Aurelia Danek-Czort began studying pharmacy at the University of Kraków in 1936. After the Wehrmacht invaded the city in 1939, she was not allowed to continue her degree. From July 1941 she worked in Tadeusz Pankiewicz’s pharmacy Pod Orłem (Eagle Pharmacy), which was inside the Kraków ghetto. Since it was located on the ghetto’s central square, Aurelia Danek-Czort witnessed inmates being persecuted and murdered by the occupying German forces. Together with her Polish colleagues, Danek-Czort supported Jewish people wherever she could, despite the risk of a death sentence. She gave them medication and obtained forged documents for them. She smuggled inmates’ valuables out of the ghetto to exchange them for food. Danek-Czort also passed on information between ghetto inmates and their relatives hidden outside the ghetto.
After the war, Danek-Czort continued her studies. She worked in various Kraków pharmacies until her retirement in 1977.
Helena Krywaniuk, Irena Droździkowska, and Aurelia Danek-Czort (left to right), Kraków, 1942. Source: Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem, Gerechte unter den Völkern
The staff at the Pod Orłem pharmacy, Kraków, 1942; left to right: Helena Krywaniuk, Aurelia Danek-Czort, Tadeusz Pankiewicz, and Irena Droździkowska. Source: Zbiory Muzeum Krakowa, MHK-Fs 15436-IX
In front of the pharmacy (from left to right): Marceli Grüner, Helena Krywaniuk, Aurelia Danek-Czort, and Tadeusz Pankiewicz, around 1942. Source: Zbiory Muzeum Krakowa, MHK-Fs 15432-IX
Tadeusz Pankiewicz with co-workers: (left to right) Irena Droździkowska, Helena Krywaniuk, and Aurelia Danek, Kraków, 1942. Source: Zbiory Muzeum Krakowa, Fs15465-IX
