Henryk Slawik was born in 1894 in Szeroka (now part of Jastrzębie-Zdrój). Coming from a very poor family, this self-taught journalist was the editor-in-chief of “Gazeta Robotnicza,” the magazine of the Silesian branch of the Polish Socialist Party. He headed the Syndicate of Polish Journalists of Silesia and Zagłębie Dąbrowskie. He was also a councilman of Katowice. He fought in the Silesian Uprisings, organized workers’ universities and sports clubs, and headed the Cultural and Educational Association of Workers’ Youth “Siła.”

After the outbreak of World War II, he became a refugee in Hungary (as a participant in the Silesian uprisings and a plebiscite activist, he was on German lists of people to be arrested). A meeting in one of the camps near Miskolc with József Antall senior, whom the government of the Kingdom of Hungary appointed as plenipotentiary for the care of war refugees, made him stay on the Danube. He became a close associate of this charismatic Hungarian, whom our compatriots called the Father of Poles.

He made a special mark in people’s memory as one who, with the cooperation of Polish and Hungarian priests, rescued Jews. Slawik’s office issued Jews from Poland new documents with new Polish-sounding names. In Vác on the Danube, they established the Orphanage for Children of Polish Officers, which was in fact a home for nearly a hundred Jewish orphans. Some 5,000 Jewish refugees, mostly from southern Poland, had arrived in Hungary by the spring of 1943. The orphans were also given new documents, taught to say goodbye with the sign of the cross, basic prayers in Polish, and were led in pairs through circuitous streets on Sundays to Mass in a Catholic church, so that residents could see where these kids were praying.

After the Germans entered Hungary in March 1944. Slawik was arrested. He was beaten, doused with water, and tortured in order to force his incriminating testimony that it was Antall who helped him organize the smuggling of some 50,000 Polish soldiers to France and the Middle East, and that together with Antall they rescued Jews from Poland. He denied all this, taking these “faults” upon himself, with which he saved his Hungarian friend. When the two were later taken from Gestapo headquarters to prison, taking advantage of the guards’ inattention, Antall shook hands with the barely alive Slawik, saying: “Friend, thank you, you saved my life!”, the latter replied: “This is how Poland pays …”.

Henryk Slawik was hanged in Mauthausen on August 23, 1944 at 4 p.m. (Source: K. Lubczyk, G. Lubczyk “Memory II. Polish Refugees in Hungary 1939-1946″). For saving Jews at the risk of his own life, Slawik was posthumously awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations by Israel’s Yad Vashem Institute in 1990. According to various estimates, thanks to Slawik and his associates, life-saving documents were issued to five thousand Polish Jews who ended up in Hungary during World War II. In 2004, President Aleksander Kwasniewski awarded the hero the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Rebirth of Poland.

On February 25, 2010, Henryk Slawik was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle by the late Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

His activities for Silesia and Poland once again lived to see signs of the highest respect and recognition. By a resolution of the Silesian Regional Assembly of November 18, 2013, it was announced that 2014 will be the Year of Henryk Slawik.

On September 29, 2004, Middle School No. 3 in Jastrzębie-Zdrój was the first school in Poland to take the name of Henryk Slawik. Our school, as the third in the country (after Middle School No. 19 in Katowice), was named after Henryk Slawik on October 15, 2012. Directors of friendly educational institutions, Grzegorz Łubczyk, former Polish ambassador to Hungary, author of numerous books and publications popularizing the figure of Henryk Slawik, reminded those gathered of the biography of the new patron of “Budowlanka”.

During the ceremony, the Construction School Complex received a new banner, funded by the Parents’ Council, referring to the national insignia on the one hand, and to the figure of its exceptional patron on the other. An occasional plaque was also dedicated to the memory of Henryk Slawik, which adorns the school hall. It will remind ZSB students on a daily basis of the figure of the Silesian hero and the values that guided him in life.