House of Melania Wiessenberg (Molly Applebaum)

“My parents had a store in Krakow and we sold fruit, candy, beer, sandwiches, soda and such. We lived in the back of the store, and when people came to visit patients, they’d buy an orange, grapes or candy to bring to the patience or refreshments for themselves after travelling some distance…Many times we’d get up in the morning and find some of the signboards on our store defaced with paint. The message read, “Do not buy from Jews”; “Jews, go to Palestine”; “We urge you to buy from your own.”
 “ [I remember my father] walking to the hospital across the street and then, a few hours or a day later, … mother coming home and throwing his hat on the bed crying, then relatives or friends coming to the apartment. A lot of candles were burning in the next room."

Melania Weissenberg was born in Cracow in 1930. Her family had a small store on Kopernika Street, in the centre of the city. Once the war broke out Weissenbergs lost their business and their apartment. In 1940 the family moved to Dabrowa Tarnowska, a small town a hundred kilometres away from Krakow. In January 1943,  local peasant Wojcik and his sister agreed to hide Melania and her cousin Helena. Since then until the liberation, two girls were buried in a box underground. During these time Wiktor Wojcik, whom in the diary Melania ironically called “Uncle” and later “Ciuruniu”, took the girls’ last possessions – their bodies, and started having sex with Melania and Helena. The fight for survival continued in misery until the Soviet liberation of Dabrowa Tarnowska in January 1944. After the war, Melania returned to Krakow, but after a Kielce pogrom, she fled to Germany and immigrated to Canada in 1948 . There she changed her name to Molly. In 1992 Wiktor Wojcik and Eugenia Kaluga were awarded the medals of Righteous Among the Nations based on Melania’s appeal to Yad Vashem Institute.