Henryk Slawik - a Polish Wallenberg

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Henryk Sławik (1894-1944) during the inter-war period he was a policeman in Polish Silesia. At the same time Sławik was social worker and activist of the right-wing faction of the Polish Socialist Party.

At the outbreak of Polish Defence War of 1939 Sławik joined a mobilised police battalion attached to the Kraków Army. He fought with distinction during the retreat fights along the northern parts of the Carpathians. His battalion was attached to 2nd Mountain Brigade, with which he took part in defence of the mountain passes leading to Slovakia.

On September 15 Sławik and his men were ordered to retreat towards the newly-established border with Hungary. On September 17, after the Soviet Union joined the war against Poland, Sławik crossed the border and was interned as a Prisoner of War. Jozsef Antall, father of the future prime minister of Hungary and member of the Hungarian ministry of internal affairs responsible for the civilian refugees spotted Sławik in one of the camps. Thanks to his fluent knowledge of German language Sławik was brought to Budapest and allowed to create the Citizen's Committee for Help for Polish Refugees. Together with Jozsef Antall he organised jobs for the POWs and DPs, schools and orphanages. He also clandestinely organised an organisation whose purpose was to help the exiled Poles leave the camps of internment and get to France or Middle East to join the Polish Army. Sławik also became a delegate of the Polish Government in Exile.

After the government of Hungary issued the racial decrees and separated Polish refugees of Jewish descent from their colleagues, Sławik started to issue false documents confirming their Polish roots and Catholic faith. He also helped several hundred Polish Jews to get to the Yugoslavian partisans. One of his initiatives was creation of an orphanage for the Jewish orphans (officially named School for Children of Polish Officers) in Vac. To help keep the true character of this school the children were visited by the Catholic church authorities, most notably by nuncio Angelo Rotta.

After the Germans took over Hungary in March 1944, Sławik went underground and ordered as many of the refugees under his command to leave Hungary. Thanks to the fact that he accomplished an appointment of a new commanding officer of the camp for Polish Jews, all of them were able to escape and leave Hungary. Also the Jewish children of the orphanage in Vac were evacuated. Sławik was arrested by the Germans on March 19, 1944. Brutally tortured, he did not inform on his Hungarian colleagues. Finally he was sent to Mauthausen concentration camp where he was shot to death, most probably in August 1944. His wife survived the Ravensbrück concentration camp and after the war found their daughter hidden in Hungary by the Antall family. His place of burial remains unknown.

It is estimated that Henryk Sławik helped as many as 30,000 Polish refugees in Hungary. Approximately 5,000 of them were Jews. After 1948 the communist authorities of both Poland and Hungary did not allow his deeds to be commemorated. In 1990 the Yad Vashem Institute honoured Sławik with the title of Righteous Among the Nations