Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton Celebrates With Wanda Lorenc

- Nassau County Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton (D - Glen Cove)
recently presented a citation to Glen Head resident Wanda Lorenc in celebration of her 90th
birthday and her selflessness and valor during World War II.
Mrs. Lorenc, a native of Warsaw, Poland, lived for five years under Nazi occupation during
before being imprisoned in a concentration camp in 1944 at age 16. Before her incarceration, she
and her Polish-Catholic family were active in the resistance against Nazi occupation and carried
out numerous humanitarian efforts to aid and protect Jewish families.
“At a time when doing the right thing carried the imminent risk of torture and death, Wanda
Lorenc and her family did not waver. To this day, Mrs. Lorenc continues to give back to all of us
by sharing her incredible story of survival and perseverance,” Legislator DeRiggi-Whitton said.
“It was a true privilege to celebrate her 90th birthday, her boundless courage and her
inextinguishable and contagious love for life.”
Mrs. Lorenc joined the Polish underground army, Polska Walczy (Poland Fights), and at age 16,
was a messenger and nurse during the 1944 Warsaw uprising, during which Nazi forces
slaughtered approximately 200,000 civilians, razed the city and shipped the surviving population
of the city to concentration camps.
Before the uprising, her father, Pawel Wos, operated a textile factory, which employed
approximately 100 and protected workers from extradition to Germany. The business also gave
her family access to the ghettos and the ability to aid Jewish families by smuggling supplies and
making arrangements to hide families from the Nazis. Mrs. Lorenc and her family would later be
honored in Israel by Yad Vashem - The Worldwide Holocaust Remembrance Center, for her
family’s valiant, selfless efforts to save Jewish lives.
Their humanitarianism came at great personal risk - Polish citizens caught helping Jews were
routinely executed. Soon after the Warsaw uprising, her family was imprisoned in the
Flosenburg and Ravensbruck concentration camps. During her imprisonment, she was beaten
savagely for giving a starving prisoner bread.
“We were Christians, and what was happening to the Polish Jews during these terrible times was
not a matter of indifference to us,” her brother, Paul Zenon Wos, writes in “Rebuilding a Life,” a
family memoir. “So we tried to help in various ways. It was a matter of life - not only for the
lives of these poor unfortunates behind the wall, but our lives and that of our families.”
After the war, Mrs. Lorenc and her husband, a urologist and surgeon, raised four children and
began to put their lives back together in Poland. In 1967, putting the futures of their four children
first, they fled Poland to escape the Soviet Union’s oppressive puppet government and made their
way to freedom in the United States and Glen Head.
In America, Mrs. Lorenc has become an outspoken Holocaust educator, speaking to numerous
audiences at high schools, Polish community centers and museums. Her story of survival was
later recorded and enshrined in several forums, including the Holocaust Museum in Washington,
D.C. as part of film director Steven Spielberg’s grant initiative.
PHOTO CAPTION - Legislator DeRiggi-Whitton, left, presents a Nassau County Citation to
Wanda Lorenc (seated) in celebration of her 90th birthday. They are joined by Dr. Robert
Madison, his wife, Dorota Madison, and canine companion Princess, a rescue from the North
Shore Animal League.