Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Krysia Chłond and Lusia Kokoszko became friends in middle school. They sat in one bench at school for five years and visited each other at home.

When the Kokoszko family was in the ghetto in Otwock during the war, Krystyna still visited them often, although it was forbidden. She also brought them money from Warsaw. Lusia’s parents asked Krystyna to take their younger daughter, 6-year-old Maryna, to Warsaw, to a safer place in the district of Leszno. [Maryna or Maria Kokoszko was placed in an orphanage under an Aryan name.³⁵⁹] The parents, along with Lusia, escaped from the ghetto and hid in Celestynów, and later in Józefów. Krystyna visited them there as well, serving as a contact person between the parents and daughter hidden in Warsaw. Dr. Michał Kokoszko, working under the false name Kosowski, ran a pediatric clinic.

The entire Kokoszko family managed to survive the war. They lived in Warsaw for the rest of their lives. As emphasized by Krystyna Dańko, her whole family believed that helping other people was completely natural. There was another Jewish child, who lived for several months in the Chłond family’s home in Otwock on Łukasińskiego Street during the war i.e. a 4-year-old Jasia Kotowicz, the daughter of Olena Kotowicz née Zybert, who was hiding in Warsaw at that time. Krysia’s older sister, Elizabeth, took care of Jasia. Olena with her husband and daughter survived the war. Her brother, Selim Zybert, Krystyna’s former high school friend, was hiding in Warsaw, but unfortunately did not survive the war.
Rev. Ludwik Wolski, the elderly pastor of St. Vincent de Paul parish in Otwock, and his vicar, Rev. Jan Raczkowski, both of whom have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, assisted a number of Jews in various ways. They helped them find shelters and provided them with false birth certificates. In their sermons, the priests condemned German crimes against the Jews as well as the activities of local bandits and extortionists, and urged their parishioners to help those in need. When the Otwock ghetto was being liquidated, Rev. Wolski rescued 7-year-old Marysia Osowiecka (later Michelle Donat) with the assistance of Bronisław Marchlewicz, the captain of the Blue Police, and Aleksandra Szpakowska. After the liberation the young girl’s aunt wrote to Rev. Wolski to thank him for his selfless deeds. (Sylwia Szymańska, Ludność żydowska w Otwocku podczas Drugiej wojny światowej [Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2002], pp.86–87.)
During the Nazi occupation, the parish’s presbytery in Otwock was attended by many people—regardless of their nationality or religion—it was a place of safe shelter, help and care. Those most needy could count on food, supply of medicines and financial aid.

Being in charge of the births, marriages and deaths register, Father Wolski issued selflessly fictitious birth certificates to children of Jewish residents in Otwock, so that they could stay legally in educational institutions and orphanages as baptized children, coming from Roman Catholic families. He would do it risking not only his own life, but also the lives of people from his closest circle. The exact number of people whom priest Wolski helped in this way is unknown. He certainly issued false birth certificates to five Jewish children: Maria Osowiecka (for the name of Halina Brzoza), Dan Landsberg (for the name of Wojciech Płochocki), Ruth Noj (for the name of Teresa Wysocka), Maria and her brother Sasza Wecer (for the name of their mother’s first husband, Konstanty Laskowiecki).

Maria Thau (nee Wecer, now a citizen of Israel), who was also rescued in such a way, says in her memoirs entitled Powroty (Returns):

“A priest in a church in Otwock cooperated with the underground. There were rumors among the survivors from the surrounding towns, who were hiding after the dissolution of ghettos, about a priest who helped Jews, and especially children. He placed many children in convents. He issued fictitious documents and birth certificates without any compensation.”

Also in her testimony made in the Yad Vashem Institute in 1964, Maria Thau talks about “an old parish priest of the church in Otwock,” and “his assistant priest,” who “saved lives of many Jewish children” (referring to Father Wolski and Father Jan Raczkowski).

The parish priest form Otwock allowed the Jewish refugees (including adults) to sleep in a wooden presbytery building that no longer exists and even under the roof of the church. Hanna Kamińska recalls:

“During the war, thanks to Father Wolski, the parish of St. Vincent was known among the Jews of Otwock as a place where you could get help and, if necessary, spend the night. I myself spent the night there in November 1942 (over two months after the dissolution of the ghetto).

Saving Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland required in almost every case the whole chain of people of good will. Priest Ludwik Wolski worked closely in this respect with other Righteous people from Otwock:Aleksandra Szpakowska, Bronisław Marchlewicz and the Sisters from St. Elizabeth convent.

  Hanna Kamińska’s letter of September 12, 1945 [addressed to Rev. Wolski] (original spelling retained) is its beautiful testimony:

“I feel the pleasant duty to express [to] the Reverend canon priest warmest thanks for the care of my 7-year-old cousin, Marysia Osowiecka. In August 1942, during the highest intensity of Nazi terror in Otwock, where on 19 August and the following day the ghetto was being dissolved [liquidated], the priest did not hesitate to risk his life to save an unknown Jewish child. In the context of unruly bands of Germans and Nazis, as well as local villagers’ behavior who would rush out like vultures to grab the possessions left by the Jews, the Christian attitude displayed by Father Wolski, who along with Ms Szpakowska, an engineer, and with Mr Marchlewicz, a commander of the police station of the time, did not fear to save a helpless Jewish child, is reflected even more starkly.

The existence of such people as the canon priest, Ms Szpakowska and Mr Marchlewicz fills us with the faith for a better tomorrow, the victory of good over evil. I wish that my clumsy words could at least in part reflect the feelings that I cherish for the canon priest, Ms Szpakowska and Mr Marchlewicz. Let Poland be filled up with such people.”

In the remembrance of the Otwock’s residents—both Poles and Jews—Father Ludwik Wolski is perceived as a man who believed that helping other human beings is his human, Christian and priestly duty.

After the war, the parish priest of Otwock helped in turn those persecuted by the NKVD and Security Office, and especially the Warsaw insurgents and members of the Home Army. He continued to support passionately the upbringing and education of indigent children and young people, allocating for this purpose his time and money, since he was living a very modest, simple life himself.
Rev. Raczkowski was honoured on the strength of the testimony of Hanna Pinkert-Langer. Ten Jews, including five members of the Pinkert and Wilner families, were rescued by the collective effort of several Poles from Otwock among them Zofia Sydry, Czesława Dietrich, and Antoni Serafin.³⁶⁰ (Jan Raczkowski, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: .)
A number of misfortunes befell the Pinkerts in the Otwock Ghetto, until finally they were told in no uncertain terms that it was time to flee. [Czesława] Dietrich and [Zofia] Sydry came to their aid again, getting [Antoni] Serafin to add Hanna [Pinkert] to the number of Jews already hiding in his house, and later they convinced him to take Zygmunt [Pinkert] in as well. Their stay was not peaceful: one day a German soldier walked in and discovered them, and only a bribe drove him away. When Serafin found out, he was terrified and ran to the local priest, Jan Raczkowski, for advice.

Raczkowski was a figure of authority and renown in the area, and he had aided many Jews. He helped indirectly by influencing his parishioners to be merciful, even instructing them directly to help Jews; he also assisted people like Joanna Kaltman, who was hiding in the area under the guise of being a Catholic, and whom he instructed discreetly as to Catholic rituals and the things she was to say and do in church so as not to be discovered. Furthermore, he handed out fake baptism and birth certificates and did not fear the danger that was all the greater for him because he was such a public person.

Raczkowski told Antoni Serafin to continue hiding the Jews despite the danger, and he even offered his own home to one of the women [Anna Różycka] and her child [Aleksander or Olek Różycki]. In this way the families survived until the liberation in 1944.
Joanna Kaltman, who was born in 1929, escaped from the Warsaw ghetto with her mother, Dr. Ewa Kaltman. Toward the end of 1943 they changed their hiding place, moving from Warsaw to the nearby town of Otwock. She described her stay in Otwock, until the Soviet liberation, and the assistance of the school chaplain, Rev. Jan Raczkowski, in her account found in Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, at page 82.
I believe that both for our hosts and in the private classes to which I was admitted almost immediately after moving, in spite of the good official documents and a reasonably believable story, the true state of affairs was quite clear. One can surmise this from the behavior of our landlady, who, during the more turbulent periods of roundups and ransacking by the Gestapo in Otwock, would come to us, sometimes at night, to lift our spirits. Also, from the fact that the vicar priest who was then effectively the spiritual leader of Otwock, Father Raczyński [actually Jan Raczkowski], would push into my hands notes certifying to my alleged confession. I would later hand these in to the same Chaplain Raczyński during religion lessons in the private classes, as this was compulsory for pupils during the preholiday period. (I had no idea then that Mrs. [Anna] Różycka, who escaped the ghetto with little Olek [Aleksander], was hiding with him in the presbytery at that time.) We could also tell from other small, but then very meaningful, gestures of assistance and goodwill on the part of various people.
After her escape from the Warsaw ghetto, Wanda Ziemska née Posner (born in 1934), stayed with a number of Poles in Warsaw. When she found herself in an emergency shelter on Sienna Street at the beginning of 1944 afflicted with typhus, she was cared for by Rev. Stefański. At the end of July, a nun in lay clothing took Wanda and several other girls to St. Joseph’s orphanage in Otwock, where she survived the war.³⁶¹
An unidentified priest from Garwolin was entrusted with the possessions of five Jews who were hidden by a farmer named Markiewicz in the village of Feliksin. As needed, the priest provided them with money and valuables for their their upkeep.³⁶²
A branch of Żegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, also functioned in Lwów, headed by Władyslawa Choms (in Polish, she is known as Władysława Chomsowa). It received extensive assistance from the Polish underground and the Polish Catholic Church. (Gilbert, The Righteous, pp.34–36.)
In Lvov [Lwów], the Eastern Galician capital, those who offered to help Jews included Władysława Choms, a Polish woman known as the ‘Angel of Lvov’. Following the establishment in Warsaw of Zegota [Żegota]—the Council for Assistance to the Jews—she became the head of its local branch. Later she was to describe how both the Roman Catholic Church and the underground Armia Krajowa or Home Army assisted her and Zegota in making it possible for Jews to be saved. ‘The Catholic clergy were of invaluable assistance’, she wrote, ‘in enabling us to obtain certificates of baptism, for which they provided blank forms, instructions on what to do, and ready-made certificates. How much effort and nerves went into the making of one document! With time we became more experienced. Zegota from Warsaw began to supply us with blanks of documents and the Home Army legalizing cell with beautifully made official stamps. The fury of the Gestapo at our graphic skills was correspondingly great for they realized what was going on.’³⁶³ …

One of those who owed his survival to Wladyslawa Choms and to at least one other member of Zegota in Eastern Galicia was Zygmunt Chotiner. … ‘Mrs. Choms helped to hide the doomed Jews from the ghetto and the escapees from the underground water canals. Two of her Polish lady friends were tortured to death after the search and discovery of false papers for the Jewish people. … She placed a lot of Jewish children in the orphan houses too.’
The following additional information is found in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, at page 143:
Wladyslawa [Władysława] Choms, the wife of a major in the Polish army … In 1938, Choms moved to Lwow [Lwów] and, after the German occupation, began smuggling food, money, and medicines into the ghetto. Choms, who was elected chairman of the Lwow branch of Zegota [Żegota] in the spring of 1943, organized the escape of a number of Jewish families from the ghetto, provided them with Aryan documents, and arranged accommodation for them in and around Lwow. She placed many Jewish orphans in Christian orphanages and local convents and wrote a report on the situation of the Jews in Lwow which the Polish underground delivered to the Polish Government-in-Exile in London. In late 1943, when the Germans got wind of her activities, Choms fled to Warsaw, where she continued with her underground work. Until her death, Choms kept up contact with many of her survivors in Israel and other countries. The book The Angel of Lvov, which describes her activities, was written by people she had saved. On March 15, 1966, Yad Vashem recognized Wladyslawa Choms as Righteous Among the Nations.
The assistance provided by an elderly priest in Janówka near Tarnopol, in southeastern Poland, identified as Father Joseph, was described by Irene Opdyke (formerly Irena Gut), a Righteous Gentile who is credited with rescuing twelve Jews. (Carol Rittner and Sondra Myers, eds., The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust [New York: New York University Press, 1986], pp.47–48.)