Polanski honors Poles who saved him from Holocaust
WARSAW, Poland — Oscar-winning filmmaker Roman Polanski returned to Poland, the country of his youth, and paid tribute on Thursday to a Polish couple who took him in and protected him when he was a child, saving him from the Holocaust.
Stefania and Jan Buchala were posthumously declared as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honor bestowed by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, in a ceremony attended by their grandson.
The 87-year-old Polanski, who now lives in France, traveled to Poland for the occasion. That’s one of the very few countries Polanski can travel to safely given that he remains a fugitive from U.S. law after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a minor in 1977 and fleeing the United States the following year.
Polanski recalled Stefania Buchala as an “extremely noble and religious person” who had the courage to risk not only her own life in sheltering him, but also the lives of her children.