Julian Grobelny

Who was Julian Grobelny?

Julian Grobelny was an activist in the Polish Socialist Party beginning in 1915, and the President of Żegota from its inception in 1942.

Born in Brzeziny, Grobelny took part in the Silesian Uprisings and worked as an activist among the workers of Łódź before Second World War. As soon as the Nazis entered the city however, the Grobelnys found themselves listed as enemies of the Third Reich and went into hiding. Despite suffering from tuberculosis, Grobelny – together with his wife Halina – was personally involved in the rescue of a large number of Polish Jews during the German occupation of Poland. The couple was famous for their preoccupation with saving particularly Jewish children from the Holocaust by entering the Warsaw Ghetto and walking out with them as their own. They harbored over a dozen Jewish PPS activists in their home, and worked in close co-operation with Irena Sendler, head of the children’s section of Zegota. Julian and Halina turned their modest house in Cegłów near Mińsk Mazowiecki into a temporary shelter for Jews until they could be moved into a more permanent place.