Mr. Mlodnicki had a wife and three children who showed constant kindness and compassion. The house had one bedroom; it was given over to a Jewish couple. The windows were covered and one could peek and see who was at the door. The Jews were given free reign of the house and treated like honored guests, always addressed as sir or madam.
There was no indoor plumbing in those days in small rural towns. The Jews dared not go outside, so Mr. Mlodnicki and his family carried out human waste everyday. The Mlodnickis dug a large pit in the utility room and camouflaged it just in case his Jewish guests needed to hide. Mr. Mlodnicki would go shopping once a week and buy enough groceries for everyone in the house.
My father-in-law was still reluctant to put his fate in the hands of another. But Mr. Mlodnicki was persistent and my father-in-law relented. A place was prepared for him to sleep in the utility room. Eventually, some thirteen people were hidden in this one house.
Polish newspapers were provided daily to the guests so that they could keep track of war news. Life was as normal as could be for these Jews under the circumstances.
One time Mrs. Mlodnicki’s brother, a Polish priest, came to visit. He knew what his sister and brother-in-law were doing. He also knew the penalty for being discovered was immediate execution. Mrs. Mlodnicki had developed heart trouble from the daily fear of being caught and she felt she could no longer handle the pressure. She asked her brother to try to convince her husband that it was too much for her. But Mr. Mlodnicki refused to renege on his promise to hide the Jews. He told his wife that if she could not take the fear, she should stay away as long as she wanted.
Twelve months passed. The retreating Germans started requisitioning local houses. Mr. Mlodnicki thought the end was near. For three months he and his guests lived in perpetual fear. The intensity of the fighting increased one August day and the shelling and bombardment of the town was very heavy. Finally, it was all over. The Russians had taken the town and the Jews were liberated. It was Tisha B’Av 1944.
Mr. Mlodnicki was one of the greatest heroes of the Holocaust, truly a righteous gentile.
Can one say Kaddish for a gentile? That question was asked of Rabbi Ephraim Oshry during the Holocaust about a woman who had rescued Jews. He saved all of his shailos and teshuvos from the Kovno Ghetto, writing them on scraps of paper and later publishing them in a sefer. Here is his teshuvah on this matter, as it appears on the Innernet website (http://www.innernet.org.il/article.php?aid=545):
Basically, Kaddish is a prayer of praise to God. When Rabbi Nathan of Babylonia was appointed Exilarch, the cantor used to add in Kaddish the phrase, “In your lifetime and in your days and in the lifetime of our Exilarch and in the lifetime of all the Jewish people.” Similarly, in the days of Maimonides, they used to add in the Kaddish, “In your lifetime and in the lifetime of our master Moshe ben Maimon.”
In this vein of mentioning others in the Kaddish, it is plainly permissible to say Kaddish in memory of the gentile woman who saved so many Jews from death…Not only is it permissible to say Kaddish with her in mind, it is a mitzvah to do so.
Like the woman referred to by Rav Oshry, Mr. Mlodnicki was a man worthy of having Kaddish said for him.