UK activist helps survivor buy hospital bed for world’s oldest Righteous, 102

A Holocaust survivor from Israel donated money to buy a £959 ($1,200) medical bed for a 102-year-old non-Jewish woman from Warsaw, who risked her life to save Jews from the genocide.

Krystyna Danko, who is now deaf and blind, is among the oldest rescuers still alive.

Joe Erlichster, 75, on Friday said it was “part of our duty as Jews to recognise what some brave souls in Poland and elsewhere did” during World War II.

Before World War II, Danko was an orphan who  was taken in a Jewish family named Kokoszko in Otwock near Warsaw. During the war, Danko almost single-handedly rescued all four members of the family, her case file says.

Danko was in 1998 conferred that title Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, Israel’s authority for commemorating the Holocaust. Unusually, Yad Vashem’s website characterises her efforts as “incredible.”

Jonny Daniels, the British-born Israeli founder of the From the Depths Holocaust commemoration group, spoke with Danko’s family earlier this week, who told him she’s in need of a bed they cannot afford.

Daniels began a crowd-funding campaign that reached Erlichster, who gave his donation in memory of the Kulinski family. That non-Jewish family saved Erlichster’s own family in Otwock. Other donors included Greg Rodin from Canada.

The bed arrived at Danko’s Warsaw apartment on Thursday.

Jonny Daniels said: “Mrs. Dańko risked her life and the life of her family to save our Jewish brothers and sisters, the least we can do is help her and the other Righteous Among The Nations, whilst we still can.”

He added “in a world like we live in today, with a rise in antisemitism and hatred all around the world, it makes the stories of true heroes like Mrs. Dańko even more important to tell, to guide us and show us what it means to stand against evil and hatred.”