Retired American Army Col. Stanley Nowinski, now living in a small town in Wisconsin, arrived today In Israel to find a warm and quite unusual welcome. Nowinski is regarded as a “righteous gentile,” a non-Jew that has helped greatly Jews and Jewish survival.
The story of Col. Nowinski, a Captain at the end of World War II, is that he became involved very much in the “Bricha,” the escape of Jews from Europe despito the efforts of the British to check this movement of displaced Jews, the remnants of the Holocaust, to Palestine.
Nowinski, a Polish Catholic, was responsible for refugees in the Salzburg, Austria area, a center for the Jews assembled from Europe for the first leg in their organized–yet illegal–voyage to Palestine. British agents and intelligence officers labored hard to prevent this movement when the gates of Palestine were closed to Jews. Nowinski saw to it that the wheels of the transfer machinery were kept in high gear, an action that helped greatly the organizers of the Bricha, who were Hagana representatives.
On his arrival here today Nowinski said he would like to see what the people he had helped come to Palestine have accomplished. He will visit the Yad Vashem Memorial Institute and many of the Bricha leaders. He will be guest of the Immigration and Absorption Department of the Jewish Agency, the United Jewish Appeal, and former members of the Bricha.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
