Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

We lived through the rest of the occupation relatively peacefully. …

Later, Mama was offered a tiny room in exchange for her cleaning. We lived there until the end of the occupation. … The landlady was the mother of a priest. She was a very decent old woman, who embraced us warmly. She later arranged for a better job for Mama, cooking dinners for the clerks in the community office. Such a job made it possible to always get something to eat.
Jewish accounts from Białystok speak of priests imploring the faithful to assist and show compassion for the Jews, assisting Jews to escape from the ghetto, and providing them with false birth and baptismal certificates. A parish priest called on his congregation to show compassion toward the Jews and to assist them.⁴⁷³ Rev. Franciszek Pieściuk, the pastor of nearby town of Choroszcz, sent food to the family of Jakub Lichtensztejn who were confined in the Białystok ghetto.⁴⁷⁴ After being issued a pass to leave the ghetto for a few hours, Józef Zeligman encountered a priest who had taught religion at the private high school where Zeligman had once been the principal. The priest took Zeligman, who wore a Star of David, by the arm and escorted him along the road to his destination.⁴⁷⁵ After escaping from the ghetto in January 1943, Henia, who had a pronounced Jewish appearance, went to a parish with her 6-year-old son Marek and requested birth and baptismal certificates which the priest provided. He also offered to shelter her son but she declined. Henia and Marek lived on the outskirts of Białystok passing as Christians, where they survived the war.⁴⁷⁶
Rev. Adam Abramowicz, the pastor of St. Roch’s parish in Białystok, found shelters for Jews and provided them with false documents. A rabbi from a nearby town, who was acquainted with Rev. Abramowicz, directed Jakub Sławiński (then Hirsz) to the priest for assistance. Sławiński obtained a false birth and baptismal certificate and a school certificate which enabled him to get a job.⁴⁷⁷ Maryla Różycka, the famed liaison officer and courier for the Jewish underground in Białystok, also attested to Rev. Abramowicz’s extending help to Jews.⁴⁷⁸ After escaping from Treblinka, Avrom-Leyzer Rubin, a 35-year-old blacksmith from Goniądz, made his way to Białystok where he hid in the crypt of St. Roch’s church for more than a month. Afterwards he was sheltered in the home Ada Liskowska, a Polish woman. A Polish cobbler put him in touch with Jewish underground liaisons, who brought him to the partisans in the forest.⁴⁷⁹ The Missionary Sisters of the Holy Family worked closely with Rev. Adam Abramowicz, and provided food and other forms of assistance to Jews.⁴⁸⁰
The Catholic priest in Ostryna, a town northeast of Grodno, counselled his faithul at mass not to participate in the German persecution of the Jews and smuggled food into the ghetto.⁴⁸¹ The Catholic pastor of Holszany near Oszmiana, Rev. Józef Chomski, a Home Army chaplain, spoke out in his sermons against the killing of Jews and urged his parishioners not to harm them. He also arranged shelter for Jews in the convent of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Family located near the church.⁴⁸²
Shoshana Feigelsohn lived in Wilno until 1941. After the German conquest she hid in a convent as a Polish woman for six months. In 1942, she left the convent and married a Christian. She gave birth to a daughter named Anna in Holszany in 1944. Her Polish husband was conscripted into the Soviet Army and fell in battle. Szoszana moved to the redrawn Poland in 1946 and lived with her husband’s family. She placed her daughter, Anna, in a Jewish children’s home in Łódź. Their subsequent fate is not clear.⁴⁸³
Father Andrew of Jesus (Andrzej od Jezusa, actually Franciszek Gdowski) was the superior of the Discalced Carmelite monastery in Wilno and the pastor of St. Teresa of Avila church, adjacent to the ancient city gate which housed the chapel and revered icon of Our Lady of Ostra Brama. Father Gdowski collaborated closely with Anton Schmid, a sergeant of the German army from Austria who was stationed in Wilno, and who was executed by his superiors in April 1942 for helping a large number of Jews escape from the ghetto. Father Gdowski supplied false baptismal certificates to a number of Jews, including Luisa Emaitis, Hermann Adler, and his wife Anita Distler. With those documents Anton Schmid obtained passports for the Adlers, which allowed them to escape to Hungary. Father Gdowski also hid some Jews in the monastery and took care of their spiritual needs by setting aside a well-camouflaged room in the church which was used by his “guests” as a synagogue. The Gestapo arrested the Carmelites in March 1942, and Father Gdowski was imprisoned for the duration of the war. Hermann Adler wrote about the heroic deeds of Father Gdowski in his memoir Ostra Brama: Legende aus der Zeit des großen Untergangs (Zürich: Helios, 1945). Although Anton Schmid was recognized by Yad Vashem, Father Andrzej Gdowski was not.⁴⁸⁴
Father Gdowski is also credited with rescuing Jewish children at the Carmelite boarding school in Wilno. One of the Jewish charges at this institution was Michael Stołowicki (Stolowitzky), who had settled in Wilno at the beginning of the war, after fleeing from Warsaw with his mother Lydia and his Catholic nanny, Getruda Babilińska. His mother died shortly after their arrival in Wilno and the young boy was cared for by his Polish nanny, who passed the child off as her own. After the Germans occupied Wilno in the summer of 1941, Babilińska had to seek protection for young Michael, who was not only circumcised but also did not have proper identity documents. She confided in Father Gdowski, who agreed to take him into the church boarding school without charge. Father Gdowski was known to preach sermons about the importance of helping one’s neighbour. (Ram Oren, Getruda’s Oath: A Child, a Promise, and a Heroic Escape During World War II [New York: Doubleday/Random House, 2009], pp.188–93).
She [Gertruda Babilińska] concluded that the church could be their only refuge. Michael remembered the first day he went there with Gertruda. In a blend of fear and embarrassment, he followed her into the big hall of the Ostra Brama Church. The cement arches supporting the ceiling, the paintings of the crucified Jesus, and the gilded altar stirred mixed feelings in him. It didn’t take Gertruda long to make him understand why he had to go with her. He understood very well that, for the outside world, he was the son of a Christian mother, and the pretense he had to adopt was a pledge for his life. …

The church was full of local residents and a group of German soldiers and officers who came to Sunday mass. The priest, Andras Gedovsky [Andrzej Gdowski], passed among the worshippers, nodding to people he knew. Michael looked at him with curiosity, examined his kind face and his white robe as he moved like an angel hovering toward the altar and sank down in prayer. …