Stefania Podgórska grew up in a Catholic farming family. She began working in a store owned by the Jewish couple Lea and Izaak Diamant in Przemyśl in 1938.
In 1939 the Wehrmacht occupied parts of Przemyśl, taking over the whole city in June 1941. Lea and Izaak Diamant were persecuted and had to move into the ghetto with their three sons in 1942. Stefania Podgórska defied a ban to take food to her former employers in the ghetto, until they were deported in 1943.
Stefania Podgórska found a hiding place for Maksymilian, one of the Diamants’ sons, in the attic of a vacant house. She and her seven-year-old sister Helena moved into two small rooms directly underneath the attic. In 1943 Maksymilian Diamant and six Jewish friends were able to escape to the prepared hiding place. Stefania Podgórska took in another seven Jews, and provided for them all until their liberation in July 1944.
In 1945 Stefania Podgórska married the rescued Maksymilian Diamant, who adopted the name Józef Burzminski. In 1979 Stefania Burzminska and Helena Podgórska were honored by the Israeli Holocaust memorial center Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations.