for the intelligentsia of the
ghetto. They would gather there to hear news from outside the ghetto and to
maintain contact with people on the Aryan side of the city. Despite the
danger to his own life, Pankiewicz used his pharmacy to
take an active role in helping and saving Jews. During one of the Aktionen
the Germans carried out in the ghetto, Pankiewicz hid Dr. Abraham Mirowski in
his pharmacy, as well as Irena Cinowicz (neé Halpern), who was trapped in the
ghetto in 1942. She escaped from a group of Jews being taken from the ghetto
during an Aktion, and Pankiewicz hid her behind the counter and covered her
with his own body, thus saving her from the transport. Irena already knew
Pankiewicz from the many times she had frequented the pharmacy to purchase
medications for her ill mother. Pankiewicz had refused to accept money from
her, and she learned that she was not the only one in the ghetto who received
medications without payment. Pankiewicz actions to save Jews were motivated
by his humanitarian and patriotic principles, and many of those he helped owe
their lives to him. Mirowski and Cinowicz, who immigrated to Israel after the
war, testified years later about Pankiewicz’s many actions to save the Jews
of Krakow. The memoir Pankiewicz wrote years later, Apteka w Getcie Krakowskim
(The Pharmacy in the Krakow Ghetto), published in Hebrew by Yad Vashem,
presented his unique viewpoint on daily life in the ghetto – the suffering
and perseverance of the Jews and how they behaved, as well as a description
of the German’s brutality in the ghetto. On February 10, 1983, Yad Vashem recognized Tadeusz
Pankiewicz as Righteous Among the Nations.
