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Poland’s Białystok names square after man who saved Jews in WWII

01.09.2025 22:00
A small square in the centre of Białystok, northeastern Poland, has been named after a local man who saved more than a dozen Jews from the Holocaust in 1941.
Józef Bartoszko Square in Białystok, northeastern Poland, is named after a local man who is credited with saving more than a dozen Jews from the Holocaust.
Józef Bartoszko Square in Białystok, northeastern Poland, is named after a local man who is credited with saving more than a dozen Jews from the Holocaust.Photo: Rakoon, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Józef Bartoszko worked as caretaker of the city’s Great Synagogue, where German forces rounded up between 600 and 700 Jews on June 27, 1941, the first day of a pogrom against Białystok’s Jewish population.

Risking his life, Bartoszko opened a side window and helped a group of Jews escape the building.

According to some accounts, 29 people were saved. The synagogue was later set on fire.

An estimated 2,000 Jews were killed that day in the synagogue and elsewhere in Białystok. The massacre, remembered as Black Friday, marked the beginning of the extermination of the city’s Jewish community.

A monument honouring fighters in the 1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising in Białystok, northeastern Poland. A monument honouring fighters in the 1943 Białystok Ghetto Uprising. Photo: PAP/Michał Zieliński

The newly named Józef Bartoszko Square is near a memorial shaped like the dome of the destroyed synagogue.

City and regional officials attended Monday’s naming ceremony.

“We are honouring an ordinary, simple man who demonstrated extraordinary heroism,” Białystok Mayor Tadeusz Truskolaski said. “His deed was like a beam of light in the dark—a sign of hope that evil can be defeated.”

Bartoszko’s granddaughter Marta also attended. Visibly moved, she told reporters the family remembers him as "a real hero."

(mk/gs)