After the German invasion of Lviv in 1941, the social worker Władysława Choms joined the Polish resistance organization Związek Walki Zbrojnej, which waged an armed struggle against the occupiers. Choms witnessed the violent persecution of Lviv’s Jewish population. When they had to move into the ghetto, Choms decided to smuggle in food and medications for the inmates. She collected donations to finance Jews’ escapes and their accommodation outside the ghetto. Choms also obtained forged documents for people living underground, and wrote reports on the persecution of the city’s Jews for the Polish government-in-exile in London.
At the end of 1942 Choms took over as head of the Żegota underground organization’s Lviv section. This brought her to the German occupiers’ attention. To evade arrest, she fled to Warsaw at the end of 1943, continuing her resistance work there. She returned to Lviv in 1944 and left Poland after the war.
Choms lived in Israel from 1964 and was honored as Righteous Among the Nations in 1966.