Leokadia Justman’s Survival Story

About the Project

Leokadia Justman, born into a Jewish family in 1922 in Łódź (Poland), suffered the persecution by Nazi Germany as a teenager. She was able to escape the Warsaw Ghetto with her parents. Her mother Sofia went on a transport to Treblinka to enable Leokadia to survive. With her father Jakob, Leokadia made her way to Seefeld and Innsbruck, where the two worked with false identities until they were betrayed to the Gestapo as Jews and imprisoned. Jakob was murdered in the camp Reichenau on 24 April 1944. Leokadia was detained with her friend Marysia Fuchs in the police building near the railway station. After the complex was partially destroyed by bombs in January 1945, Leokadia was able to escape with her friend. In the Saggen district of Innsbruck, they located police officer Rudl Moser, who put them up with Marianne Stocker. They were then taken in by Maria and Wanda Petrykiewicz in another apartment in Saggen. After two weeks they moved to Zell am See with again forged documents. Leokadia survived the last weeks of the war in the rectory of St Martin near Lofer. After the end of the war, she returned to Innsbruck and became secretary of the Jewish Committee at Adolf-Pichler-Platz. There she met her husband Joseph Wisnicki who had survived in Vorarlberg – the first Jewish marriage in Innsbruck after the war. A few years later the couple emigrated to New York.

Five police officers working in Tyrol and three women involved in this story have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem since 1980. Justman wrote down her fresh memories in Polish in Innsbruck in 1945. Only two short passages were published in the Polish exile magazine Glos Polski (Gmunden) in 1946. A heavily abridged and revised English version of the story was published in the USA in 2003: Lorraine Justman-Wisnicki, In Quest for live – Ave Pax, 2003.

Documents

The author’s son Jeffrey Wisnicki has provided scans of the following documents:

  • Typescript AVE PAX in Polish language, Innsbruck 1945/46 (significantly longer base text, starting with Part II of the published version)
  • Typescript In Quest for Life, New York 1963 (slightly longer base taxt of Part I of the published version)
  • two theater scenes, written down in the Ghetto in 1940, enacted by children
  • Poems and memories, Innsbruck around 1945
  • autobiographical account and material by Joseph Wisnicki, who surived in Vorarlberg
  • historical photos

Objectives

  • Publication of a German translation of Leokadia Justman's memories (Tyrolia, 2025)
  • Academic online publication of the source texts with commentary
  • Conferences and academic publications
  • Public awareness programs via media and schools (third mission)
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