Karol Kuryluk

Karol Kuryluk (October 27, 1910 – 1967) was a Polish journalist, editor, activist, politician and diplomat. In 2002 he was honored by Yad Vashem for saving Jews in the Holocaust.

Karol Kuryluk was born on October 27, 1910 in Zbaraż (Zbarazh), a small town in Galicia, the eastern province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (after World War I part of Poland, today in the Ukraine), and died in Budapest. He was the eldest son of Franciszek Kuryluk, a mason, and Łucja, née Pańczyszak. He had three brothers and four sisters.

In 1930, after finishing high school in his native town, Kuryluk received a small scholarship to study Polish language at the University of Lvov (in Polish Lwów, in German Lemberg, today Lviv, Ukraine), the former capital of the Austro-Hungarian province of Galicia and a multicultural metropolis (Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Armenians, Belarusians, Germans and Tatars). He was multilingual (Polish, Ukrainian, Russian and German), and during his studies he supported himself and helped his family back home by giving private lessons.

In 1931 Kuryluk met the writer and philanthropist Halina Górska and became involved in her social care project Akcja Błękitnych (Action of the Blue Knights), distributing food and clothing to slum children and helping to run shelters for homeless boys. At the University he protested against the "bench ghetto", set up by the nationalists to separate Poles and Jews in the lecture halls, and he sided with Jewish and Ukrainian students who were harassed and beaten up by the Endecja gangs.

...
Wikipedia