Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Godlewski frequently had meetings with Adam Czerniaków, the chairman of the Judenrat, listening sympathetically and trying to give hope. Caritas, a Catholic welfare organization, opened a soup kitchen in the ghetto operated by a Father Michał Kliszko, [vicar at the cathedral parish of St. John the Baptist]. It was open to anyone who came. Several hundred Jews were kept hidden with Godlewski’s former parishioners on the Polish side and in a chapel at 49 Złota Street.

Father Godlewski and his young curates remained in the ghetto until they were expelled, but continued their work outside the walls.
Jewish converts residing outside the ghetto were often assisted by the Catholic clergy. Aleksandra Śmietanowska (later Leliwa-Kopystyńska), born in 1937 to a Polish father and a Jewish mother who had converted to Catholicism, was sheltered by a priest in the Warsaw suburb of Grochów together with her mother and older brother.²²⁰ Jadwiga Keiferowicz, born in 1924, her younger sister Teresa, born in 1925, and their widowed mother, Elżbieta Keiferowicz, converted to Catholicism in their hometown of Lublin in 1936. During the German occupation, they relocated to Warsaw, with a reference from Mother Stanisława Manowarda of the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union. Mother Maria Leśniewska, the superior of the Grey Ursulines (Ursuline Sisters of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus) accepted Elżbieta’s mother and sister into the boarding school for girls, whose director was Sister Irena Szczepańska (Sister Augustyna od Krzyża). The boarding school had been moved to the order’s premises at 30 Tamka Street, which was a hotbed of conspiratorial activity. Its chaplain was Rev. Jan Wosiński, who later became the auxiliary bishop of Płock. Another Jewish convert, who was a postulant at the time, also resided there. Jadwiga found employed at an institute for children with tuberculosis, and afterwards at the Institute for Blind Children in Laski outside Warsaw, which was run by the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross. Her mother and sister had to leave the boarding school after a denunciation. They were taken in briefly by Rev. Jan Zieja, the nuns’ chaplain. Sister Popiel of the Grey Ursuline found them safe houses with Polish families, despite Jadwiga’s mother’s Jewish appearance. Afterwards, her mother resided in a home for nuns with tuberculosis. All three of them survived the war and remained in Poland. After becoming a doctor, Jadwiga Keiferowicz joined the Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived (of Stara Wieś), and was known as Sister Elżbieta.²²¹
Dr. Eleonora (Barbara) Reicher, who had converted to Catholicism in 1904, was a prominent educator who worked at a clinic at the University of Warsaw. Because of her Jewish appearance, from November 1940 she hid under an assumed name with the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Mary at their convent on Rakowiecka Street in Warsaw and with the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross in Laski, outside Warsaw. Nonetheless, she managed to help several Jews survive the war. With the assistance of her friend Princess Aniela Woroniecka and the latter’s housekeeper, Jadwiga Turek, she arranged for Elżbieta, the five-year-old daughter of her cousin, Dr. Edward Reicher, who was not a convert, to be sheltered by the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Międzylesie. Passing as Elżbieta Zofia Jankowska, the child remained there until the eve of the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, when she was reunited with her parents. The Reicher family survived the war, with the assistance of a number of Poles.²²² Through Fr. Jacek Woroniecki, the prior and close family friend, several boys of Jewish origin were taken in at boarding school of the Marian Fathers in the Warsaw suburb of Bielany. Dr. Eleonora Reicher had weekly food parcels delivered to them.²²³ Piotruś Kormiol, who was born in Warsaw in 1932, recounted, in May 1945, the assistance he received from various persons, including priests at that monastery. (His testimony is found in the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), Record Group 301, number 489.)
The Majackis solved Aunt Basia’s [Dr. Eleonora Reicher, who had converted to Catholicism] problem by agreeing to take me to their house [in 1942]. And that was what happened. It was very nice for me at the Majackis’ house. My aunt and Miss Helenka [her housekeeper] came to see me every week. Even though the time I could spend outside was limited, I was not bored. I had a friend there, the Majackis’ son, Janusz. …

I also did not behave the way I should have at the Majackis’. I was very talkative. This irritated Mr. Majacki. Luckily at that time Father Jacek Woroniecki was in Warsaw, a Dominican, Mrs. Potocka’s brother. It was he who helped my aunt put me in the dormitory run by the Marian Fathers in Bielany [a suburb of Warsaw].

Part of the dormitory was occupied by the Germans and that was very dangerous. The people there were also very unfriendly towards me. Because of my completely Semitic features, they would call me a Jew in front of everybody. Once I even had problems with a German. One of my friends from the dormitory told him straight out that I was a Jew. Who knows how badly everything might have ended, if the rector, a priest, had not calmed the situation down. But I could not stay there anymore. It was dangerous for me, and the rector was afraid. My aunt did not know where to put me. … Finally, Mrs. Starzecka came up with a solution. She inspected orphanages of the Polish Red Cross. She put me up in the orphanage founded by my aunt. …

In July [1944], the entire orphanage was sent to the country for summer vacation. I was the only one who could not go [doubtless because of his appearance] and I had to stay behind. … So I stayed with Mrs. Bilińska and with several people from the orphanage’s staff. This was where I was when the uprising [of August 1944] broke out. … The uprising was put down, and the Germans sent me to the camp in Pruszków. …

When I was in Pruszków, I did not know what was happening to my aunt, or to Miss Helenka. After three days, they took me with a transport to Kielce. I did not know anyone in Kielce, so I got on a train and went to Kraków. Mrs. Potocka’s brother lived in Kraków, Father Jacek Woroniecki, who put me in a municipal orphanage [actually this was a reformatory for delinquent boys] in Bronowice, near Kraków.²²⁴ Life was miserable [for all the children], and there was lots of work. … no one knew about my background. A few weeks later, my aunt found me, but she could not take me out of the orphanage. … This is how I survived until Poland was liberated, without any real changes. … When Kraków and Warsaw were taken over [by the Soviets] I returned to Warsaw and am living at my aunt’s house again.
Rev. Władysław Kulczycki of Kraków agreed to marry Maria Gregorowicz and Ignacy Hirsch, an assimilated Jew who underwent baptism, which gave him the cover of being a Catholic Pole. (“The Gregorowicz Family, The Polish Reighteous, Internet: , with corrections based on the Polish version.)
The Gregorowicz family came from Lwów. Leon was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army. He died in 1919. In the 1930’s, Mrs. Gregorowicz, with her daughters Maria and Leonia settled in Kraków.

In the first year of the war, Maria married Ignacy Hirsch, an assimilated Jew, who agreed who agreed to be baptised. The wedding was performed by the priest, Władysław Kulczycki, an activist in the resistance movement involved in helping Jews.

The young couple worked in a firm run by an Austrian, Wilhelm Faude, who knew of Hirsch’s and supported the Gregorowicz family, both materially and morally. His affectionate nature distracted suspicion of any illegal activity.

Leonia joined the resistance. Helping Jews was only one aspect of her fighting against the occupiers, as well as an expression of her belief that every human being was equal. In 1942, she led Ignacy’s mother, Zofia, out of the ghetto. She found a hiding place for her and, for safety, moved her to other places, among others, to Mrs. Mazur in the Olsza settlement, to Mrs. Krzyściak in the Officers’ settlement, and to Mrs. Dąbrowicka on Moniuszko Street.

Sometimes, Ignacy’s sister, Eugenia, would also hide in these places. However, she was recognised as a Jew on the street and was arrested. She spent the rest of the war in camps. When liberated, she was in Buchenwald.

Solecki, the father of Maria’s friend, also benefitted from the overnight accomodation of the Gregorowicz family. The 8-9 year old Sztegier girl spent a month in their home. Józef Bratter, a doctor friend from Lwów, spent a few weeks there. 

The Hirsch family, the Sztegier girl and Dr. Bratter all survived the war. Ignacy took his wife’s surname. In the 1990’s, Eugenia was present when Leonia was awarded the title “Righteous Among the Nations”.
After leaving Lwów in August 1942, Anna Weissberg took refuge in Kraków where she posed as a Christian. In April 1943, she met a Polish acquaintance from Lwów whom she married. The priest who performed the ceremony, the groom’s cousin, issued an antedated marriage certificate. In May 1944, Anna ran across Sylwia Szapiro, an employee of the Arbeitsamt in Lwów and a known Gestapo confidante. Szapiro wanted to know Anna’s place of residence. Anna threatened Szapiro with retaliation from well-placed individuals, which was a bluff, and managed to get away safely.²²⁵
Not all conversions were genuine. Some Jews underwent conversion believing that it would help them survive, only to revert to Judaism after the war. Chaya and Yisrael Finkielsztejn and their four children were baptized by Rev. Aleksander Dolęgowski, the pastor of Radziłów. The family then resided in Konopki, a nearby village, as Christian Poles, moving among the farmers of the village and other farmers in the area until liberation on January 22, 1945.²²⁶
Jewish converts—even those with a pronounced Jewish appearance—often lived openly among Poles and survived the occupation without being denounced.²²⁷ The following account concerns the Herman family who lived in the Warsaw suburb of Włochy, where they had the support of the local Catholic priests. (Arnon Rubin, Against All Odds: Facing Holocaust: My Personal Recollections [Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2005], p.151.)
I had visited also the Herman family, father, mother, and a daughter Ewa, living in Włochy, a small town near Warsaw. I personally knew the family, because Ewa was a close friend of my sister, the two attended the same school and the same class during the Soviet rule in Lwów, they often met in our house. The Herman family occupied a small house in Włochy, all for themselves. They entertained me cordially. They all three had a very distinctive Semitic features each of them looked not like one Jew, but like ten Jews, together. I think that all the surrounding knew that they are Jews. It was impossible not to. They survived the war; I met them after the war in Kraków. Ewa told me that they had support of the local priest; by the way all Herman family had been converted Jews, and a very pious and devoted Christians.
Not all rescue efforts ended well. The four-member family of Dr. Artur Władysław Elmer, who had converted to Catholicism in the early 1920s, took refuge in the residence of the Archbishop of Lwów, Bolesław Twardowski, for a period of two years, having been brought there n July 1941 by Rev. Zygmunt Hałuniewicz, the chancellor of the metropolitan curia. Unfortunately, when Dr. Elmer’s youngest son, Janusz, went out on August 8, 1943 to collect the morning milk delivery from the caretaker’s home, he was stopped by Gestapo men because of his distinctly Semitic features. Upon questioning, he informed them that he resided in the archbishop’s palace. When the Germans arrived there to investigate, Dr. Elmer fled in panic and was shot. His family was arrested and executed on the outskirts of Lwów. Remarkably, Archbishop Twardowski did not suffer any repressive measures.²²⁸
All interventions on behalf of Jewish converts to the German authorities proved to be futile, and indeed they were counterproductive. In July 1942, the Episcopal Curia of Przemyśl, at the direction of Bishop Franciszek Barda, petitioned the town’s commissar Giesselmann, through Monsignor Zygmunt Męski and Rev. Jan Kwolek, not to confine Jewish converts in the ghetto. These appeals had the opposite effect: the converts were all arrested, some of them were executed immediately and the rest were sent to the ghetto. Bishop Barda also provided false birth certificates to non-converts, among them Stanley and Lusia Igel (Igiel) and their daughter Tonia (later Toni Rinde).²²⁹
A young Jewish woman from Pruszków by the name of Balbina Synalewicz was taken to work as a labourer on a farm in Czerniaków outside Warsaw. One day she received word about the fate of her parents, who were confined in the Warsaw ghetto, from an unknown priest who had met her father by chance. (Elsa Thon, I Wish It Were Fiction: Memories, 1939–1945 [Hamilton, Ontario: Merkel & Deahl, 1997], pp.24–25.)
One day, as I was working in the field, someone came to tell me that a man was waiting for me. I brought the raft to the other side and ran to the kitchen, where I introduced myself to the man. He was about twenty or twenty-two years old. His face was round, he had dark blond hair and blue eyes. He wore a sport jacket and black trousers. He got up to greet me.

“I have a message for you from your father.”

“How are my parents?” I blurted. “How did you happen to meet them? Where are they?—A cascade of words, questions: I asked so many things. He couldn’t answer some of these questions because he didn’t know. Others, I suspected, he wouldn’t answer because he knew too much.

“I saw your father in the place where he worked. He gave me your address, and asked me to see you.”

“How were you able to travel?”

“I’m a priest. The Germans don’t allow us to wear our religious habits. I have to dress in civilian clothes.”

“What was my father doing when you saw him? Did you see my mother?”

“No, only your father. They are locked up in the ghetto. In the morning the SS take them out for different chores outside the ghetto. Your father wanted to know how you were. He asked if you had heard from his your sister.”

“Are you allowed to enter the ghetto in Warsaw?”

“I’m sorry, no, I can’t. It has been sealed off.”