Jan Kostański lived in Warsaw with his mother Władysława and his sisters Danuta and Jadwiga. They were friends with the Jewish Wierzbicki family, who were interned in the ghetto from the fall of 1940. Young Jan Kostański, aged 15, provided them with food.
When deportations to extermination camps began in 1942, the Kostańskis helped Aizyk Wierzbicki and his two children Nacha and Nathan to escape from the ghetto by bribing guards. The Wierzbickis fled the city. Unable to find a permanent place to stay, they returned to the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. In March 1943 the Kostańskis helped them to escape the ghetto again. They initially hid the three of them in their own home, and from the fall of 1944 in the vacant basement of another building. The Wierzbickis stayed hidden there until their liberation in January 1945.
Jan Kostański and Nacha Wierzbicka married in 1946. In 1983 Władysława and Jan Kostański were honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Center as Righteous Among the Nations.
Jan Kostański (left) and Ajzyk Wierzbicki by the ghetto fence, Warsaw, around 1941. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., courtesy of Jan Kostański, 36499
Jan Kostański (right) with his friend Władek Cykiert in the Warsaw ghetto, 1941. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, courtesy of Jan Kostański, 36508
Jan Kostański (right) with two Jewish friends shortly after the Warsaw Uprising was crushed, 1944. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, courtesy of Jan Kostański, 36502
The Kostański family on a secret visit to the Wierzbickis in the ghetto, including Władysława Kostańska (2nd row, 2nd from left), Aizyk Wierzbicki (3rd row, 2nd from left), and Jan Kostański (back row, 3rd from left), Warsaw, 1942. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., courtesy of Jan Kostański, 36512
