Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Everyone was telling the German they didn’t know where the man was, when suddenly he looked at me and said, “Oh, but this is a Jewess.” The head of the village said, “Oh, no, she cooks at the school. She is a very good cook.” Nobody said, “Oh, well, she is Jewish. Take her.” He let me go.

The population of the village was about two thousand. They all knew there was something “wrong” with me. Any one of them could have sold me to the Germans for two hundred deutsche marks, but out of two thousand people nobody did it. Everybody in the village protected me. I had very good relations with them.
Indeed, Dr. Lilien remained in Tarnobrzeg after the war where she continued to work as a pediatrician caring for the children of the villagers who had sheltered her. She died there in August 1996, at the age of 92.
Barbara Szymańska Makuch also took Malka, the ten-year-old daughter of Sara Glass (later Pasht), a fugitive from the Sandomierz ghetto in October 1942, to the Felician Sisters’ convent in Lwów. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, at pages 802–803.)
In October, 1942, after the Germans had begun to liquidate the Sandomierz ghetto in the Kielce district, Sara Glass (later Pasht) succeeded in transferring her ten-year-old daughter, Malka, to Janina Szymanska [Szymańska] for safekeeping. Janina, a former acquaintance, lived with her daughter, Barbara, in the village of Mokrzyszow [Mokrzyszów] in Tarnobrzeg county, Rzeszów district. Szymanska and her daughter received the young fugitive warmly, representing her to those who inquired about her as a relative and caring for her with love and genuine devotion. Despite the fact that Malka did not look Jewish, rumors began circulating in the village that Szymanska and her daughter were hiding a Jew in their home. Because of threats and their fear for her fate, Barbara took Malka to a convent in Lwow [Lwów], where she remained until the liberation of the city by the Red Army in July 1944. … Sara Glass also survived the camps and after the liberation found her daughter Malka and they both emigrated to Canada.
The Felician Sisters sheltered Jews in a number of other localities as well. Lidka Taubenfeld (also known as Ilana Feldblum) and her cousin Lena Gross (Kaniewska) were sheltered by the Felician Sisters in Kraków under assumed identities,⁵⁵⁹ as was the daughter of a pharmacist named Goldfuss from Dębica.⁵⁶⁰ Barbara Metzendorf (born in 1936) was sheltered in a nursery school in Kraków run by the Felician Sisters until it was closed. She then stayed in a shelter run by the Dominican Sisters outside of Kraków. Later she was cared for by a family friend. Her older sister (by three years) was rescued by a Polish aristocratic woman. The two girls were reunited with their father after the war.⁵⁶¹ Another resident of the Felician Sisters’s convent on Smoleńsk Street, in Kraków, was Maria Kiepura (née Neuman), the mother of the famous tenor, Jan Kiepura, who converted to Catholicism when she married. After a three years’ stay at the convent, she went to live with her husband’s cousin, Helena Kiepura-Kuc, in Końskie, where she died on November 28, 1943. The convent’s chaplain, Rev. Władysław Bajer, was summoned three times by the Gestapo in connection with Jewish women hiding in that convent.⁵⁶²
Several Jewish children—perhaps seven—were sheltered by the Felician Sisters in Sądowa Wisznia near Jaworów, among them Stanisław Stammer-Cichocki from Lwów (born in 1937) and Renia, the daughter of a local Jewish doctor. Because the number of children grew during the war to more than thirty, it was necessary to move the children’s shelter to the monastery of the Reformed Franciscan Fathers, also in Sądowa Wisznia. The head of the convent was Sister Kantalicja Zagrodzka; two other nuns are shown in a 1943 group photograph of the children: Sister Zdzisława Zarzycka and Sister Irena Chrycuk. As the Soviet front approached, the Felician Sisters were ordered to evacuate the monastery for use by the German military. In the spring of 1944, they transferred their charges to a children’s home in Otwock near Warsaw, also run by the Feliacian Sisters. One of the nun’s who accompanied the children and the mother of one of the Jewish children to Otwock was Sister Łukasz Makuch.⁵⁶³
The following testimonials concern institutions run by the Felician Sisters in Wawer, located on the outskirts of Warsaw, in the nearby settlement of Glinki, and in Kraków. Sister Zygmunta (Johanna Reiter), the mother superior of the convent in Wawer, was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, pp.174, 350; Part 2, pp.666, 784.)
[1] When their Warsaw apartment was confiscated during the occupation, Stefania Dlutowska [Dłutowska] and her daughter, Maria-Krystyna, were forced to move to the nearby village of Radosc [Radość]. From early 1943, six Jews—Jerzy Leinkram and his young daughter, Ruth; his grandmother, Blums Goldman; his nephew, Michal [Michał] Flohr; his uncle, Julian Leinkram; and his cousin, Marta Lencka—all found shelter in the cellar of the Dlutowskis’ new home, where Stefania and her daughter took good care of them. When the Dlutkowskis were no longer able to support such a large number of people, Dlutowska transferred Ruth under an assumed name to a children’s institution run by the Felicjanki [Felician] nuns in the village of Glinki, near Warsaw, and Flohr to a relative of Dlutowska’s who agreed to take him in. … Dlutowska and her daughter received no payment for their acts of courage …
[2] During the occupation, Lidka Taubenfeld (born 1932) [later Ilana Feldbulm] moved with her family from the town of Radom to Przemysl [Przemyśl], where her father passed away. Although Taubenfeld and her cousin, Lena Gross [later Kaniewska], had been provided with Aryan papers by their parents after Lena’s parents perished, Lidka’s mother realized the importance of finding them a safe shelter. In a chance encounter with Maria Klepacka, the latter agreed to hide the two girls in her apartment and teach them the basic tenets of Catholicism to prepare them for admission to a convent orphanage, where they would be safe. Klepacka took the two girls into her one-room apartment in Cracow [Kraków], where they were soon joined by other refugees. Klepacka often put up Jews on a temporary basis until they found more permanent accommodation on the Aryan side of the city. Half a year later, Taubenfeld and Gross were transferred to a convent belonging to the Felicjanki [Felician] Sisters under assumed identities. In late 1942, after Taubenfeld’s mother perished, a relative undertook to pay the convent fees. After he too perished, the children were returned by the nuns to Klepacka, who continued to look after them like her own daughters. In due course, after Zegota [Żegota], at Klepacka’s request, agreed to pay the convent fees, Taubenfeld and Gross were sent back to the convent, where they stayed until January 1945, when the area was liberated.
[3] In 1943, Mirla Kajler managed to escape from the Warsaw ghetto with her four-year-old daughter, Felicia. When Kajler realized that she had no chance of surviving with her daughter, she went to a Catholic convent in Wawer, an eastern suburb of Warsaw, and approached the mother superior, Sister Zygmunta, the former Johanna Reiter, begging her to admit her daughter to the home for abandoned children run by the sisters of the convent. When Sister Zygmunta found out that the girl was Jewish, she looked after her devotedly, protected her, and watched out for her safety during the periodic interrogations conducted by the Germans in an attempt to discover Jewish children hiding there. … After the war, Felicia was returned to her mother and the two moved to France …
[4] Before the war, Fraidla Skladkowska owned a leather-processing factory in Warsaw. After the occupation of Warsaw, Zenon Szenfeld helped the Skladkowskis by offering to hide their assets and valuables for them. When the Skladkowskis were interned in the ghetto, Zenon and his wife, Marianna, smuggled in food parcels to them. In July 1942, they helped the Skladkowskis and their daughter, Aliza, as well as Skladkowska’s brother, Jakub Pinczewski, escape to the Aryan side of the city, where they provided them with forged papers and financial aid. After putting them up for a short while, the Szenfelds arranged for the refugees to stay with Maria Szmidt, Marianna’s mother. After the authorities were alerted by an informer, however, the Skladkowskis moved in with Czeslaw [Czesław] and Maria Car, where they hid until May 1943, while the Szenfelds continued to look out for their safety. Again the danger of discovery forced them to move, this time to the home of Janina Szymanska [Szymańska]. Thanks to the Aryan papers in her possession, Fraidla found work in a factory, while her daughter, who fell ill, was transferred to the nearby Wawer convent. In due course, her husband and brother moved in with Anna Szwerkowska and Irena Rudkowska, her sister, in Anin, near Warsaw, where they remained until September 1944, when the area was liberated. After the war, the survivors emigrated to the United States.
Barbara Bregman, who was born in 1930, and her mother Bronisława Bregman escaped from the Warsaw ghetto in July 1942. They were helped by a number of prewar Polish friends, among them Stanisława Wedecka and Bonawentura Lenart, Barbara’s nanny, and new acquaintances. Rev. Leon Pawlina, who was a member of Caritas, the archdiocesan charitable organization, provided them with false baptismal certificates. Bronisława Bregman became Paulina Karczewska and was sheltered by Irena Nowodworska, the widow of Leon Nowodworski, who was a National Democrat activist and head of the Warsaw Council of Lawyers. (After the Council of Lawyers rejected German demands to remove its Jewish members in February 1940, Leon Nowodworski was removed from the bar and died the following year.⁵⁶⁴) Barbara Bregman became Marianna Anyszka and was placed in the Felician Sisters’ boarding school in Wawer in February 1943. She remained there for half a year, before rejoining her mother. She was asked to leave after another Jewish girl, whose true identity had become widely known, identified Barbara Bregman as a Jew, thereby exposing her cover. She suggests that the two Jewish girls’ departure was due to the fact that the nuns did not want to shelter Jewish children, which is not the case because they did accept a number of Jewish children at this institution, as the rescue of Felicia Kajler (described above) shows. In fact, they had to leave because once their cover had been disclosed, their continued stay put the rescue operation at risk and became precarious for the entire institution.⁵⁶⁵
Halina Robinson, who was born in 1928 as Lina Trachtenberg, was deported together with her family from their hometown of Kalisz to Warsaw at the beginning of the war. She escaped from the Warsaw ghetto in September 1942, at the age of 14, by jumping over the ghetto wall with the help of Leokadia Komarnicka. Komarnicka also helped Halina’s stepmother, Jadwiga Trachtenberg, and Zofia and Sabina Zander, Jadwiga’s mother and sister, escape from the ghetto. (Leokadia Komarnicka, who helped dozens of Jews, was later executed by the Germans when caught aiding a Jew.⁵⁶⁶) For the next two years, young Halina was in hiding, in thirteen different places and with four sets of false documents. As she recalls, “In the 23 months I spent in hiding, following my escape, I had to pass through 13 locations with four sets of false documents. That means that close to 100 other Righteous Gentiles risked their lives to save just one Jewish teenager.”⁵⁶⁷ These courageous Poles arranged for her transport, accommodation, and false documents. Among them were Zygmunt and Maria Truchanowicz, with whom Halina lived for some time, and Maria Jiruska, who had worked as a headmistress before the war. Passing as Halina Górska, Halina was among eleven Jewsh children sheltered by the Felician Sisters in their convent in the Warsaw suburb of Wawer, where she attended a boarding school from October 1942 to February 1943. The Jewish children were under the care of Sister Maria Kalasancja (Antonina Fuja), who was the director of the high school. Halina describes her rescue in her memoir, A Cork on the Waves: Reflections of a Turbulent Life (Sydney: Sydney Jewish Museum, 2005; Sydney: Park Street Press, 2006). A summary account regarding rescuers Wanda Jiruska and her daughters, Stefania Weronika and Maria Antonina, in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, at page 325, suggests that the children’s homes run by the Catholic Church to which Wanda Jiruska referred Jewish children as orphans were not aware of their charges’ Jewish origin. That was certainly not the case with regard to the Felician Sisters in Wawer. A summary account regarding rescuers Zygmunt and Maria Truchanowicz in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, at page 342, states that Sabina Zender was placed in a convent near Warsaw, but no particulars are provided.
The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul sheltered several Jewish children and adults in their convent in Nyrków, on the outskirts of Czerwonogród near Zaleszczyki, in Tarnopol province. After escaping from the ghetto in Drohobycz in 1942, Karolina Heuman (born in 1928) and her younger brother Henryk (born in 1936) were placed there by their father. Karolina assumed the name of Marta Regusz; her brother, who did not survive a Ukrainian partisan attack on the town in February 1945, was known as Andrzej. Karolina recalled those turbulent years in her account published in Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, at pages 187–89:
After a few months of staying in the ghetto [on Drohobycz], we managed to escape. At that point, our entire family split up. Mother, under an assumed name, left for Lwów, and my brother and I were placed by Father in the cloister of the Sisters of Charity in Czerwonogród. I remember how we were driven by night in a horse-drawn wagon to the cloister and how Father bade us farewell. Pointing to the sky, he said, “We shall meet there.” He then paid for our stay⁵⁶⁸ with money he kept hidden in a bottle, and he left. From that moment I never saw him again.

In the cloister, I used the name Marta Regusz. I worked in the fields. Whenever Germans showed up in the cloister, I would die of fright (after all, my brother was circumcised!). After placing us in the cloister, Father went into hiding in Horodenka, where he was shot at the beginning of 1943. … I don’t know where Mother perished. … My brother perished during a raid on the cloister by the followers of Bandera [Ukrainian nationalist partisans who attacked Poles]. He was then nine years old. Here is how, at the time, I described the events of this horrible day:

“It was the second of February 1945, at eleven o’clock. … There were three of us young girls and my beloved brother … I woke up with a start during the night and heard terrible shooting around the cloister. There was often shooting going on at night, but it never made the same impression on me as then. I got up and walked up to the window. It seemed to me that it was strangely bright outside. I lay down again, but some inner voice would not let me lie. I started to get dressed, and I dressed my brother. All of us girls were already dressed when Sister Władysława [Sobierajska] walked in and said we were surrounded by Bandera’s followers. We were terrified.

“Right away, we went over to the bedrooms of the Sisters, and there, by the window, we stood for three hours, watching the terrible tortures of people who were fleeing in panic from the flames. The inhuman barbarians ran around furiously with flares in their hands and set fires to one hut after another, and whenever they saw someone, if they could, they grabbed him alive, and if not, then they would shoot him on the spot. They captured one family in our village and all that was later found of the children were fragments of burned-up bones, and the father’s skin had been ripped off from his stomach all the way to his head. We, the girls, stood all the time by the window, waiting for what would happen next. We felt that our own lives, too, were hanging by a thread. …

“Soon, our suppositions came to pass. At three o’clock in the morning, we heard terrible knocking on the front gate, which seemed to foretell our approaching end. Sister Władysława called us into the chapel and began to pray and prepare us for death. We knelt in front of the altar for perhaps ten minutes. …

“I had no regrets about dying, because until then I had not experienced contentment on earth. I just felt sorry for my brother. … In the last moment, when the glass of the windows in the lower corridor started falling onto the floor with a loud crash, Sister Superior [Klara Linowska] hid us under the altar.”