Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

After this official visit the Nazis ordered the convent to move to Stara Miranka, a few miles away from Mir. The transfer had to take place by March 1943.

The new house consisted of four rooms and a barn attached to the main building. Because Oswald was well known in the area, he could not show his face. The actual move, therefore, had to take place in a number of steps. “As the nuns emptied the different rooms they locked me into one of them. On the last day, one of the nuns left for the new place very early in the morning, before anyone was up. That same evening, I, dressed as a nun, walked with the other three nuns to our new home.”

The new convent was not only smaller but also more exposed, without a garden, without a fence. At this time the Germans were becoming more and more nervous. Night searches for partisans were common. It would have been too dangerous for Oswald to sleep in such an exposed place. The barn became Oswald’s sleeping quarters. This barn, although attached to the new convent, was used by the Germans as a storage place for food confiscated from the peasants. To avert partisan attacks, at night it was guarded by policemen. Each evening another group of policemen would come and watch the barn till dawn. Because of this watch, no Germans would dream of searching inside the barn.

In principle, those buildings belonged to the parish-church of Mir, but were being used by the authorities. In a small hall opposite the entrance a ladder served as the way to the attic of the barn. Every evening the Mother Superior, Oswald dressed as a nun, and a cat would climb up this ladder behind the standing guard. As they climbed the nun spoke to the cat, pretending that she was bringing it there to keep away the mice. Since the attic contained all kinds of food, the presence of a cat protected the food from mice. And so the guard never considered interfering with this nightly pastime. Each morning after the policeman had left, Oswald still dressed as a nun, would sneak down and into the house.

… But peace was becoming progressively more elusive. In fact, the Germans were becoming more cruel and more violent. It was as if the loss of battles created a special need for victories against vulnerable civilians. The smallest crimes, often imaginary ones, were met with severe punishment.

Thus, for example, in a nearby town [Nowogródek], twelve nuns, suspected of feeding partisans, were executed. Raids into private homes became more frequent. As the terror grew, more natives joined the partisans. Escapes into forests, in turn, led to more violent Nazi retaliations. As usual, the losers were the innocent people who had little to do with such moves.

With this increasingly threatening situation, Oswald became concerned about the nuns’ safety. He was convinced that he could avert disaster by leaving the convent. But he had no place to go. …

And so, on December 3, 1943, in the evening, dressed as a nun, Oswald left the convent in the company of the Mother Superior. In a nearby forest he took off his robe. As he handed it to the nun, she cried, saying, “Come back in case of difficulties. Be sure to come back.” Too upset to speak, Oswald nodded, knowing full well that this time he wouldn’t be returning.

Still crying softly the nun blessed him and left.
Many testimonies gathered by Yad Vashem describe how priests—most of whose identities have not been established—extended a helping hand to Jews and assisted the rescue efforts of fellow Poles. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, pp.75, 118, 120, 126, 132–33, 196–97, 237, 249, 263, 355, 357, 358, 382, 391, 405, 452, 452–53, 463, 483, 485, 523, 526, 531; Part 2, pp.546–47, 573, 596, 620, 635, 656–57, 664, 711–12, 725, 727–28, 741, 757, 785, 809, 890, 917, 928–29, 938, 947; volume 10: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, 536, 561 563–64, 586.)
[1] Helena Barcikowska lived with her two sons in the village of Wisniowiec [Wiśniowiec] in the Tarnopol district [actually, near Krzemieniec in Volhynia]. Following the Nazi invasion of the area in 1941, she found employment as an agricultural worker in the fields of a German-administered estate, where she became acquainted with two Jewish brothers from Warsaw, Adam and Michal [Michał] Gajlo [Gajło]. In 1942, when the Jews of the village were incarcerated in a ghetto, Helena decided to take the brothers into her home. Only Adam was able to take advantage of the offer, however, as Michal was bedridden. As a devout Catholic, Helena regarded the saving of human life as both a duty and a privilege. The danger of the undertaking was not lost on her, since the German and Ukrainian police were constantly searching for Jewish fugitives. The house was raided twice, and it was only owing to Helena’s astuteness that her activities remained undiscovered. Adam Gajlo remained in hiding until October 1943. Helena requested no payment for sheltering him and, despite her dire financial situation, divided her meager earnings as a seamstress between her Jewish charge and her sons Tadeusz, aged 14, and Jozef [Józef], aged 13. The latter were actively involved in caring for Adam. They built a hideout for him beneath the house, brought him food, and kept the hiding place clean. At the end of 1943, Helena obtained a forged birth certificate for Adam [from a local Catholic priest⁵¹⁸] and, fearing the intrigues of her Ukrainian neighbors, fled westward with her children before the approaching Russian front. Adam escaped together with them, but afterwards their paths separated. Under his new name, Krzysztof Boleslaw [Bolesław] Sawicki—which he also retained after the war—he moved to Lancut [Łańcut], where he remained until the liberation.
[2] Maria and Olga Brzozowicz were friendly with Stanislawa [Stanisława] and Jan Pastor, with whom they had studied in the town of Sarny, in the Volhynia district. In 1940, during the Soviet annexation, the NKVD imprisoned Maria and Olga’s father, who was later exiled to the far north.The Brzozowicz sisters and their mother [Antonina] subsequently moved to Lwow [Lwów], where they rented a small apartment. Some time later, Stanislawa and Jan Pastor also moved to Lwow, with their mother, Ela Karmiol, who had since remarried, and the two families resumed their friendship. In 1941, when the Germans occupied Lwow, Karmiol and her children were evicted from their apartment. In desperation, they turned to Antonina Brzozowicz and her daughters, who, despite their straitened circumstances and small apartment, immediately agreed to take them in. In time, Antonina’s Ukrainian neighbors began suspecting her of hiding Jews and threatened to report her to the authorities. [Antonina Brzozowicz turned to a priest for guidance and he urged her to continue hiding her charges.⁵¹⁹] Undeterred, the Brzozowiczes vigorously denied the allegations and continued hiding the refugees. Stanislawa, Jan, and their mother, Ela, stayed with the Brzozowiczes until they were liberated in July 1944. After the war, the two families moved to an area within Poland’s new borders and remained friends for many more years.
[3] After the German occupation of Lwow [Lwów] in the summer of 1941, 18-year-old Hana Landau escaped the anti-Jewish pogroms [carried out by Ukrainians] that erupted in the city, during which her parents and brothers were killed. She went to the local church in the nearby village of Winniki, obtained Aryan papers made out in the name of her friend Czeslawa [Czesława] Bandalowska and returned under an assumed identity to Lwow. As she was known to be Jewish, however, she was arrested and interned in the Janowska concentration camp, but was later released after convincing the Germans that she was Christian. Armed with her Aryan papers, Hana subsequently moved to Cracow [Kraków], where she obtained work.
[4] In 1940, Stanislawa [Stanisława] Butkiewicz was employed by Jakov and Hana Fajnsztajn, residents of Vilna [Wilno], to look after their baby daughter, Masha. Upon the German occupation of the city, the Fajnsztajns were interned in the local ghetto. Hana was sent daily to forced labor outside the ghetto and met Stanislawa each day on her way to work. One day in the autumn of 1941, Hana took Masha and handed her over to Stanislawa, requesting the latter to look after her daughter if she did not return. She never came back and the infant remained with Stanislawa, who cared for her faithfully and obtained an Aryan birth [and baptismal] certificate for her [from a Catholic priest⁵²⁰] on which she registered the child as her daughter, Maria Butkiewicz. Fearing denunciation by suspicious neighbors, Stanislawa left her apartment and moved with Masha to the home of her relatives in a distant village. Masha remained under her assumed identity with her former housemaid, who selflessly jeopardized her life to save her. After the war, when it became known that Masha’s parents had perished, Stanislawa did not conceal the child’s Jewish identity from her, although she raised her like a daughter in every way and took care of her upbringing and education.
[5] Edward Chadzynski [Chądzyński] worked for the Warsaw city administration in the public records department during the war. This position allowed him to provide Jews with false papers. He was also active in the Polish Resistance movements where one of his tasks was to organize false documents for underground activities. Edward also helped people who were in need of hiding places and for this he used his connections at work. … [Procuring false documents required the cooperation of many people. First one had to obtain a birth and baptismal certificate which was necessary to then fabricate an identity document and obtain a kennkarte. In this regard Chądzyński collaborated with the parish churches of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the New Market Square and St. Anthony on Senatorska Street. He also benefited from help of employees of the public records department of the city administration to obtain birth and marriage certificates.⁵²¹]
[6] Lucja [Łucja] Meister, followed by her brother, Bertold, escaped from the Przemysl [Przemyśl] ghetto, in the Rzeszow [Rzeszów] district, with the help of forged documents which their friend, 19-year-old Zofia Komperda, obtained for them. Komperda arranged for Lucja to move in with her aunt, who lived in a village near the town of Przeworsk. However, when neighbors began suspecting that Lucja was Jewish, Komperda arranged for her to be transferred to a nearby village, where Lucja worked in a local school [as a teacher and lived in the parish rectory—she had converted earlier⁵²²] until the area was liberated in 1944. Although she survived the war, Lucja dies shortly thereafter [of typhus]. Komperda also arranged for Bertold Meister, Lucja’s brother, to stay with her parents. Her father, who was a picture restorer, taught Meitner the secrets of his trade, and employed him as an apprentice. Komperda also trained Meister as a land surveyor, and sent him to the nearby village of Wola Zglobienska [Zgłobieńska], where he worked in his new profession until the area was liberated in 1944. After the war, Meister remained in Poland.
[7] In 1943, during one of the Aktionen in the Bedzin [Będzin] ghetto in Upper Silesia, 13-year-old Alina Potok escaped from the transport and reached Warsaw. She made straight for the apartment of her parents’ acquaintances whose address she had. However, after a short stay, Alina was told to leave. During her stay at the acquaintances’s home, Alina got to know Leonard Glinski [Gliński], a member of the AK [Home Army]. When he heard that the acquaintance was planning to send Alina away or even hand her over to the authorities, Glinski beggd him to keep Alina for a few more days, during which time he managed to obtain Aryan papers for her, including school certificates, an identity card, and a birth certificate [from St. Casimir’s Church in Lwów⁵²³]. Since her age on these documents was 16, she was able under her assumed identity to register for work in Germany. Thanks to his ties with the underground, Glinski arranged for her to go to Vienna, where she worked with a doctor’s family with whom she stayed until the area was liberated. Throughout this time, Alina corresponded with Glinski.
[8] After their parents died, Shmuel and Arie Halpern, residents of Chorostkow [Chorostków] in the Tarnopol district, were interned in the Kamionka Strumilowa [Strumiłowa] labor camp. In July 1943, when the camp was surrounded by German and Ukrainian police in readiness for its liquidation, the Halpern brothers escaped. With great difficulty [Arie was assisted by an unidentified Ukrainian Uniate Catholic priest who distracted the attention of Ukrainian policemen when Arie passed through the village of Iławcze⁵²⁴], they reached the village of Iwanowka [Iwanówka], where they knocked on the door of the Gorniaks [Górniaks], former acquaintances of their parents. Tatiana Gorniak gave them a warm reception, while her husband, sons (Jan and Michal [Michał]), and daughter-in-… [Show more]law prepared a hiding place for the fugitives in the loft of their cowshed, where the whole family protected and looked after them. [For a very brief period, the brothers stayed in the barn of Rev. Lubovych, a Ukrainian Uniate Catholic priest, who was aware of the rescue and offered to provide the brothers with food and shelter.⁵²⁵] One night, a gang of Ukrainian nationalists raided the farm, killing Tatiana’s husband and brother. The fact that her son Michal slept with the Halpern brothers in their hiding place saved his life— which the Gorniaks interpreted as a miracle and a divine recompense for helping the Jews. Jan, Tatiana’s eldest son, and his wife, Jozefa [Józefa], who lived in another building, also participated in the rescue effort. In endangering their lives to help the Halpern brothers, the Gorniaks were acting out of simple humanity, and a loyalty which triumphed over adversity Later, Arie Halpern, who immigrated to Israel, and his brother Shmuel, who immigrated to the United States, kept up contact with their saviors’ family.
[9] As school friends, Irena Gwozdowicz and Ludwika Rozen, from the town of Bursztyn in the Stanislawow [Stanisławów] district, spent a lot of time in each other’s homes. Before the war, the Gwozdowiczes moved to the town of Przemysl [Przemyśl] while Ludwika and her parents remained in Bursztyn. After the German occupation, the Rozens were interned in the local ghetto and in 1942, when the Germans began liquidating the local Jewish communities, Ludwika fled from the ghetto to the Gwozdowiczes in Przemysl, where they gave her a warm reception. [When the Gwozdowiczes had returned to Bursztyn for a visit they brought food to the Rozens in the ghetto, left a note with their new address, and told Ludwika to seek them out if she was in danger. Ludwika reached Przemyśl on foot, exhausted, hungry and with high fever. A priest she met on her way gave her the birth certificate of Józefa Bałda, her peer who had recently died. Mrs. Matylda Gwozdowicz obtained an identity card for Ludwika in the same name.⁵²⁶] … [They] passed her off as the daughter of their maid, who, under Soviet rule, had been exiled to Siberia, and found work for her in a German soldier’s club. … Rozen stayed with the Gwozdowiczes until the area was liberated in 1944.
[10] Jozef [Józef] and Maria Kmiecinski [Kmieciński] lived in Vilna [Wilno], where their daughter, Sabina, studied at the local high school. One day a Jewish student joined her class—a Jewish boy called Ludwik Kupferblum (later Miedzinski [Miedziński]). He had come to Vilna from Warsaw in 1939 with his parents, Josef and Felicia, and his brother, Viktor, after the Germans invaded the city. … Together with the other young Jews, Ludwik and Viktor worked outside the ghetto, where they lived with their parents. Sabina would meet Ludwik and bring him food and she and her parents formulated a plan for getting his parents out. They obtained papers in the name of Miedzinski, and on the appointed evening at a specific time on their way to work Viktor and Ludwik led their parents outside and took them to the Kmiecinskis. That night, the whole family was taken by cart to Maria’s mother’s estate in the district of Swieciany [Święciany]. The family hid there until strangers turned up in the vicinity, at which point it was considered too dangerous and they were taken to friends of the Kmiecinskis, Wanda and Waclaw [Wacław] Kanczanin, who had an estate called Malinowka [Malinówka] near Kiemieliszki. Josef Kupferblum had cancer and Maria Kmiecinska’s sister, Jadwiga Bydelska, provided him with drugs but his condition worsened and he died. The problem of his burial was solved when the local priest in the parish of Kiemelin agreed to bury him in the Catholic cemetery at Kiemieliszki. The Kmiecinskis decided that it was too dangerous for Viktor, Ludwik, and Felicia to stay at Malinowka and took them to Maria’s sister, Helena Frackiewicz [Frąckiewicz], in Vilna. Helena arranged for Viktor to work as a janitor at the Dominican [Sisters’] monastery near Vilna. Ludwik joined the Polish army and managed to meet his brother in Lodz [Łódź].
[11] In 1938, after Vienna’s annexation to the Third Reich, Lola Holdengraeber and her daughter, Rita, left Vienna for Lwow [Lwów], Poland. In 1942, Lola and Rita left Lwow and escaped to Tarnow [Tarnów], where they turned to Mieczyslaw Kobylanski [Mieczyław Kobylański] and his sister, Jadwiga, former acquaintances of theirs. Despite their mother’s misgivings, Kobylanski and his sister opened their door to the two Jewish refugees and sheltered them in their home without expecting anything in return. In due course, Holdengraeber, thanks to Aryan papers Kobylanski obtained for her, found employment in an SS officers’ club. In late 1942, Holdengraeber and her daughter left Tarnow and moved to Warsaw. In Warsaw, the mother joined the Gwardia Ludowa (Peoples’ Guard) and was arrested and sent to Auschwitz, where she perished. The daughter, Rita, returned to Tarnow, where Kobylanski and his sister looked after her until July 1943 [with the help of a priest, Kobylański obtained a baptismal certificate for Rita⁵²⁷], after which she returned to Lwow where she stayed until the area was liberated in July 1944.
[12] While serving in the Polish army, Tadeusz Kobylko [Kobyłko] from Lwow [Lwów] made friends with Jewish recruits who helped him when, in September 1939, Lwow was annexed to the Soviet Union. In 1941, when the Germans occupied Lwow, Kobylko decided to repay his Jewish friends, and in July arranged for a group of Jews from Lwow to stay with the Kellers, a Jewish family who lived in nearby Stary Sambor. Keller prepared a bunker for the refugees, fed them, and saw to all their needs. In the spring of 1942, during a German raid, most of the hiding places in the village were discovered and the Jews who were hiding were killed. Kobylko, fearing that the Kellers’ bunker would be discovered, too Fajga (Fani) Ginsberg back to his apartment in Lwow, where he passed her off as his wife, Maria. Later, shortly before the liquidation of the Jews of Stary Sambor, Salka Keller, Fajga’s sister, sent a note to Kobylko informing him that she had left her four-year-old daughter, Ita, behind in the bunker. At great personal risk, Kobylko made his way to the bunker and took little Ita back with him to Lwow. When the neighbors became suspicious, Kobylko moved to a new apartment, where Fani, whom he had meanwhile married, gave birth to a baby boy. After Lwow’s liberation in the summer of 1944, Kobylko was suspected of collaborating with the Germans, and it was only thanks to his Jewish friends, who testified to his courage and altruism during the occupation, that he was released. After the war, Kobylko and Fani moved with their son and little Ita to an area within the new Polish borders. Later, Fani separated from her husband and immigrated to Israel with her son and niece.
According to information found in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Internet: ):
Itta Keller (now Ben Haiem) is the daughter of Shlomo and Sara Ginsburg. She was born in Lvov [Lwów], the closest hospital to her shtetl, Stary Sambor, on July 2, 1939. Shlomo worked there in a hardware store owned by his fathe... r, Shimon Keller. The family lived with Sara’s mother, Rivka Ginsburg, and had a home with a large cellar that they used to hide Jewish refugees who were fleeing to the Soviet Union in the fall of 1939. Sara’s sister, Fanny, worked in a chocolate factory in Lvov before the war where she became friendly with a co-worker, Tadeusz Kobylko [Kobyłko]. After the Germans took control of the region in 1941, Fanny came home to visit her sister in Stary Sambor and got caught in an Aktion. Fanny ran away and by chance met Tadeusz in a field. He offered to shelter Fanny as his wife in his home in Lvov. Tadeusz and Fanny were married by a priest who gave her false papers, but the couple had to move on more than one occasion when neighbors suspected that she was Jewish. Tadeusz also promised to help Sara if conditions worsened. In August 1942, the Germans conducted a round up of the Jews of Stary Sambor. Before the deportation, Sara sent a message to Tadeusz that “uncle is very sick”. This was a prearranged code for him to come and rescue Itta. She was hidden in the cellar with food and drink. Sara and her mother Rivka Ginsburg were deported to Belzec [Bełżec] where they perished. Shlom’s fate remained unknown. Tadeusz came to Stary Sambor and retrieved the little girl. He wrapped her in blankets and carried her out as if she was a package. On the way back to Lvov, Ukrainian guards with dogs chased him, and he had to jump into a lake, holding Itta aloft, so that the scent of the dogs would be thrown off. For the remainder of the war, Itta lived with her aunt, Tadeusz and their son Adam as their daughter under the name Irena Kobylko. During the war Tadeusz worked for the Polish railroads so that he could get information to help the underground. After the family was liberated on April 14, 1944, the Russians arrested Tadeusz and accused him of being a collaborator because of his work for the railroads. Only the testimony of Fanny secured his release. Tadeusz offered to convert to Judaism and attempted to leave for Palestine with Fanny and the two children, but he was not able to get a visa and permission to travel. Fanny and the children left Poland with Rabbi Herzog’s children’s transport and never saw Tadeusz again. They came to France and lived for a year in the village of Schirmeck before sailing to Palestine in October 1947 on board the Providence. Fanny setteled in Tel Aviv but wasn’t able to support the children and was forced to place Itta and Adam in boarding schools. Not receiving support from her family who was already in Israel, Fanny had to struggle until the end of her life in 1992. Itta and Adam married and live in Israel. Tadeusz Kobylko remarried and had three children. Yad Vashem recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations. He died in 1975.
[13] In 1942, shortly before the liquidation of the Sandomierz ghetto, Roma Glowinska [Głowińska] and her cousin, Gucia Glowinska, fled at their parents’ insistence. Because of their Aryan appearance, the two were sure their Polish acquaintances would be prepared to put them up, but much to their surprise they found that this was not the case. Ironically, salvation came from strangers. One day, in the winter of 1942, upon arriving in the town of Piastow [Piastów], near Warsaw, they knocked on the door of Andrzej and Anna Kostrzewa, a childless couple who lived in a one-room apartment. Despite the fact that Kostrzewa earned a paltry salary as a school caretaker, the Kostrzewas took the two refugees in and provided them with forged birth certificates. Despite the forged certificate, Gucia was arrested in the street and disappeared without a trace. The Kostrzewas reassured Roma, who feared a similar fate, telling her: “God will protect us.” Roma stayed with the Kostrzewas, who held themselves responsible for her safety and shared their meager fare with her, until September 1945. … In risking their lives, the Kostrzewas were inspired by deep religious faith and love of their fellow man.
According to the memoir My Life-Story by Ruth Marks (Roma Glowinski), found in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives (Internet: ):
Gucia and Roma went to the home of a former employee of the family who arranged for them to stay with Anna and Andrzej Kostrzewa, a Polish couple who lived in Prushkow [sic, Pruszków] near Warsaw. The Kostrzewas claimed that Roma was a distant relative whose father was a Polish officer killed by the Germans and whose mother died in the bombings in Lublin. Gucia also claimed to be a distant relative. The Kostrzewas acquired false papers for Gucia under the name Halina and a priest supplied a birth certificate for Roma under the name, Vislava Serafinska [Wisława Serafińska]. Andrzej had worked as a school concierge until the Germans closed the school. Anna supported the family by washing uniforms for German soldiers. To augment her meager wages, Gucia darned socks, and Roma did chores for neighbors. Gucia also sold food on the black market. She was arrested during one of her trips to Warsaw, and after revealing that she was Jewish, she was executed. After this incident, the Kostrzewa’s neighbors began to suspect that Roma also was Jewish. However, despite the rumors and inherent danger, Roma became closer to the Kostrzewas, and Anna and Andrzej cared for Roma like their own daughter.
[14] Even before the establishment of the Dabrowa [Dąbrowa] Tarnowska ghetto in the Cracow [Kraków] district, Lucylla Chmura came to the aid of Ida Margulies, a widowed school friend of hers, and her son, Henryk. Chmura supplied them with Aryan papers, and advised them to move to the village of Czechow [Czechów] in the county of Pinczow [Pińczów], Kielce district. [With the help of a priest she obtained a birth certificate for Henryk in the name of Marian Jackowski which he used until the end of the war.⁵²⁸] In their new home, Wojciech Kowalski, Chmura’s fiancé and an engineer, employed Henryk as his assistant and helped his mother financially. In early 1944, when the police became suspicious of Ida’s identity, she and Henryk moved to Cracow, with the help of Chmura and Kowalski. In Cracow, members of Zegota [Żegota] found jobs for them and watched out for their safety until January 1945, when they were liberated. [The Gestapo killed the landlord who had rented to Kowalski the office which was served as the Margulies’ hideout in Czechów.]
[15] At first the relations during the occupation between Henry [Henryk] Krueger, a resident of Warsaw, and his friends interned in the local ghetto were completely businesslike. But the humanitarian values imbued in Krueger soon induced him to help the needy and the persecuted, at great risk to his own life and without receiving any payment. He supplied food to his acquaintances in the ghetto, such as Halina Wald and the Frydman family, but in the summer of 1942 when the big Aktion began in Warsaw in which the ghetto’s Jews were taken to Treblinka, he felt compelled to do more to save their lives. He managed to get into the ghetto, which was more closely guarded at the time, bringing Aryan papers in his pockets. He gave these to 20-year-old Mina Frydman and accompanied her to an apartment he had prepared to shelter her on the Aryan side of the city. While she was hiding, Krueger continued to supply Mina with everything she needed, and when she was threatened by blackmailers he moved her to another apartment [and provided her with new identity documents based on a certificate obtained from Holy Cross Church in Warsaw⁵²⁹]. She remained there until the late summer of 1944 and after the Warsaw Uprising was taken, with her borrowed identity, to forced labor in Germany, where she was liberated by the Allied armies.
[16] In July 1942, a seven-month-old Jewish baby was left on the doorstep of the Leszczynski [Leszczyński] home, in the village of Rozki [Rożki] in the county of Krasnystaw, Lublin district. The Leszczynskis took the baby in and Sabina, one of the daughters, took responsibility for looking after it. Undeterred by the neighbors’ assertion that the entire village would be in danger if the police discovered the baby, Sabina looked after it devotedly, showered it with motherly love, and despite her family’s poverty saw to all its needs. The Jewish baby, who was christened Zygmunt Zolkiewski [Żółkiewski] in the local church, remained under Sabina’s care until July 1945 [sic, 1944], when the area was liberated. Shortly after the war, Mendel and Rivka Wajc, the boy’s parents, who had fled to the forests and joined the partisans, turned up at the Leszczynskis’ home. For reasons that were never clarified, the parents did not claim their child. … The Jewish child remained with Sabina and was later transferred to a Jewish children’s home near Lodz [Łódź].
[17] At the start of the German occupation of Poland, Laib Hersz [Leon] Grynberg, his wife, Ewa, and their daughter, Hanka [Chana, later Halina], fled from Warsaw and settled in Bialystok [Białystok], in Eastern Poland, which was annexed to the Soviet Union. The Germans subsequently occupied Eastern Poland in June 1941. In February 1943, Grynberg managed to smuggle his daughter out of the local ghetto and, with the help of Polish acquaintances [Michał and Jadwiga Skalski, who took Hanka in for several weeks and taught her Catholic prayers and rituals so that she could pass for a Polish orphan], transferred her to the nearby town of Suraż. Klemens and Zofia Leszczynski [Leszczyński] and their son. Jozef [Józef], agreed to take in ten-year-old Hanka without any preconditions or payment. They represented Hanka to neighbors as a Polish orphan from Warsaw, but in due course it was rumoured that the Leszczynskis were sheltering a Jewish girl. [When the Leszczyńskis learned that Hanka was Jewish, at first they were terrified, but after discussing the matter with their priest, they decided to continue looking after her. Hanka was secretly baptized, and then made her First Holy Communion publicly to maintain her cover.⁵³⁰] They saw to all her needs and educated her as if she were their own daughter. Hanka remained in this loving atmosphere until August 1944, when the area was liberated by the Red Army. Hanka’s father survived [after jumping out of a train treansporting Jews to Treblinka, he made his way back to Białystok where he stayed with the Skalskis] and after the liberation turned up at the Leszczynskis’ home, where his daughter was delivered to him safe and sound. Hanka and her father stayed in Poland. In risking their lives to save Hanka, the Leszczynskis were guided by compassion and humanitarian principles only.
[18] One night during the occupation, nine-year-old Helena Tygier knocked on the door of Rozalia Lojszczyk [Łojszczyk], who lived with her three children in the village of Bukowa Stara, some 35 kilometers from Warsaw. Exhausted and grimy, Helena related how she had left her parents in the Warsaw ghetto and, at her mothers [sic] bidding, had escaped to seek shelter with Lojszczyk’s mother, an old acquaintance of hers. Since Lojszczyk’s mother had already passed away, Lojszczyk took Helena into her home, where she looked after her devotedly. Helena made occasional forays into the ghetto to bring her parents food. After a tip-off to the authorities, German soldiers turned up at Lojszczyk’s home in January 1944 searching for the Jewish refugee. When she saw them entering the farmyard, Lojszczyk thrust a pail of milk into Helena’s hand and pushed her out of the door. The Germans took no notice of her, thinking she was a local dairymaid, and when they failed to find the girl they were looking for, they left. Since it was far too dangerous for Helena to continue staying with Lojszczyk, Lojszczyk arranged for her to stay with her brother, who lived in the neighboring village and agreed to shelter her. Lojszczyk also obtained a baptism certificate from the local priest, which enabled her to find work in the flour mill. Helena stayed with Lojszczyk’s brother until January 1945, when the area was liberated.
[19] Immediately after the war began, Izabela Malinowska, who lived in Vilna [Wilno], rushed to the aid of the Jewish refugees who began thronging to her for help. Taking advantage of her close acquaintance with numerous officials in municipal institutions, she helped the Jewish refugees by giving them advice and guidance. Malinowska worked in a coffee house that served as a rendezvous point for Jewish refugees and it was there that she met Efraim Jakiri. The two became friends and eventually fell in love. Jakiri moved into Malinowska’s house, located in a suburb of the city. When the Germans occupied Vilna [in June 1941], Jakiri tried to flee from the city with the retreating Red Army but was unsuccessful. He returned to Vilna and was confined in the ghetto set up there. All the while, Malinowska helped by supplying him with food parcels when he arrived daily at the city’s military base where he worked. Thanks to her acquaintance with the local priest, Malinowska managed to procure Aryan papers for Jakiri and took him back into her home after he fled from his place of employment. His presence in her home aroused the ire of the neighbors and Malinowska was forced to find Jakiri a safer place to hide. She was helped by a friend, a member of the Polish underground, who moved Jakiri to relatives of his who lived in the village of Kobylniki, near Lake Narocz. There he was represented as a student in need of country air because of the tuberculosis from which he suffered. In 1943, Jakiri joined the partisans. He was wounded in battle and after the liberation married Malinowska and they moved to an area within the new Polish borders.
[20] In the summer of 1941, Olga Jospa and her parents were deported from their home town of Husiatyn, in the Tarnopol district. After much suffering and hardship, the three Jewish fugitives arrived in the ghetto of Kopyczynce [Kopyczyńce], from which they fled just before its liquidation in early 1943. While they were still in the ghetto, Aniela Malkiewicz [Małkiewicz] approached the Jospa family, for whom she had done housework from the year 1928, and without asking for any payment expressed her willingness to help them in any way she could. When they left the ghetto, the Jospa family came to Malkiewicz, who at first hid them in the attic of the local church. She subsequently moved them to a number of other hiding places in the surrounding villages. Despite the danger posed to her life, Malkiewicz continued to care for the three Jewish refugees until the liberation of the area in the summer of 1944.
[21] In July 1942, about three months before the final liquidation of the ghetto in the resort town of Busko-Zdroj [Zdrój] in the Kielce district, Helena Schmalholz and her two sons, Shimon and Yehoshua, fled from the ghetto. A member of the underground from the Peasants’ Battalions (Bataliony Chlopskie [Chłopskie]— Józef Maślanka, a local commander) who had known the family before the war helped them escape from the ghetto, bringing them to the nearby village of Ruczynow [Ruczynów] . There he referred them to the farm of Wincenty and Jozefa [Józefa] Misztal, local-born farmers, also active in the underground, who lived with their son, Stanislaw [Stanisław]. All three members of the Misztal family received the three Jewish fugitives warmly, without asking for or receiving anything in return, considering it their patriotic duty and part of their war against the common enemy. After a short time, Jozefa obtained Aryan papers for Schmalholz and her sons and represented them to their neighbors as relatives. Because of the special treatment that Schmalholz and her sons received from the Misztal family, no one in the village doubted that the mother and two sons were indeed relatives of their hosts. The three moved about freely in the village and slept and ate together with the Misztal family members, who also prepared an underground hiding place in case of a surprise search or if they should be betrayed. Schmalholz and her two sons remained in the home of the Misztal family until the liberation of the area in January 1945 and after the war left Poland.
From Helena Schmalholz’s testimony: “Maślanka gave me a letter for Mrs. Misztal … with instructions that she accompany me to the local commune council administration (gmina). Risking her safety, she went with me to that office, and the priest and organist, who were privy to the activities of the underground, gave me papers showing me as Mrs. Misztal’s sister, and on the strength of these documents I obtained employment in Busko-Zdrój.” ⁵³¹
[22] After the Jews of Warsaw were ordered to move into the ghetto, Abram and Felicia Gwiazda decided to seek refuge in one of the villages in the area of Otwock, near Warsaw. The situation worsened, and when Felicia Gwiazda was about to give birth, Katarzyna Monko [Mońko], the local midwife, was called in to help her. She determined that the conditions of the hideout could pose a danger to the lives of both the mother and child. Although she knew that Gwiazda was Jewish, she offered to hide her in her home, where she lived with her son and daughter-in-law, Mieczyslaw [Mieczysław] and Aniela. Gwiazda gave birth to a little girl in the home of the Monko family, and after it became clear that it was impossible for them to return to the hiding place, Gwiazda decided in desperation to abandon her baby in the train station. Monko expressed her firm opposition to this idea, and with the support of the local priest decided to keep the little girl and care for her until after the war. The little Jewish girl remained in the home of the Monko family, who treated her with devotion. After Monko died, her son and daughter-in-law continued to care for and raise the child. Eventually, a German soldier took the child with him to an army camp, where she was given over to a Polish woman, with the intention of bringing her to Germany. The Polish woman decided to flee from the camp and adopt the little girl as her own. However, Mieczyslaw and Aniela Monko kept track of the child, and after the war, when her biological parents arrived at the Monko home to reclaim their daughter, the Monkos gave them the address of the Polish woman. She refused to give them their daughter back, but thanks to the testimony in court of Mieczyslaw Monko and his wife, the child was finally returned to her parents. The family eventually immigrated to Israel …
[23] Rosalia Werdinger met Boleslaw [Bolesław] Muchowski before the war at his place of work in the city of Drohobycz, in the Lwow [Lwów] district, and in time their friendship turned into love. After the attacks against the Jews began following the German occupation of the area, Boleslaw took Werdinger to his brother, Zygmunt Muchowski, who lived in the village of Dziewule in Siedlce county, while he himself rented an apartment in the nearby town of Lukow [Łuków]. Zygmunt took Rosalia under his wing and hid her in his home in the village, and after he obtained Aryan papers for her in the name of a deceased relative [based on a baptismal certificate he obtained from the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Warsaw⁵³²], he took her to Lukow, where his brother Boleslaw was waiting for her. In Lukow, Boleslaw introduced Rosalia as his wife. Together with Soviet partisans active in the underground in the area, Zygmunt Muchowski continued to extend his assistance to Jews in need … After the war, Boleslaw married Rosalia and they remained in Poland.
[24] During the occupation, Bronislaw [Bronisław] Nietyksza worked in the manpower department of the city of Warsaw. He was also active in the underground organization that found hiding places and procured false documents for those persecuted by the occupation authorities. In this capacity, Nietyksza was approached by Jews who escaped from the ghetto, whom he also helped. Nietyksza had an arrangement with two Catholic priests in Warsaw, who agreed not to publish the names of all the newly deceased in their churches so that their identity cards could be adapted for use by Jews hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw. Netyksza supplied more than ten Jews with false papers in this way before the Germans discovered what he was doing. They arrested him on May 24, 1944, and sent him to the Stutthof concentration camp, from which he escaped during the evacuation of the camp.
[25] Stanislawa [Stanisława] Pacek was a teacher who lived during the occupation in the village of Prawiedniki near Lublin with her two sons, Leszek and Jerzy. After her entire family perished, 12-year-old Sara Kraus fled from the Warsaw ghetto. After much wandering, she arrived in Prawiedniki, where Pacek, a widow, took her in. She and her two sons took the girl under their wing and safeguarded her. Eventually, seven-year-old Basia Klig [born in 1935, later Batya Golan] and her mother [Chava-Chana or Hava-Hanna] also arrived at their home after fleeing from the Lublin ghetto and wandering for some time through the local countryside. In her testimony many years later, Klig would relate that Stanislawa Pacek had been a wonderful woman who, motivated only by love of humanity and without asking for or receiving anything in return, gave the fugitives emotional and physical succour, teaching them how to preserve their human dignity even under inhuman conditions, Despite the danger to her life and the lives of her sons, Pacek persevered in her rescue efforts, doing everything in her power to help the people she had taken in. After the war, all the survivors immigrated to Israel.
Before arriving at the Paceks, the Kligs had received assistance from other Poles in the area including a Catholic priest in Bychawa (?) who had given them medical help. The Pacek family also sheltered Reuben Finkelstein in their small farmhouse, after his mother’s Polish benefactor had been imprisoned by the Germans for helping Jews.⁵³³ Sara Kraus (later Kolkowicz) came across many rescuers after leaving Warsaw. She was sheltered for a brief period in the diocesan chancery in Lublin, where she worked as the housekeeper’s helper. This was the seat of the diocesan vicar general, Rev. Józef Kruszyński.⁵³⁴
[26] In 1941, before Irena Weksztein’s parents were deported from Czestochowa [Częstochowa] to a forced labor camp, they found a way to make contact with Kamilla Pelc, who, motivated by her love of humanity and without asking for or receiving any remuneration, agreed to take their two-year-old daughter under her wing. Pelc, a war widow, lived with her son, Karol, and risked her life to smuggle young Irena into her apartment and obtain Aryan papers for her [from a priest who agreed to forge a birth certificate for Irena⁵³⁵]. She represented Irena Weksztein to curious neighbors as her niece and cared for her as if she were her own. Over time, Irena grew very attached to Pelc and her son, looking upon them as her mother and brother. Despite the many dangers they encountered, Irena remained in their home until the liberation in January 1945. After the war, Irena’s parents, who survived the war, came to take her with them. Because the young girl had become so attached to her adopted family, she refused to accept her real parents. Her refusal was so intense that they had to leave the girl with Pelc for a few more months. Irena eventually emigrated with her parents to France and kept in touch with Pelc for many years.
[27] In September 1942, Lea Wicner’s [Leah or Lucia Weitzner] mother [Gusta] shoved the 12-year-old out of the railroad car that was transporting the Jews of Hnizdyczow [Hnizdyczów]-Kochawina [near Żydaczów] (Lwow [Lwów] district) to the Belzec [Bełżec] extermination camp. Wicner returned to her village, where she joined up with an uncle [Mundek Feldman] who had [avoided] the transport [and was hidden by the Wohański family⁵³⁶]. With his assistance, she obtained Aryan papers [from a Polish priest⁵³⁷] with which she was able to reach Stary Sambor, where she went to the home of Feliks and Stefania Plauszewski, who were acquainted with her family. The Plauszewskis took Wicner in like a member of the family, taking care of her and not disclosing her Jewish origin to anyone, including their children. In early 1943 [1944?], the Polish residents of Stary Sambor were expelled to the west. The Plauszewskis, together with Wicner, reached Tarnobrzeg (on the Vistula River), but since Poles from Wicner’s village had also been expelled to this area, it was feared that her identity would be revealed. Thus, the Plauszewskis decided to move Wicner to the home of Stefania Gos [Goś], Feliks’s sister, in Sobieska Wola (Lublin district). Gos and her husband, Edward, like the Plauszewskis, treated Wicner as affectionately and devotedly as a daughter until the area was liberated in July 1944. The two Polish families risked their lives to rescue Wicner purely for humanitarian reasons, without remuneration. After the war, Lea Wicner moved to Israel and stayed in touch with her rescuers’ children.
[28] In March 1943, after the liquidation of the Cracow [Kraków] ghetto, Mr. and Mrs. Kardisz continued to work in the Optima factory on the Aryan side of the city, hiding their two children, Rena and Romek, in the factory as well. There, they met Rozalia Poslawska [Posławska], the wife of Boleslaw Poslawski [Bolesław Posławski], a minor factory official. The Kardiszes felt that they could trust Posławska and told her about their two children hiding in the factory. The story touched Posławska, who had three children of her own, and she offered to hide the children in her home unconditionally. She told them she had connections with a Polish underground organization that helped Jews and if necessary could ask the organization for financial help to care for the children. Mr. and Mrs. Kardisz were eventually deported to a concentration camp and their two children remained with the Posławski family. One day, a Polish neighbor happened to discover that the Posławskis were hiding two Jewish children in their home and attempted to blackmail them. Posławska refused to pay what he asked and he informed on them to the authorities. Posławska was arrested with young Romek, but his sister, Rena, managed to escape and hide in a church. Posławska was thrown in prison and tortured and only thanks to the confusion caused by the approaching front was she able to escape from prison and hide. Romek was murdered, but his sister, Rena, was returned to the Posławski family by the priest who discovered her presence in the church. Of the parents, who had been deported to Bergen-Belsen, only the mother, Ester Kardisz, remained alive. … Kardisz came to them sick and exhausted and they cared for her as if she were a member of the family and helped her and her daughter Rena to get back on their feet. Kardisz and her daughter eventually immigrated to Israel.
[29] Stefan Raczynski [Raczyński], who lived with his family in the village of Wegelina in the Vilna [Wilno] district, was superficially acquainted with Jews in the nearby town of Niemczyn. In September 1941, after the massacre perpetrated by the Germans and Lithuanians against the local Jews, Jewish fugitives began turning up at Raczynski’s home asking for help. Stefan and his family helped the Jewish refugees to the best of their ability and provided them with food and a temporary hiding place. Stefan’s mother even looked after a baby whom a Jewish woman had abandoned on her doorstep. Thanks to her rescue work, her home became known as “the home of Abraham the Patriarch.” In 1942, Raczynski became acquainted with Shoshana Dezent, a young Jewish woman from Vilna who was hiding under an assumed identity in the surrounding villages and working in peasants’ homes as a casual laborer. Dezent, who had lived in a town all her life, found it hard to adapt to village life. Fearing for her safety, Raczynski decided to protect her and whenever she was in difficulties arranged for her to stay with acquaintances of his in the nearby villages. In the spring of 1944, armed Polish nationalists, suspecting Dezent of being Jewish, attacked her and beat her almost to death. Raczynski immediately summoned the local priest, who testified that Dezent was not Jewish, thereby saving her life. Following this incident, Raczynski took Dezent home and looked after her until the area was liberated. After the war, Raczynski … married Dezent. In 1960, the Raczynskis immigrated to Israel with their two children.
[30] In 1943, Mariam Feier placed her four-year-old daughter, Warda, in a Polish children’s home in Warsaw. A priest who worked in the home, realizing that Warda was Jewish, feared for her safety, since German policemen frequently came to inspect the home looking for Jewish children. The priest turned to his friend, Teofilia Rauch, who lived with her daughter [in] Zalesie, not far from Warsaw, and asked her to take Warda in. Rauch agreed and, for almost two years, looked after Warda and saw to all her needs as if she were her own daughter. After the war, Mariam Feier returned from Germany, where she had been sent as a forced laborer, and began looking for her daughter through the press. When Rauch found out that Warda’s mother was looking for her, she was extremely ambivalent about contacting her, but in the end, for religious reasons, decided to return Warda to her mother without asking for any remuneration.
[31] During the occupation, Jan and Wladyslawa [Władysława] Smolko [Smółko] were AK [Home Army] activists who lived in the town of Tykocin in the Bialystok [Białystok] district. In his official capacity as organist and registrar at the local church, Smolko had access to the birth and death registries [which allowed them to provide documents to Jews⁵³⁸]. In January 1943, before the first Aktion in the Bialystok ghetto, Michael Turek and his brother, Menachem, were smuggled out of the ghetto by a Polish acquaintance who hid them temporarily in his home. The Smolkos, after being approached by the acquaintance, took the Turek brothers in, provided them with Aryan papers, and supported them financially for about a year and a half, until the liberation. [The Smolkos also helped four members of the Goldzin family survive.]
[32] Before the occupation, Ela Pleszewska, an attorney, and Henryk Sosnowski, a judge in Cracow [Kraków], were colleagues. Already in September 1939, when the Germans occupied the city, Sosnowski foresaw the danger threatening the Jews and, guided by humanitarian principles, hid Pleszewska in his apartment. Since Pleszewska was known in Cracow, where she had many acquaintances and former clients, Sosnowski, fearing informers, asked his friend the priest for help. The priest, without even seeing Pleszewska, drew up an official document stating that Sosnowski and Pleszewska were husband and wife. Sosnowski and Pleszewska left Cracow, but fearing discovery despite possession of the document kept constantly on the move. Unemployed and with no fixed source of income, Sosnowski nevertheless managed to smuggle food into the Cracow ghetto for his “wife’s” family and helped some of them escape to the Aryan side of the city. Destitute, and persecuted both by the authorities and extortionists, the Sosnowskis were liberated in January 1945, after which they returned to Cracow and resumed their careers. Pleszewska died in Poland in 1965.
[33] During the occupation, Maria Sitko lived with her daughter, Wanda, in Sosnowiec (Upper Silesia). Starting in 1943, after the ghetto in the Srodula [Środula] neighborhood was liquidated, the Sitkos’ apartment—living room, kitchen, and half-room, with neither running water nor indoor conveniences—served as provisional shelter for five Jewish refugees. Three of them—Leon Wajntraub, Jerzy Feder, and Nechamia Mandelbaum—had escaped from the ghetto; the other two, Frymeta Feder and Felicia Kac, had slipped out of the Auschwitz prisoners’ death march in January 1945. Several fugitives were housed in the half-room; the others were placed in a hideout specially prepared for them under the kitchen floor. Sitko and her daughter were prompted to aid the Jewish refugees by profound altruism stemming from their religious faith. After a priest gave their rescue operation his blessing after they disclosed it to him in confession, the Sitkos offered the fugitives even greater assistance and never sought recompense. In one case, when the Gestapo searched their house for hidden Jews, the Sitkos resourcefully concealed their wards, thereby saving their lives. The Sitkos gave the five Jewish refugees devoted and sympathetic care until the liberation in late January 1945.
[34] In August 1942, with the liquidation of the Jewish community of Wiszniew in the Nowogrodek [Nowogródek] district, a number of Jews, including Mina Milikowska, escaped. After many vicissitudes and on the verge of despair, she reached the estate of Bagatelka, where she met a farmer by the name of Julian Slodzinski [Słodziński]. Slodzinski, guided by humanitarian principles which overrode considerations of personal safety, led her to his house and, with his wife’s consent, offered her shelter there without expecting anything in return. Milikowska stayed with Julian and Bronislawa [Bronisława] Slodzinski and their daughter, Regina, until April 1943, after which she joined a Jewish partisan company operating in the nearby forest, fighting in its ranks until the area was liberated.
The Słodziński family also assisted other Jews and secured the help of a local priest in their rescue efforts. (“The Slodzinski Family,” The Polish Righteous, Internet: .)
Julian Słodziński, along with his wife Bronisława, his daughter Regina and three younger children, worked on their farm in Bagatelka near Wiszniew. … The Słodzińskis rescued Mina Milkowska [sic], one of the few Jews who managed to escape [from the ghetto in Wiszniew]. They knew Mina before World War II, when her father owned two shops and a mill. Regina shared a room with Mina. The Słodzińskis would tell their guests she was a babysitter. Mina joined a Jewish partisan group in 1943.

The Słodzińskis also rescued a Jewish woman who had escaped from the ghetto in Wilno. Regina does not remember her name. Having so-called “Aryan features,” the woman was able to openly help on the farm. After a month, a friend priest gave her a baptism certificate, and she left her shelter in Bagatelka. Her further life paths remain unknown.

Moreover, the Słodzińskis hid 6 Jews in their barn for about one month. One of them was the family’s former friend, Leon Kokin, and one was probably Mina’s brother. Regina remembers two other names: Dudman and Reiman. She never saw these Jews, as she would only bring them food and leave. However, they had contact with Julian, who would bring them food in the evenings. These Jews later joined the partisan groups.
[35] Janina Straszewska and her daughter, Teresa, lived in Cracow [Kraków]. They met Ludwika Liebeskind in late 1941, when the inhabitants of the ghetto were sent to work outside the ghetto. In the summer of 1942, Liebeskind asked Straszewska to place Gizela Szwarc, her five-year-old niece, in hiding in her apartment. Straszewska agreed, sought no remuneration, and offered to shelter Liebeskind too. Straszewska provided the Jewish girl with a certificate of baptism and Liebeskind with a forged birth certificate. [They obtained the documents from a priest they knew in an outlying village.⁵³⁹] After a while, Liebeskind found a way to move her mother and sister from the Plaszow [Płaszów] camp and, with Straszewska’s assistance, found them asylum in a rented apartment in town. Because her facial features left no doubt about her Jewishness, Liebeskind was arrested one day while riding the streetcar. Although she escaped and returned to the Straszewskas’ home, she was afraid to go outside from then on. Teresa, active in a Resistance movement, provided Liebeskind with a forged Kennkarte (identity card). Liebeskind and her niece, Szwarc, stayed in Straszewska’s home until the liberation in January 1945.
[36] During the war, Jozef [Józef] and Antonina Szewc, along with their seven children and Jozef’s parents, lived in the village of Niedzieliska in the Zamosc [Zamość] district, where Jozef acted as the village elder. In late 1940, following the closure of the Warsaw ghetto, Fraida Rozental (later Cukier), who was then 16, found her way to Jozef’s home. She possessed papers in the name of Irena Kiel. Jozef and his family sheltered her in their home. In May 1942, Jozef obtained a birth certificate for her that was confirmed by the local priest [the pastor of Wielącza] in the name of Halina Byk. These papers enabled Frieda to work in Germany for the remainder of the war. Jozef’s wife, Antonina, as well as his parents, Marcin and Zofia, were also helpful. “Marcin Szewc even mailed a couple of letters to me in Germany,” wrote Fraida Cukier in her testimony to Yad Vashem. After the war, she returned to Poland and remained there.
[37] In the summer of 1942, before the ghetto of Pinczow [Pińczów] (Kielce District) was liquidated, eight-year-old Halina Fiszer’s parents ordered the girl to flee to the home of Dr. Aniela Goldszmid, their acquaintance. Dr. Golszmid took her to her sister, Leonka Tarabula, who with her husband and three children lived in Miernów (Pinczow county). Despite their dire economic circumstances, the Tarabulas agreed to take in the Jewish girl, whom they had never met. … The Tarabulas welcomed Halina as a niece in every sense and [to maintain her cover as a relative], Leonka had her baptized and equipped with a Christian birth certificate. Halina was raised lovingly and lacked for nothing … Halina spent three years with the Tarabulas, a period that she subsequently recalled as a time of kindness that prepared her for normal life. After the war, Tarabula … delivered Halina Fiszer to the Jewish orphanage in Cracow [Kraków], from which, along with other youngsters, she moved to Israel in 1950.

[38] Danuta Wolikowska (née Malinowska) was raised in Luck [Łuck] (in Volhynia), where she graduated from the Tadeusz Kosciuszki [Kościuszko] state gymnasium, where she befriended a Jewish girl named Ida Dekelbaum (later Landsberg). In early 1941, Danuta’s father was deported to Siberia. One June 21, 1941, Danuta went to Lwow [Lwów] to meet Ida, who was studying there. That very day, the German-Soviet war broke out and Lwow was bombarded. The girls decided to return to their family homes. Since all communication was cut off, they started out by foot towards Volhynia. They walked for five days but did not reach their hometown. In this situation they came to the conclusion that Ida had to conceal her origins, so she tore up her papers and threw them away. Danuta and Ida then managed to get to Wlodzimierz Wolynski [Włodzimierz Wołyński], where Danuta’s mother was living. … Ida went into the ghetto. Danuta, however, began to work in the regional office where she managed to get papers for Ida, which allowed her to leave the ghetto and look for a way to earn some money outside the ghetto walls. In 1942, rumors spread about the liquidation of the ghettos. Danuta decided to hide Ida in her own rented apartment. There, she fed her friend and took care of all her needs. When the liquidation of the ghetto began, she decided to take Ida out of town altogether. One day she drove a carriage near the house dressed as a local girl. She dressed Ida in the same manner and together they drove out of town. They reached the village where Danuta’s mother worked as a teacher and Danuta introduced Ida as her relative and arranged a place for her to stay, leaving her under the care of the trusted school janitor but without telling him of her real origin. Danuta visited Ida often, bringing her food and clothing; at the same time, she continued to tell the locals that Ida was her relative. She also arranged to obtain proper documents for Ida through the local priest. Towards the end of 1943, Danuta reached the conclusion that due to the anti-Polish sentiments of the local Ukrainian population, Ida should leave the village. She gave her the address of friends in the Kielce area and sent her on her way with a group of Polish refugees. Ida got to Kielce, where she safely awaited liberation while working as a teacher in a nearby village. Throughout this entire period, Danuta’s messengers maintained contact with Ida.

[39] Regina Zajaczkowska [Zajączkowska] lived with her son, Ryszard, and her daughters, Izabela Stasiuk and her family and Maria Janiak and her family, in Wlodzimierz Wolynski [Włodzimierz Wołyński]. One day, Irena Gelman and her year-old daughter, Anna, appeared at their house. Irena had fled the Lwow [Lwów] ghetto (her husband had perished even before they entered the ghetto) and after a long journey arrived in Wlodzimierz Wolynski. She represented herself to the local priest as a Polish woman whose entire family had been killed. She said she was looking for work. The priest directed her to the Stasiuk family to work as a maid and cook. Some time afterwards, the Stasiuk family decided to move to Lublin out of fear of Ukrainian nationalists and invited Irena to come along with them. Izabela’s mother, Regina Zajaczkowska, came to visit her daughter and advised Irena not to go to Lublin. At the same time, she offered help if Irena should have to flee Lublin in the future. Irena went with the family to Lublin but was forced to return to Wlodzimierz Wolynski. She then went to Regina, who warmly welcome her and her daughter (who was ill) into her home. … After a few days, when Irena’s daughter recovered, Irena decided to leave. She thanked Regina for her help and said that she did not wish to put her at risk anymore as, she explained, she was a Jewish escapee from the ghetto. Zajaczkowska smiled and told her that from the moment she first saw her and her child she knew they were not Polish, but that this did not change a thing. Regina agreed to keep Irena and her daughter with her … Irena stayed with the Zajaczkowskis until the end of the war …
[40] Olga Zawadzka, originally from Lwow [Lwów], moved to the village of Czuszow [Czuszów], Kielce district, after her marriage. Between the years 1925 and 1930, she had been a student in Jan Kazimierz University in Lwow, where she had befriended a Jewish woman named Frida Kohn, who was a mathematics student. After Olga left Lwow, the two friends lost contact. When the Germans took over Lwow, a mutual friend turned to Olga and asked her if she would hide Fela in her home. Olga, bearing in mind the fact that Fela was a Jew, told her warmheartedly that Fela would be most welcome. Fela arrived in Czuszow and Olga, with the help of friends and a priest,⁵⁴⁰ obtained a false birth certificate and Kennkarte for her made out in the name of Maria Zajaczkowska [Zajączkowska]. Fela asked Olga to help a friend of hers, Klara Nachtgaist, who was spending entire days in churches, too frightened to leave. Olga welcomed her into her home as well. Klara already had Aryan papers made out in the name of Julia Nahorayska. In the summer of 1942, Olga went to Lwow again, where she agreed to bring back Nina Drucker (later Noe Levine), the seven-year-old daughter of the director of the Lwow ghetto hospital, Dr. Herman Drucker, to Czuszow. Olga took Nina, who had a birth certificate in the name of Janina Witeszczak, into her home. Whenever the need arose, the child was either put up in the Sisters of St. Urszula [Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union] boarding school in Cracow [Kraków] or the Sisters of the Holy Ghost [Sisters Canonesses of the Holy Spirit de Saxia] boarding school in Busko [Busko-Zdrój]. Olga represented the fugitive child as a daughter of relatives who had died during the war.
[41] Henryk Zielonka was a tailor and ran an underwear factory in Czestochowa [Częstochowa]. When he married Getruda he was already a widower and had two sons from his previous marriage. In the summer of 1943, Henryk’s son brought home a five-year-old Jewish girl named Chana (later Chana Batista). Chana was born on the outskirts of Czestochowa, in Rakow [Raków]. On June 16, 1943, Chana’s mother had taken her to Czestochowa⁵⁴¹ and gave her a scrap of paper with an address written on it. Chana was told that at the said address she would find a woman who would help her. Since then she never saw her mother again. A passerby directed Chana, who was not able to read at the time, to the address, where she waited a few hours for the woman whom her mother had told her about. The woman wrote her a new note and took the girl to a church. She told her to wait for the priest and quickly disappeared herself. After mass, Chana turned to the priest and showed him the note. The priest said that he could not help her. He called in a boy and a girl and asked them to take Chana to an old age home run by nuns. In front of the home there was a big courtyard; on the bench sat a few people. They started asking Chana questions to see if she knew how to pray. Suddenly she noticed the boy coming down the stairs; it was Henryk Zielonka’s son. “Aren’t you ashamed to tire this girl out with questions?” he asked. He took Chana by the arm and escorted her to his parents’ house. After a time, Henryk managed to get documents for Chana “proving” that she was his niece. … “Shortly afterwards they told me to call them ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ … I was a difficult child, I almost didn’t speak, I didn’t smile, and in addition I didn’t want to eat. My poor mother did what she could to make sure that I would eat something. …” After the war, Chana started school, finished her studies, and began working. When her adoptive parents died, she … discovered that her mother was murdered by the Germans.
[42] Halina Zwanska [Zwańska] and her mother, Aleksandra Gurska [Górska?], lived in Vilna [Wilno]. During the war, they rescued a five-year-old girl, Miriam Griner (later Miriam Goldin), [born in Wilno in 1939]. After the town was occupied by the German army, the Griner family—the father, Faibish, his wife, and their daughter Miriam—found themselves, like all remaining Vilna Jews, in the ghetto, and later in a camp in Vilna. Towards the end of March 1944, the Germans seized all of the children that were in the camp. Faibish managed, however, to hide his then five-year-old daughter. Aleksandra Gurska, who agreed to take the child under her care, carried her out of the camp in a big cooking pot and then later to her apartment where she lived with her already married daughter, Halina Zwanska. The two women looked after the child for four months, until the Red Army liberated the town on July 10, 1944. In his testimony to Yad Vashem, Faibish emphasized that the child spoke only Yiddish at the time, making the situation even more complicated. Miriam Goldin also added in her testimony that during her stay with Gurska and Zwanska another Jewish woman called Werszes was staying there too. [Her rescuers passed Miriam as a Catholic and took her to church services. Her identity was known to the priest, who was supportive of the rescuers. After the war, Miriam was reunited with her parents. ⁵⁴²]
[43] Witold and Zofia Bohdziewicz and Grzegorz and Beata Schneider of Wilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania) knew each other even before the war, but until the Nazi occupation there was no special connection between them. The relations between these two young families, as yet without children, became closer only in the summer of 1941, after the German occupation of the city and the confinement of the Jews in the ghetto. Bohdziewicz was then working as an engineer in the Haus und Wohnung Rustungsbetrieb factory in the service of the war effort, under German supervision. [Hundreds of thousands of Jews also worked in German factories and workshops, mainly in the service of the war effort, under German supervision.] Grzegorz Schneider was a metalworker by profession and Bohdziewicz gained him employment in the factory. Thanks to his employment there, Schneider had a permit to circulate outside the ghetto. In addition, the Bohdziewicz family helped the Schneider family with food. In 1943, when rumors spread that the Germans were about to liquidate the ghetto, the Schneider family sought a way to escape outside the walls. The problem was to find a suitable hiding place for their one-year-old son, Alexander, born in 1942 in the ghetto. Schneider decided to confide in his benefactor, Bohdziewicz. The latter discussed the matter with his wife, Zofia, then pregnant with their daughter. Zofia understood the distress of the Schneider couple, and, after some hesitation, agreed to save the infant by taking him in. She was helped in her decision by the fact that the child was blond and uncircumcised. The child was smuggled out of the ghetto, and presented as abandoned on her doorstep. She told her curious neighbors that she intended to adopt him. So that there would be no suspicion that the child was Jewish she had him baptized, with the prior consent of his parents, and gave him their surname of Bohdziewicz. [The age of the child rendered the request for baptism suspect, as did Zofia’s pregnancy.] They cared for him devotedly and lovingly as if he were their own son in every sense of the word. The infant Alexander Schneider remained with the Bohdziewicz couple until after the liberation when he was returned to his parents who had also survived. The Bohdziewiczes did not ask for any payment.
[44] During the German occupation, Maria Hanzowa, a poor widow and devout Catholic, lived with her adult daughter, Andzia, at 4 Łyczakowska Street in Lwów (today L’viv). She rescued Zofia Akselrod (later, Garfinkel), her brother Milek and their mother Ester Akselrod. Zofia Akselrod worked in a clothing factory in Lwów on the “Aryan” side. In March 1943, she began contacting Poles she knew hoping to find a place to hide with their assistance. Her first efforts were not successful since she was only sheltered for one night in exchange for money she had received by selling a coat and was forced back to the ghetto. Maria Hanzowa had had business dealings with Zofia’s parents in Przemyślany (Tarnopol District), from whom she bought butter for sale at market. She had accumulated a debt of 400 zloty [złoty] that she had not been able to pay back. Following some dreams in which Zofia’s father appeared, Maria decided to find the family and help them. She asked her priest for advice and began to search for the family. Maria and Zofia met accidentally on Źódlana Street outside the ghetto. She agreed to take Zofia’s mother and promised to share with her family whatever she had. Zofia sent her mother, Ester, to Maria Hanzowa and joined her after her plan to hide with a young couple fell through. The two were then joined by Milek, Zofia’s brother, who managed to escape from the Janowska Camp after Zofia had sent him the address hidden in a loaf of bread. Maria informed them about the situation at the front and cared for their needs. She cooked for them, providing dairy food. She was motivated by her financial debt to the family [which was hardly sufficient to offset the risk and expenses she incurred] and hoped that they would convert, although she did not pressure them. Maria sold some gold pieces she had to help her buy food for them. Maria’s daughter, Andzia, knew about the arrangement and kept the secret. Maria Hanzowa hid and cared for Zofia, her brother Milek and their mother Ester from March 1943 until June 1944. After the war, they would meet Maria while still in Lwów, providing her with extra food, but later contact was lost after Maria Hazowa moved west to the new borders of Poland, while the Akselrods moved first to Kraków in March 1945, then to a DP camp, and finally immigrated to the United States.
[45] The Jankowski family, a devout Catholic family of three, lived in the village of Maliniak (Młyniec?) near Warsaw, the parents Bolesław and Stanisława and their three-year-old daughter Halina (today, Brulińska). In 1942, after suffering the torments of wanderings and persecutions, 12-year-old Ester Rotfing (later, Livny) arrived at their home. She had been smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto with her older brother. They had tried to survive in the surrounding villages, working as shepherds for the farmers, and assuming the false identity of Polish orphans [an unlikely guise]. After losing her brother as a result of denunciation, Ester began to work for the Jankowski family, where she was very industrious and treated in turn with warmth. One day, Bolesław asked her if she had already participated in her First Communion ceremony as required at her age and she innocently replied in the negative. Bolesław promised to include her in the Communion ceremony the next Sunday at the church. When she went as required before the ceremony to her first confession before the priest, she panicked and revealed to him that she was Jewish. As a result, the priest did not let her participate in the ceremony and he shared the secret with Boleław. Once it was known that she was Jewish, Ester was seized by fear and sought to flee. Bolesław stopped her, calmed her down and promised that nothing would happen to her, that they would continue to treat her as a daughter in every way and take care of all her needs. He delivered on this promise and Ester stayed with the Jankowski family until the end of the war. They kept her even though many of the villagers knew that she was Jewish.
[46] During the war, Klara Lassoga lived in Ursus near Warsaw, where she worked in a factory for the Germans. In 1942, a good friend of her brought Leontyna Erenbrod, a 14-year-old Jewish orphan girl from Warsaw, to Klara asking that she hide the young girl in her home. Leontyna was originally from Bukaczowce (Rohatyn County, Stanisławów District, today Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine) and her parents had been murdered a year earlier in Warsaw. Klara, who was living alone at the time, had Jewish friends in the Warsaw ghetto, such as Laiche Rozen, whom she was in touch with and tried to help as much as she could. Her willingness to help her friends in the ghetto gave the impression that she would be willing to hide a young Jewish girl in her home. Indeed, when the girl was brought to her, she agreed to take her under her wing. In 1943, Leontyna was converted to Christianity in order to get a Christian birth certificate and to appear as Klara’s relative. Her new name was Ludwika Mileszczuk (later, Matias). She remained in Klara’s home and under her protection until the end of the war, and their relationship was like that of real members of the family even after the war.
The following is based on the recognition by Yad Vashem of the Brykczyński family in 2010 (The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: ):
[47] Feliks Sandauer was born in Lwów, Poland, on September 9, 1928 to parents Józef Henryk, a lawyer, and Franciszka, a pediatrician. In 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews en masse from Lwów to the Belżec camp. Although the Sandauers lived outside the ghetto, theirs was no easier fate: the Germans had the addresses of Jews living on the “Aryan” side, and they took away Józef Henryk, Franciszka, and Franciszka’s mother, Sara Czoban. Feliks was saved by two Italian soldiers who were quartered in the apartment and hid Feliks in their bed sheets. Somehow (possibly with the help of the Italian soldiers), Feliks found himself in the home of Aleksandra Dąmbska, a former friend of his mother’s. … when Feliks arrived, Aleksandra accepted him without any hesitation. However, because she herself was quite involved in the work of the Polish resistance, she hurriedly arranged for him to be sheltered in the home of her sister Maria Dąbska-Brykczyńska and her husband Marcin Brykczyński. Maria and Marcin Brykczyński lived in Skołyszyn with their four children. The couple was also playing host to a family of five Poles expelled by the Germans from their home in Poznań. Nonetheless Feliks was warmly welcomed in, under the assumed name of Feliks Sawicki, son of Marian and Franciszka, Poles ostensibly murdered by Germans. Only Maria and Marcin knew the truth of Feliks’ origins. They had him baptized in secret by a friendly priest, and nobody guessed his real identity. Everyone in the family perceived him as a brother or a cousin. Feliks, in turn, felt the same – a familial closeness to the Brykczyńskis as well as to Aleksandra Dąmbska. [In fact, word of this spread among the villagers but no one betrayed them.⁵⁴³]
The following is based on the recognition by Yad Vashem of Kazimiera Demiańczuk in 2011 (The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: ):
[48] Eugenia Vilensky was born in 1940 in Wilno (now Vilnius) to parents Mausza (b. 1893) and Sara (b. 1905). Mausza was a construction engineer with a background in singing. Sara was a pianist and accordion player. She also helped her mother in the laundry she owned, and in 1938 opened a little shop of her own.
In July 1941 the Germans came to Wilno and sent many Jewish men, including Mausza Vilensky, to forced labor in Kena, where they were all executed in September. Meanwhile, the women of the family (Eugenia, her mother, and her grandmother) were sent into the ghetto. The … [Show more]grandmother had a housekeeper named Maria Kalicka who came with them to the ghetto. When the Aktionen (mass executions) began in the ghetto, Sara started thinking of a way to save her infant daughter. Maria, who was Jewish, had somehow managed to acquire Polish identity papers and was acquainted with one of the German guards, who allowed her to go outside to buy food. In this way Maria managed to carry Eugenia out of the ghetto and give her to Kazimiera Demianczuk [Demiańczuk] (b. 1888), who lived nearby. Sara and her mother remained in the ghetto until their joint escape, but they both perished. Eugenia lived with Kazimiera until the end of the war. She called her “Auntie.” Demianczuk was a very devout woman. She baptized Eugenia and took her to church often. When there were battles and explosions in the city, she would wake the girl and have her pray to God for salvation. They were near starving, and Eugenia was often ill. The only language the child knew was Polish, and she learned to read from an illustrated book in Polish. Eugenia was exposed to much suffering and peril as a very little girl, and some of the things she saw in wartime Wilno remained with her as nightmares for the rest of her life. However, due to Kazimiera’s diligent care, she survived the war and remained with her “Auntie” for a while, attending kindergarten until some of her surviving Jewish relatives found her and took her to Moscow. Eugenia received a good education and became a musician and journalist. Kazimiera went to live in Poland after separating from the girl, and all contact with her was lost.
The following is based on the recognition by Yad Vashem of Jadwiga Sztefec in 2012 (The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: ):
[49] Alexander Semyanovski was born in 1937 in Vetrino, Belarus. By the beginning of World War II, the family moved to Łuck (today Lutsk) [in Volhynia]. Alexander’s father, Mikhail, was a military officer who fell in the first days of the war. His mother, Sofia Alkevtich-Semyanovska, and the two children, Alexander and Felix, were sent to the Łuck Ghetto in September 1941. They stayed there until August 1942, when a mass shooting in which 25,000 Jews were murdered too place. Right before the Aktion (mass execution) began, Alexander and Felix were taken away by Jadwiga Sztefec. She had been friends with Sofia before the war (Sofia worked at the post office and had many local friends and acquaintances). Jadwiga risked her life providing the Semyanovskis with food and clothing throughout their stay in the ghetto, but when an acquaintance of hers in the police told her that there was to be a mass killing, she decided to bribe a guard in the ghetto to extract the boys and save them. The spontaneous decision to save the children had dire consequences for Jadwiga. Her Ukrainian husband left her because it was well known that the Nazis would kill their entire family if they were to find Jewish children in their home. Her acquaintances knew she had no children, so she had to keep the boys hidden in the attic. Govern her circumstances, she soon realized that it was impossible to rescue two children, so she arranged for a different hideout for Felix, who survived the war tending to cattle on a farm. Jadwiga was able to get Alexander an identification card through her church, registering him as an adopted orphan. Still, when it was too dangerous to stay in the house, she had to hide him in the chimney or take him to the countryside, taking odd jobs to justify moving about. When someone reported that Jadwiga Sztefec was hiding a Jewish child, the two were saved by the same police acquaintance who had told her about the Aktion at the beginning of the war. They managed to escape again. After the war, Alexander stayed with Jadwiga until his enrollment in a military academy in 1955. He considered her his mother and treated her accordingly throughout her life. She died in 1977.
In some cases, Jews who were passing as Catholics turned to priests for solace without the expectation of material help. It is apparent, therefore, that they did not view the Catholic clergy as a hostile element even if they did not personally know the priest in question. One such case was that of Laura Schwarzwald, a native of Lwów, who was residing in Busko-Zdrój with her young daughter, Selma (born in 1937, later Sophie Turner-Zaretsky), under false identities. Laura had become Bronisława Tymejko, a widow, and her daughter was Zofia Tymejko. They were joined there by Laura’s younger sister Adela, who was living under the name Ksenia Osoba. (R. D. Rosen, Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust’s Hidden Child Survivors [New York: HarperCollins, 2014], pp.42–43.)
It was toward the end of the war, when Laura couldn’t have bought a good night’s sleep with a million zlotys, that an itinerant Catholic priest walked into Busko-Zdrój from who knows where and drew a crowd of faith-hungry Poles to a field outside of town. For reasons Laura herself barely understood, she stood in the chilly spring wind and listened to him.

She couldn’t take her eyes off of him. With his black moth-eaten cassock and sunken dark eyes, he looked as if he had experienced his own share of suffering. He stood in the pasture with his Bible open in one palm and his other hand pointing to the sky. He told the crowd that they would overcome their suffering with hope and prayer, that Jesus had not forgotten them, and that God would punish the evildoers, and so on and so forth. So where’s God been since 1939 she thought.

Laura almost never went to church on Sunday with Zofia and her class, and she couldn’t even remember a single Jewish prayer, but the man’s message struck some forgotten chord in her. When he finally closed the Bible and made some blessing motions and thanked everyone for coming, Laura was overcome with the desire to go right up to him and ask him to hear her confession.

“Prosze pani [proszę Pani], I will gladly hear your confession,” the priest said, “but only in a church, if you would be so kind as to show me the way to your house of God.”

She led him back across the field to St. Leonard’s Church, which was empty. She sat in a pew and he took a seat in the row behind her.

“O haven’t said a word to anyone for so long, and although I know I am putting my life in your hands by telling you, Father, I feel I must. I’m not even sure why, but please have mercy on me.”

“Go ahead, my daughter,” came the voice right behind her.

She swallowed and said, “I’m Jewish.”

There was silence behind her, which she broke by explaining that she and her daughter had been living as Catholics since 1942. What am I doing? She thought. Am I sending the two of us to our deaths after all this? After coming so far” A word from this tattered priest to the Gestapo and that would be it.

Still, there was silence, and Laura’s stomach tightened terribly.

She finally heard the priest say in a low voice, “You should not fear anyone or anything except for God. Gear God only and you will be helped and he will have mercy on you. Bless you, my daughter.”

The priest mumbles something in Latin and fell silent.

She waited, but the priest said no more. When she finally turned to look at him, he was no longer in the pew. She caught a glimpse of his long coat as he exited the church and turned. She stood up, amazed at what she had done and overcome with the unfamiliar feeling that there was a supernatural being looking out for her and Zofia. Before the war, she had been a nonbeliever, bound only by ethical principles. What sense did it make that only now, after God had abandoned the Jews, she should feel imbued with some fresh hope and renewed strength to survive? And yet she felt a presence.

She really didn’t know what to think. She had been the beneficiary of more than her share of sheer luck, but she didn’t believe she had been chosen. She didn’t believe she had earned it. She and Zofia had escaped deportation several times. Why? Because she was pretty? Because she spoke perfect German? Because her daughter was blond?

She had lived undetected among the Nazis. Why? Because she did the Polish officer and his family a favour? Because the landlady had given her a Christian prayer book and a good piece of advice?
Nuns throughout Poland took up the call to shelter Jews, especially children, in their convents, orphanages, and boarding schools. Many of these benefactors remain anonymous, as the following testimonies gathered by Yad Vashem illustrate. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, pp. 144, 148, 177, 214, 215, 332, 345–56, 358, 370, 404–405, 421, 489, 502, 507, 511–12; Part 2, pp.545–46, 713, 808, 863, 884, 923, 946; volume 10: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, 531–32, 542–43.)
[1] One day in the autumn of 1942, two men approached Janina Choromanska [Choromańska] in Warsaw, representing themselves as Poles who were interested in renting a room. Although they had Aryan papers, Choromanska realized that they were Jewish refugees and, stirred by their plight, invited them to stay with her. Shamai Zylberman and Jakub Gurfein took up her offer and stayed with her for several months, during which time Choromanska looked after them and helped them with their preparations for crossing the border into Hungary. Before they left, the fugitives passed on her address to Meir Gliksman and Tuvya Firer, whom Choromanska also sheltered in her home. Gliksman later also crossed the border into Hungary. When Firer informed Choromanska that his niece, who was hiding in a convent near Cracow [Kraków], was in danger, Choromanska, in a heroic operation, traveled to the convent and brought her back with her. Uncle and niece stayed in her apartment in Warsaw for several months. After the war, Zylberman, Gurfein, and Gliksman immigrated to Israel. Tuvya and his niece perished in unknown circumstances.
[2] Early on in the occupation, Romualda and Feliks Ciesielski, who lived in Bydgoszcz with their nine-year-old son, were deported to Cracow [Kraków], where they were assigned a shop and apartment that had been confiscated from their Jewish owners. Although they had no say in the matter, the Ciesielskis felt sorry for the Jews and decided they would do all they could to help them. In addition to distributing food and clothing among needy Jews, the Ciesielskis let their shop be used as a temporary shelter for Jews until they found a more permanent hiding place. Among the Jews helped by the Ciesielskis were Dr. Edmund Fiszler and his wife, Leonora, who stayed with them for several weeks. The four members of the Horowicz family also found temporary shelter with the Ciesielskis. At Romualda’s suggestion, the Horowiczes’ daughter, Zofia, was hidden in a convent. In 1942, the Gestapo, alerted by informers, arrested the Ciesielskis. Romualda was interrogated, tortured, and sent to Auschwitz, where she continued helping Jewish prisoners. Her husband was interned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, where he perished.
[3] One day in 1942, Wladyslaw [Władysław] Dobrodziej, a member of the Polish underground, entered the Warsaw ghetto dressed as a Polish policeman to get his friends Maria and Henryk Angielczyk out of the ghetto. After he succeeded in his mission, a shelter was arranged for the Angielczyks in the town of Piastow [Piastów], near Warsaw. During the rescue operation, Dobrodziej gave his address to Barbara Groslik, who lived in the same apartment as the Angielczyks, together with her young daughter, Elzbieta [Elżbieta]. That same year, Groslik escaped with her daughter and moved into a rented apartment on the Aryan side of the city. When the German police got wind of their whereabouts, Groslik turned to Dobrodziej, who helped her out, as he had promised. After placing Elzbieta in an institution for abandoned children run by nuns, Krystyna his wife, took Groslik to her mother, Helena-Maria Bunin, who lived in Miedzylesie [Międzylesie], near Warsaw,. The Dobrodziejs continued with their efforts to rescue Jews, helping Wladyslaw Gorzynski [Władysław Gorzyński] escape from the ghetto. Thanks to the Aryan papers in his possession, Gorzynski was sent to work in Germany, where he remained until the liberation. The Dobrodziejs were also instrumental in smuggling Zygmunt Rudnianski [Rudniański], and engineer, his wife; his brother, Adam Neuman; and a woman named Roza [Róża] Bukiet out of the ghetto and hiding them in a house they rented in Piastow. The Dobrodziejs considered saving Jews part of the struggle against a common enemy and never expected anything in return. Wladyslaw Dobrodziej was killed while carrying out an underground assignment. .
[4] In early 1943, Lea Russak and her relative, Aron Moszkowicz, left their hiding place in the Carpathian Mountains and moved to Otwock near Warsaw. Equipped with forged papers, the two turned up on the Fiejkas’ doorstep, asking to rent a room in their house. Helena and Boleslaw [Bolesław] Fiejka, realizing they were Jewish, agreed to hide them in their home against payment, which was willingly provided. The Fiejkas prepared a well-camouflaged shelter for the Jewish refugees under the floor of Fiejka’s carpentry shop. In time, the Grynszpans and their ten-year-old daughter joined them. Despite the danger, Helena Fiejka looked after the five Jewish refugees, cooked for them, washed their clothes, and removed their bodily wastes, even after they were no longer able to pay. One day, however, Boleslaw Fiejka ordered the refugees out. After days and nights of wandering through villages and fields without finding shelter, Russak and Moszkowicz, in desperation, returned to the Fiejkas. This time, Helena managed to persuade her husband, Boleslaw, to let the Jewish refugees stay. The three Grynszpans also returned to the Fiejkas’ home and stayed there until they were liberated. While at the Fiejkas, Russak fell ill and required medical attention. She was persuaded by Sister Teresa, a nun, to leave her hiding place and move in with relatives of Sister Teresa who lived in the town of Piastow [Piastów], near Warsaw. Russak stayed in Piastow until the area was liberated in January 1945 and after the war emigrated to Israel, while the Grynszpans moved to Canada. After the liberation, Moszkowicz joined the Red Army and fell fighting for Poland.
[5] In February 1942, with the establishment of the Tarnow [Tarnów] ghetto in the Cracow [Kraków] district, the Blumenkranzes decided to find a foster mother for their four-year-old daughter, Lea, outside the ghetto. Janina Walega [Wałęga, later Filozof, the niece of the bishop of Tarnów], a single woman who lived on the outskirts of the city, agreed to shelter little Lea in her home. However, only a few days later, neighbors began suspecting that Lea was Jewish and blackmailers and extortionists began threatening her. Hiding her little charge in a suitcase, Walega traveled with her in a compartment full of Germans to the town of Przemysl [Przemyśl], where she enrolled Lea, under a false identity, in a children’s institution run by Catholic nuns. Walega paid for her upkeep at the institution until the area was liberated.
[6] During the occupation, Franciszek and Maria Kielan lived in Warsaw with their daughters, Krystyna and Zofia. One day in 1942, Krystyna got to know Janina Prot, a new girl in her class. In due course, as the two became friends, Janina told Krystyna that she was Jewish and that she had left her parents, who were hiding in a nearby town, and had come to Warsaw on her own, believing that she had a greater chance of surviving there. Stirred by her friend’s plight, Krystyna and her sister, Zofia, decided to ask their parents to shelter Janina. Despite the danger, the parents agreed and took Janina into their home without expecting anything in return. Later, the Kielans arranged for Janina to stay with acquaintances in a village, where she helped with the housework, but she was soon sent back to the Kielans after the village authorities became suspicious of her true identity. One day in 1942, Prot was joined by Romana Laks, who also turned up on the Kielans’ doorstep after her hiding on the Aryan side of the city became too dangerous. For several months, the Kielans and their two daughters sheltered both Janina and Romana until Romana found a place in a convent near Warsaw, where she remained until the area was liberated by the Red Army. After suffering terrible hardships during the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1942, Prot stayed with the Kielans until the area was liberated. After the war, the two survivors emigrated to the United States …
[7] Giga Kochanowska, a spinster who lived in Warsaw, was indebted to her Jewish friends who, before the war, had helped her through periods of economic hardship. During the occupation, when several of these friends were interned in the local ghetto, Kochanowska repaid their kindness by risking her life to save them. In early 1942, Kochanowska helped her friend Estera Marber escape from the ghetto and put her up in her small apartment, where she looked after her devotedly, without expecting anything in return. She also entered the ghetto, at great personal risk, to bring food to her friends Moshe and Estera Borten and their baby daughter, Julia, who was born in the ghetto. In December 1942, when the Bortens asked Kochanowska to help them escape, she devised a daring plan which entailed crawling through a sewer to the Aryan side of the city. As soon as they arrived, Kochanowska provided them with Aryan papers and rented accommodations for them. When, some two months later, the landlord refused to extend the lease, Kochanowska, with considerable ingenuity, found the Bortens two separate apartments on the eastern side of the city and arranged for the baby to be sent to an institution outside Warsaw run by nuns. In late summer 1944, after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising, Kochanowska and Marber were driven out of Warsaw and, after suffering much privation, were liberated in January 1945. The Bortens were liberated in September 1944 and after the war immigrated to Israel. Marber later emigrated to France.
[8] After returning to Warsaw from the front in 1939, Antoni-Stefan Koper, knowing that he would not find work in his chosen profession (journalism), took an office job with the municipal tax authorities, which allowed him to enter the ghetto. On his visits to the ghetto, Koper brought with him documents forged in an underground printing press with the help of a friend and distributed them among Jews, enabling them to escape to the Aryan side of the city. In the summer of 1942, after the large-scale Aktion in the ghetto, Koper offered to shelter his friend, Fanny Margulies, whose entire family had been deported to Treblinka, in his apartment in central Warsaw. After helping her escape, Koper brought Margulies to his apartment where, to her amazement, she discovered that Koper was already sheltering Bronislawa [Bronisława] and Henryk Finkelstein and Dr. Maksymilian Ciesielski, also fugitives from the ghetto. Between 1942 and 1944, a number of Jews passed through Koper’s apartment for various periods, including children who were later placed in Catholic orphanages. Despite the danger, threats, and attempted extortion, Koper continued with his humanitarian activities. With the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, all the Jewish refugees fled with the rest of Warsaw’s population and survived until the liberation.
[9] Anna Reich was nine when her parents and close family were murdered during the Aktion which took place in 1942 in the town of Biala [Biała] in the Cracow [Kraków] district. On the night preceding the massacre, Anna’s mother escaped with her daughter and after arranging for Anna to stay with a Polish friend returned to the ghetto, where she perished. A few days later, the Polish friend sent Anna to stay with her aunt, in Cracow. Since Anna had little chance of surviving in Cracow, the aunt asked Jadwiga Kruczkowska, a friend who lived with her son, Adam, in nearby Wieliczka, to take Anna in. Jadwiga, whose husband, the famous Polish author Leon Kruczkowski, was interned at the time in a prisoner-of-war camp, immediately agreed to shelter Anna in her home. After obtaining Aryan papers for Anna, Kruczkowska enrolled her at the local school, where she was put in the same class as her son. The fact that Anna looked Jewish made the rescue venture doubly dangerous. The above notwithstanding, Kruczkowska looked after Anna, whom she passed off as her niece, for a year, until 1943, when the aunt arranged for Anna to be admitted to a convent in a Cracow suburb. Anna stayed in the convent until January 1945, when the area was liberated.
[10] In November 1942, during the liquidation of the Jews in Chelm [Chełm] in the Lublin district, Perla Horn managed to escape from the Aktion with her three-year-old daughter, Estera [later Maria Ochlewska]. For a whole year, mother and daughter wandered through local villages, spending the night in farm-buildings, living off scraps of food that kindly villagers offered them, and spending the summer in the forest together with other Jewish refugees. One day in November 1943, Horn left her daughter with a peasant family, [the Struś family in the village of Pławanice near Chełm], promising to return for her later that day. When Horn, however, was shot dead [by the Germans], the [impoverished Struś] family, [who lived in a one room hut with only a dirt floor], … [several months later] handed her over to their acquaintance, Leokadia Wojtkiewicz, who agreed to take responsibility for the girl. After sheltering her for a few days in her home in Chelm, Wotkiewicz took Estera [then called Marysia] to Warsaw to stay with her sister and brother-in-law, Joanna and Karol Kulesza, who, despite the danger, agreed to take her in, without expecting anything in return. The Kuleszas provided Estera, who was passed off as Wojtkiewicz’s illegitimate daughter, with a birth certificate under an assumed identity. Despite their strained circumstances, the Kuleszas looked after Estera devotedly and kept her identity hidden even from their own two children. Even after the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, when the Kulesza were driven out of Warsaw, they took Estera with them. When Estera fell ill, they arranged for her to be looked after by nuns in [Łaski, from where she was later transferred to an orphanage⁵⁴⁴] in Kraków.
[11] Dr. Maria Mantel [née Kłosińska] was the wife of a Polish officer of Jewish ancestry who was murdered at Katyn in the [1940 Soviet] massacre of Polish prisoners of war. Mantel, who lived in Warsaw and ran a private medical clinic in her home … In 1943, Mantel also hid Erwin Aleksandrowicz, an old acquaintance, in her apartment. He, like Mantel’s mother-in-law, had also been forced to wander from one hiding place to another. Mantel also found a hiding place for Irena Aleksandrowicz, Erwin’s daughter, until he found a more permanent place for her in an institution run by nuns.
[12] In the 1930s, Stanislaw [Stanisław] Mazur, who had been born and bred on a farm, met Jews for the first time as a student at the University of Warsaw. … Stanislaw Mazur and his wife, Krystyna, helped Jews imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto. The Mazurs’ address was known to Jews fleeing from the ghetto, and, disregarding the risk to their lives, the Mazurs took them into their home, provided them with false papers, and helped them find other places to hide, mostly outside of Warsaw. Of the 30 Jewish fugitives helped by the Mazurs, only 20 survived the war … [Stanisław Mazur took several children out of the ghetto, among them the six-year-old daughter of a lawyer named Goldman and another girl of a similar age. Both girls were taken in by nuns. ⁵⁴⁵]
[13] Kornel Michejda, a professor in the Stefan Bathory [Batory] University in Vilna [Wilno], was known before the war for his liberal views and as a friend of the Jews. When the Germans occupied Vilna in June 1941, Professor Michejda gave asylum to his friends Professor Michal [Michał] Reicher and Professor Ignacy Abramowicz, moving them to a hiding place on his summer estate in the nearby village of Gulbiny. In order to keep the presence of the two Jewish fugitives secret, Professor Michejda handed the estate over to nuns who had nowhere to live after the Soviet authorities, which had ruled Vilna until the German occupation, drove them out of the convent that had been their home. Paid by Michejda to do so, the nuns were required to care for and safeguard the two Jewish fugitives and provide for their every need. Reicher and Abramowicz remained in their hiding place under the protection of Professor Michejda until their liberation in September 1944. After the war, they remained in Poland, earning reputations as outstanding men of science.
[14] One day in 1942, Maria Niemiec showed up in her tiny apartment in Przemysl [Przemyśl] with six-year-old Teresa [actually Irena Licht, who assumed the identity of Teresa Krystyna Urban]. She then told her four children that Teresa was now their sister. Teresa was the only child of Shimon and Dziunia Licht, who knew Niemiec as the daughter of a woman who had worked in their household before the war. After they gave her their daughter, the Lichts used false papers to reach Warsaw. Teresa was received warmly by the Niemiec family, who, despite their impoverished circumstances and overcrowded home, cared for her with warmth and kindness, telling neighbors that she was a relative. A friend of Niemiec, who lived nearby, was at the same time hiding a seven-year-old cousin of Teresa’s. The little boy [Olek Licht] carelessly revealed he was Jewish and the Germans took him away. Following the boy’s arrest, the Germans discovered his parents’ hiding place in Przemysl and murdered them all. Fearing that Teresa’s identity would also be discovered, Maria Niemiec took her to Warsaw and, using connections her parents had, placed her in a convent, where she remained until the liberation.⁵⁴⁶ Niemiec remained in Warsaw throughout the entire period and without asking for or receiving anything in return served as a go-between for Teresa and her parents. Only after the war ended did Niemiec return home to her husband and children.
[15] Before the occupation, Michal [Michał] and Jadwiga Skalski, who lived with their little daughter in an isolated house in Bialystok [Białystok], were on good terms with their Jewish neighbors. Even after the closure of the ghetto, Skalski and his wife kept up contact with their Jewish acquaintances, whom they met at their places of work outside the ghetto, and helped them to the best of their ability. Skalski used his job as a clerk at the municipality in charge of distributing ration cards to help his Jewish friends. In early 1943, when a number of Jews turned to the Skalskis asking for shelter, the Skalskis prepared a well-hidden shelter for them under their house. Among those who hid in the shelter in the course of 1943 were Leon Grunberg [Grynberg] and his daughter, Halina [Hana] (who later moved to the nearby village [with the Leszczyński family]), Aleksander Brener and his daughter, Ida, Aniela [and Szlama] Kapinska [Kępiński], Jakub Weisfeld, Felicja Bagon, and Jakub and Fruma Rozen. The Skalskis helped support their charges, even selling their belongings to buy them food. They also helped other Jews who were hiding in the vicinity. The Skalskis, who were fearful of discovery, insisted on complete secrecy, refusing even to inform their relatives of what they were doing. When Bagon gave birth in hiding, Skalski, fearing that the baby’s presence would endanger the refugees, took the baby to a nearby convent [an orphanage in Białystok run by nuns⁵⁴⁷], claiming it was a foundling. The baby and the refugees under the Skalskis’ care survived until the area was liberated. … After the war, some of the survivors immigrated to Israel and Brazil while others stayed on in Poland.
[16] Waclaw [Wacław] and Irena Szyszkowski lived in Warsaw during the war. They had three young children. Waclaw was a lawyer but hardly ever practiced law because he was active in the AK [Home Army]. In the summer of 1942, a prewar friend, Jozef [Józef] Zysman (also a lawyer, who was murdered a year later), approached Waclaw and asked for help in saving his son Piotr (born 1939). Soon afterwards, Jozef’s sister-in-law fled the ghetto through the sewage system along with her daughter and Piotr. She met up with Irena in a prearranged spot and handed over Piotr. Because the Szyszkowskis had three children of their own, they were not able to keep Piotr for very long. Eventually they put him up in a monastery [an institution run by nuns near Warsaw⁵⁴⁸] and later moved him to different hiding places. (After the war, Piotr’s mother, Teodora Zysman, found him in a monastery.) … Teodora stated in her testimony that the Szyszkowskis saved two other girls, the daughters of a Warsaw lawyer named Roman Frydman Mirski [who were placed with the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Płudy].
[17] Marta and Feliks Widy-Wirski lived with their two children in Warsaw. At the end of 1941, Marta met a friend on the street who had told her that Janina Poswolska, a friend from the days of her pharmaceutical studies in Poznan [Poznań], was in the ghetto with her husband, Henryk, and their son, Andrzej. Marta subsequently bribed an officer of the Blue Police with a large amount of money and he in turn brought Janina and the child back to her home. Janina and her son settled in with Marta and Feliks, Janina pretending to be their maid. … In 1943, Janina’s son was placed under the care of nuns outside Warsaw, since the landlady warned Marta that the other occupants of the building suspected her and her husband of hiding Jews. “For safety’s sake, we all moved to Sulejowek [Sulejówek] and later, for similar reasons, to Podkowa Lesna [Leśna],” wrote Marta in her testimony. Shortly before the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, a man appeared at the Widy-Wirskis’ home telling them that Henryk Poswolski was lying wounded in the cowshed. Marta and Feliks brought the wounded Henryk (who was wounded while escaping from Treblinka) to Podkowa, where they were able to get him medical attention. After the liberation, the Poswolski family emigrated to Brazil.
[18] During the war, Wladyslaw Wojcik [Władysław Wójcik] lived with his parents in Liw, in the county of Wegrow [Węgrów], Siedlce district. … In April 1943, … Wladyslaw put [Irena Cymerman] up with a friend of his, Genowefa Krol [Król], who was already sheltering three-year-old Helena Davis, daughter of Miriam Davis from the Wegrow ghetto. Miriam had put her daughter under the care of Wladyslaw as she was working at forced labor in Germany under the guise of being a Pole. Initially, Wladyslaw had left the child with a Polish family in Galkowo [Gołków], near Warsaw. He paid the family 1,000 zlotys [złoty] a month for the girl’s upkeep. After a few months, the girl aroused the suspicions of the local police and as a result she was taken to Warsaw. Wladyslaw then put her up with Genowefa Krol. When the hideout in Genowefa’s apartment was “burned,” Wladyslaw took all of his dependents to his aunt’s apartment. Because he too was wanted by the police, he took his aunt’s advice and put the girl in an orphanage, where she survived until the end of the war. After the liberation, Miriam Davis was able to find her daughter. … Miriam and her daughter emigrated to the United States as well.
[19] Franciszek and Tekla Zalwowski lived with their sons, Jozef [Józef], Michal [Michał], Wladyslaw [Władysław], and Stanislaw [Stanisław], in the village of Krytowce, near Zbaraz [Zbaraż], in the Tarnopol district (Eastern Galicia). They were a poor family, barely earning enough money to maintain their household. In June 1943, Ester Krystal and her daughters, Maria and Zosia, escapees from the Zbaraz ghetto, hid in a potato field belonging to the Zalwowskis. When the Zalwowskis found them there, they fed them with whatever they had available and the sons built a bunker for the fugitives to hide in. The Zalwowskis brought their wards food every day and when the need arose they also brought them medicine—all without receiving any payment. At the end of June 1943, Michal [Michał] Zamojre, a prewar friend of the Zalwowskis, came to their house after escaping from a camp in Tarnopol with his friend Izio Kornberg. They were both accepted into the Zalwowskis’ home and were hidden in the barn loft where Mendel Altscher, his wife, Regina, and their young daughter Halinka were already hiding. [Because Halinka was a 6-month-old child whose crying might have betrayed them, she was placed in a convent by the Zalwowskis as a foundling. She was returned to her parents after the liberation.⁵⁴⁹] During the war, the Zalwowskis also hid two other girls in their loft—Luisa and Rosa Sonensztajn. In time, Izio Hindes, Ira Edelman, and Nachum Kornberg joined Ester and her daughters in the bunker. All in all, the Zalwowskis sheltered 13 Jews.
[20] Kazimiera Zulawska [Żuławska], a doctor of philosophy and the widow of the well-known Polish poet and author Jerzy Zulawski, lived prior to the war and during the German occupation with her son Wawrzyniec, in Warsaw. In their home on Marszalkowska [Marszałkowska] Street, they regularly hid eight to ten Jews, mainly cultural figures. Among those who found shelter in their apartment were Roza [Róża] Wittlin, Stefania Dabrowska [Dąbrowska], and Leonia Jablonkowska [Jabłonkowska]. The outbreak of the war found Roza Wittlin in Lwow [Lwów]. In 1943, she left Lwow and traveled to Warsaw, where she did not know anyone. Furthermore, she could not speak any Polish since she had been brought up in Germany. After a few weeks of hiding in basements and abandoned stores, she met Kazimiera, who invited her to her apartment. Kazimiera did not know Roza but had heard about her difficult situation through mutual friends. Roza moved to Kazimiera’s apartment in November 1943 and stayed there for three months without paying for her accommodation or upkeep. … Stefania Dabrowska also arrived in Warsaw after leaving Lwow. In Warsaw, she met a schooolmate who directed her to Kazimiera. Kazimiera and her son, Wawrzyniec, helped not only Stefania but also her parents and her sister Margaret (Rita) Mayer, [who was placed in convents⁵⁵⁰].
[21] In December 1941, after one of the killing operations perpetrated against the Jews of Radom, Bracha Wakszlak (later, Bergman), 14, and her younger sister, Ester, were rescued from the ghetto by their cousin, Teofila (Tośka) Wakszlak. She took them to Warsaw, where she was living under an assumed name with “Aryan” papers. For half a year she moved the two girls from one Polish family to another, supporting them financially but unable to find them a satisfactory haven. Finally, she placed the younger girl [Ester] in a convent, while Bracha, the elder sister, aided by an acquaintance of her father, reached the Bart family. She did not know them, but they were willing to hide her in their home under an assumed name. The Bart household consisted of Jerzy and Zofia Bart, and their two children, aged five and six, and the grandparents. A patriotic Polish family, they had connections with the Polish underground Home Army (AK). Jerzy, an electrical engineer by profession, worked for the Germans for his living, but he also worked with the underground, preserving the cultural treasures of the National Museum. The Barts made Bracha feel at home, like one of the family, and she lived with them in safety for a year, until Zofia and Jerzy were arrested by the Gestapo on April 7, 1944, and thrown into Pawiak, the central prison, located in the ghetto area. The underground was able to ransom Zofia, but Jerzy never returned. While both parents were incarcerated, Bracha looked after both the two children and the grandmother. Henryk, the grandfather, had been executed, probably due to his activities in the underground. Despite the suffering the family endured, Zofia agreed to go on sheltering Bracha. The most difficult trial came during and after the Warsaw Uprising in the summer and fall of 1944 when the Barts were forced to abandon their home and became fugitives, wandering from one village to another in search of a place to stay and means of subsistence. Yet even under those trying conditions they did not abandon Bracha but kept her with them and continued to treat her like a full-fledged member of the family. She stayed with them until liberation in January 1945.
[22] During the German occupation of Poland, Fryderyk and Maria Czerwień, and their two children, Ryszard and Stanisława, lived in Rawa Ruska (Lwów District). From 1941 until the summer of 1944, they hid 12 Jews in a shelter they built especially for this purpose under their home, and provided for their needs. The rescued Jews were: Herman and Róża Graf; Mosze and Helen Lewin and their four-year-old son, Dawid; and Abisz and Efraim Post—all families that had made their living as furriers—as well as the teachers, Abraham and Róża Klang; Łazar and Helena Diller; … [Show more]and Mendel Hoch, a merchant. Years after the liberation, the survivors continued to correspond with the Czerwieńs, viewing them as members of the family: “I feel that I am writing to father and mother and to my brothers who understand me,” Abraham Klang wrote in 1952 from Melbourne. At a certain stage, the Czerwieńs arranged a place for Helen Lewin and her son in a Christian orphanage. Immediately after the liberation, the Czerwieńs left Rawa Ruska and settled in Wojcieszów (Lower Silesia).
The following is based on the recognition by Yad Vashem of Pelagia Łukaszewicz in 2006, who resided in Krasnystaw (The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: ):
[23] Jona Wiesenberg (later Teichman) was born in 1939 in Drohobycz to parents Artur and Fryda. Artur was a doctor, and as such was enlisted by the Russian army in 1939. He ended up in Anders' Army (the Polish armed forces in the east), which he deserted in 1943 for Mandatory Palestine. Meanwhile, Fryda and Jona remained in Drohobycz, which was occupied by the Germans in 1941. Soon after the arrival of the Germans, the Jews of the town were incarcerated in a ghetto. Fryda, however, managed to escape with her daughter and hide in the hospital where Artur used to work. Eventually … [Show more]the hospital refused to shelter the two of them any longer. Fryda took Jona to Warsaw, where they sought refuge until their financial resources were depleted. Fryda then rode around with her daughter on trains in order to find shelter, but was not successful.

One day, Jona fell seriously ill. Fortunately, on one of the trains they met a woman called Waleria (her last name is unknown), who offered her help. She took the Jewish mother and child to a nearby monastery, where Jona regained her health. With the help of the nuns at the monastery, Fryda found Pelagia Lukaszewicz [Łukaszewicz], who agreed to take Jona in as her adopted daughter for the duration of the war. By then, Jona was about three years old. Her mother explained to her that they needed to separate, so that she could be safe, and that she would be with a nice new family and would have food to eat and a brother to play with.

Pelagia “Lucia” Lukaszewicz was a charming, educated woman who was employed in a storehouse outside the village where she was living with her son Jacek and an adopted daughter. As the wife of a Polish officer who had helped the partisans and been taken prisoner by the Germans, Lukaszewicz was in danger, and was forced to leave Warsaw. Luckily, Jona looked like Polish, so her sudden addition to the family did not raise any suspicion. It also allowed Jona to roam free and play with Jacek.

Jona later recalled a life that was “completely pastoral: skiing, swimming in the river, walks in the forest, taking care of rabbits.” She also remembered her “new mother” Lucia and her “brother” Jacek. Jacek’s father was rumored to have been a partisan and killed at the beginning of the war, and as there were nighttime meetings in the house, the children were forbidden from leaving their rooms after dark. In fact, Jacek’s father was freed after the war and returned home.
Fryda visited her daughter on occasion, but progressively less often, because Lukaszewicz was worried that Jona would inadvertently reveal her true identity to someone, perhaps one of the Germans who frequented the village. The goal was for Jona to treat Lukaszewicz as her real mother. In turn, Lukaszewicz took care of Jona as her own daughter, equal in every way to her son. Jona was christened and taken to church regularly for her protection. [Obviously, the priest would have been aware that a child christened at that age was a Jewish child. M.P.] Gradually, Jona came to believe she was Lukaszewicz’s daughter.

After the war, Fryda, who had managed to obtain Aryan papers and survive, returned to reclaim Jona. It was a traumatic experience for all involved, as a mutual love and devotion had developed between the little girl and her adoptive family. The danger in which Pelagia Lukaszewicz had placed herself and her son had been immense, but she acted out of pure compassion for Jona. To separate from her now was understandably difficult and painful.

The story of the Szostak family has only recently come to light (“Polish Righteous Among the Nations Honored at Yad Vashem,” May 13, 2013, Internet: ):

[24] One day in August 1942, a woman appeared at the modest apartment of Ludwika and Zygmunt Szostak inquiring about a notice the couple had put in the paper regarding renting a room in their apartment. The Szostaks were an elderly couple that lived in the Żoliborz suburb of Warsaw and in order to ease their tough financial situation, decided to rent out the extra room in their house. It quickly became apparent that the woman who came to rent the room, Dora Agatstein was Jewish, she and her 7-year-old daughter, Karolina, had escaped the Lvov [Lwów] Ghetto just one month before the Great Deportation. Despite their initial concern over housing the mother and daughter, the Szostak couple welcomed them in their home and took care of them. Even as the rent money Dora paid to the couple began to run out, the good relationship between her and the Szostaks only grew stronger. Since the room where Dora and Karolina slept was not heated, the Szostak couple decided to let them sleep in their bedroom which had a heater and together they passed the cold days of winter. After running out of money for food, Ludwika and Dora began to work from the apartment by wrapping homemade candies. Even little Karolina, who due to the situation was forbidden to leave the house and play with neighboring kids in the yard, helped out in this endeavor. Dora also began to give private lessons to some children in the neighborhood allowing her a little income. When the achievements by her students began to stick out in school, a nun who managed the institution came to visit Dora, offering her a teaching job. The visit by the nun and Dora’s teaching position at the school helped to lower the suspicions and worries of the neighbors towards Dora and her young daughter. Karolina was enrolled in a kindergarden that was run under the patronage of the AK, the Polish resistance’s Home Army in Nazi-occupied Poland, and was walked to and from school by Ludwika. With the breakout of the Polish Uprising in August 1944, the Żoliborz suburb was hit hard by the heavy fighting between the Soviets and Germans. Residents, including both the Szostaks and Agatsteins, were loaded on trains and taken to southern Poland where they lived as refugees. Zygmunt, Ludwika, Dora, and Karolina found themselves living with a poor farming family. The four joined in the hard agricultural work, including picking potatoes and Dora continued to earn a little by teaching lessons until the area was liberated by the Soviet army in April 1945.
Bronisława and Antoni Supłat took under their care a little Jewish girl with the assumed name of Basia, who had been abamdoned near an orphanage in Kraków run bu nuns. The Supłats took her into their home in 1942 and treated her as their own daughter, spreading false information that the child was born to Antoni out of wedlock. Although the neighbours doubted this story, everyone kept the secret. The biological parents of Basia (Batia Rehes, later Batia Kfir) found her several years after the war and left for Israel.⁵⁵¹ (The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: .)
Basia Kfir was born circa 1939. At age 4 she was abandoned near a monastery kindergarten in Bronowicze [Bronowice, a suburb of Kraków], in the Kraków district. The nuns picked her up, but the arrival of a small child aroused the suspicion of the authorities.

Antoni Supłat, a Polish butcher, provided food to the kindergarten as a donation for the children. During one of his visits, he spotted Basia. He and his wife, Bronisława, had no children and decided to adopt Basia. The child was happy to believe that they were her real parents and that they had temporarily lost her during the war—the story … [Show more]they told her to spare her feelings.

In the neighborhood the rumor spread that Basia was Antoni’s illegitimate child, which meant that her Jewish origins were not discovered. Basia, now Batya Kfir, wrote in her letter to Yad Vashem: “For two years I received from them warmth and kindness. They showered me with love and provided for all my needs.”

As Basia grew in this loving family, she sincerely believed herself to be their real daughter, a Catholic by birth. After the war, however, Basia’s parents returned to find her, and the Supłats were forced to part with her. They later adopted another child, a Polish boy.