March 2024 Portrait of the Month — Fryderyka Mangel

Fryderyka Mangel

March’s Portrait of the Month honors Fryderyka Mangel, whose birthday was March 14th, 1914. She would be 100 years old in 2024. Fryderyka and her husband Edmund Kessler survived the Holocaust by hiding, first in the attic of a sympathetic Polish family until a neighbor threatened to denounce them, and then with a kind couple named Kalwinski. The Kalwinskis were already hiding a few people in a tiny underground bunker. They agreed to let Fryderyka and her husband hide there, too. The Kalwinski family was later honored by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among Nations. The Righteous Among Nations are people recognized for their efforts in saving Jewish people during the Holocaust. Read more and be inspired by the brave souls that risked their lives for others.

This portrait of Fryderyka was created by a student at a workshop in Gorlice, Poland - only 60 miles from Fryderyka’s hometown in Rzeszow, Poland. Gorlice was once a town filled with Jewish residents, business, and town councilmembers. That all changed in 1939 when the German occupation forced most of the Jews to flee. It was touching to see Fryderyka’s story being told to members of a community not far from her own.