The symbolic ‘remains’ of the railroad in Treblinka. Many are opposing a memorial to Poles who rescued Jews from being sent to the Treblinka death camp and other Nazi concentration camps during WWII. Photo: wiki commons.

As a Catholic Pole, Elka shouldn’t even have been in the ghetto of Czestochowa, in southern Poland. But the nanny was so devoted to the 12-year-old Jewish boy she had raised since infancy that she refused to leave. She ended up being sent to the Treblinka death camp — where she was murdered with the Jews.

Today the boy, Sigmund Rolat, is an 85-year-old Polish-American businessman and philanthropist on a mission. He aims to build a memorial in heart of Warsaw’s former ghetto to his beloved Elka and the thousands of other Polish Christians who risked their lives for Jews during World War II.

Read full story at The Associated Press.