Yael Rosen with Righteous Gentile Anna Hornun
Yael Rosen with Righteous Gentile Anna HornunIsrael news photo: courtesy of ATZUM

In Israel, right up to the end of life, Jews do not forget to acknowledge and honor the sacrifice of a Righteous Gentile. So it was with Anna Hornung, deemed Righteous Among the Nations, who recently passed away in Haifa.

Her funeral, held in the Kiryat Tivon Cemetery, was an intimate affair attended by family, close friends from her prayer group and the staff of ATZUM, an NGO that had provided her with support services in her later years. She was eulogized by two members of her prayer group and by Yael Rosen, director of the organization's Righteous Among the Nations Project.

Hornung, who is listed in Yad Vashem's Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, was working for a German construction company, when the Nazis occupied Stryj, then under Soviet rule.

Leon Hornung and his two elder sons, natives of Upper Silesia, were posing as Germans since they were fluent in the language. His wife and younger children had already been caught and sent to the Belzec extermination camp.

Working in a German construction company, they had been the ones who hired the young Ukrainian maid, Anna Tomczak, in order to further avoid suspicion. But when the company's management suddenly demanded to see their documents, they fled to Drohobycz, and “became” Poles instead. It was only then that Tomczak realized her employers had been Jews.

Eventually the three men sent for Tomczak, who looked like an Aryan, and who was willing to pose as Leon Hornung's wife. Anna Tomczak proceeded to act out her role as “mother” and “housefrau” – but in time, a relationship truly developed between the “parents.” When the area was liberated in August 1944, the two married, and all four members of the family immigrated to Israel.