For some, bravery is learned.
For others, it's in their blood.
"This is the way I was programmed by mom.
Regardless by age or if you're young or old.
If you can help, that's what you do."
Meet Anna Stupnicka-Bando.
89 years young.
She's lived a life full of achievements.
A beautiful home.
Family.
A brilliant career as a neurologist.
But perhaps her most impactful accomplishment came as a teenager.
"Those people all survived."
She, her mother Janina Stunpnicka, and grandmother saved several Jewish lives in Poland during
the Holocaust.
But at least three people directly owe their lives to her family.
"If you can help this person, you help this person.
It comes from your heart.
In my family the paramount values were humanitarian values."
This story could have ended very differently.
Anna's mother, Janina, had been a member of the Polish military.
"Had the Germans found out, she would have been executed."
Janina told the Nazis she was a teacher, but they had closed all secondary schools.
Instead, they hired her to check housing registration.
The Warsaw ghetto, Europe’s largest forced neighborhood of Jewish imprisonment, fell
in her territory.
And that's where her bravery truly began.
"Because she was supervising and checking the residents, she had two passes to the ghetto.
And once in a while she'd take me with her, and in my school bag she would, under the
books, I would carry a loaf of bread or jello because there was a family of 6 or 7 that
were extremely poor and my mother connected with this family and was trying to help them
by delivering food.
It was my role to bring the food to this family."
The Nazis punished even little acts of kindness with death.
But Anna's mother wasn't concerned about the risks.
"My family was against my mom taking me into the ghetto because I was an only child.
There were many diseases in the ghetto and they were afraid I might be exposed, but my
mom thought if we were able to help this family, and with those two passes my mom would have
a loaf and I would have a loaf, that it was more important than thinking about exposing
me to any of the diseases that were in the ghetto."
Anna was barely a teenager.
"It was a traumatic experience for me because in the beginning I could see the juxtaposition
of children dying on the streets of hunger and you could see the people nicely dressed
on the street."
One night, everything changed.
Janina was in the ghetto when a man walked over to her with his daughter.
His name was Hilary Alter.
They had never met before.
He asked her to take his only child, Lila.
And she said yes.
No questions.
No family discussions about whether this was a good idea.
Just one person knowing in their heart they needed to help another.
The following day, Janina brought Anna with her to make the dangerous move.
"My mom told me you have to be very confident, hold your heads up and straight and walk in
a very confident manner."
What was it like to watch a father say goodbye to his daughter under those circumstances?
"It was such a traumatic experience for me seeing a father part with his daughter, that
it stayed with me for many many years after the war.
The moment when I recall this scene is extremely extremely difficult for me emotionally.
It seemed like they both knew that he would not see his daughter again and basically they
hugged for a long time and especially Lila's father cried and this little girl also cried.
It's an image I carry with me."
Janina told the girls, about the same age, to switch coats.
Anna remembers it vividly.
"I had my school coat and Lila was in a very bright green winter coat.
So she thought it could draw attention to Lila so she thought it would be a good idea
to switch."
She gave the girls her only two passes out of the ghetto.
"Until this day I do not know how my mom was able to leave the ghetto without the pass.
I never asked my mom.
It's a mystery."
Anna's family chose not to hide Lila in a crawl space or behind a wall.
Anna's mother forged papers renaming Lila, Krisha, now Anna's cousin.
So Lila lived during the war, in fear, but out in the open.
After Anna participated in the Warsaw uprising, the family was expelled from the city.
They brought Lila with them.
Where they went, she went.
Lila was family now.
When they returned to Warsaw after the war, they discovered their home was destroyed.
"Lila found this photo in the rubble of our apartment."
She keeps it close to her heart.
"This is the most important document for me."
Sisters, bonded not by blood, but by experience.
Lila's father was executed in extermination camp Treblinka.
Her mother was hiding, but a Polish citizen identified her to police and she was killed
on the street.
Lila's only surviving family, an Aunt in France.
She went to live with her.
Under communism, Lila and Anna couldn't communicate.
"We thought about her often, we wondered what happened to her."
For more than 40 years, Anna didn't hear anything.
She didn’t know Lila had married another Holocaust survivor and was living in Paris.
Until 1989, when communism fell.
Anna got a letter.
"There's so many memories that unite us and it all comes back.
You can be so proud of your mom, your grandma and yourself because you saved me during those
tragic years.
I have never forgotten about it but seemingly I lived in a different reality and I could
not think about the war.
I had a life, children which fulfilled me."
Anna quickly boarded a plane to Paris.
"We immediately recognized each other."
The war ended more than 70 years ago, but Anna has been able to speak about her experience
for less than 30 years.
Communism hid her heroism for decades.
That's no longer the case.
Anna and her mother are now honored as Righteous Among the Nations, an honor only bestowed
to those who risked their lives to save Jews from extermination.
So far, more than 26 thousand people from 51 countries have earned this honor.
But all these years later, Anna's focus is not on making sure her heroic actions are
remembered, but her mothers'.
"My mom always thought that if someone needed assistance, needed help and if you can offer
this help, that's what you need to do.
I feel the same way."
Anna wants the stories of heroism passed on, because she knows those who witnessed the
devastation up close won't be around forever.
She wants that same feeling of responsibility passed on, so next time someone needs to step
up, they do.
And they remember her actions, and her mothers'.
"My mother, Janina Stunpnicka."
Would you do it again?
"For sure.
Absolutely."