Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Those who survived repatriated to Poland.
The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul also sheltered the two-year-old daughter of Regina Gertner. Her daughter was left at the convent in Nyrków near Czerwonogród as a foundling by a Christian woman whom Regina Gertner turned to with that request. Regina Gertner survived the war hidden by a Polish family and reclaimed her daughter.⁵⁶⁹
Baruch Milch, who escaped from ghetto in the town Tłuste near Zaleszczyki, in Tarnopol province, along with his brother-in-law, Jakub Weinles, found shelter among Poles in the village of Czerwonogród. They and other Jews encountered helpful nuns, Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Nyrków near Czerwonogród, and priests along the way, among them Rev. Szczepan Jurasz of Czerwonogród and Rev. Stanisław Szkodziński of Tłuste.⁵⁷⁰ Rev. Szkodzińki, the pastor, and his vicar, Rev. Bronisław Majka, were both killed by Ukrainian nationalists on September 15, 1943.⁵⁷¹ During an attack by Ukrainian partisans in February 1945, more than 60 Poles lost their lives in Czerwonogród, including the pastor Rev. Szczepan Jurasz and two nuns, Sister Klara Linowska, the superior, and Sister Henryka Bronikowska.⁵⁷² (Gilbert, The Righteous, pp.51–52.)
A second family, by the name of Zielinski [Zieliński], who had not known Milch or his brother-in-law before the war, took them in, and kept them in hiding for nine months. In spite of the danger to their own lives, the Zielinskis gave the two grieving men both ‘moral support and love’, in addition to taking care of all their daily needs. Later, they found a hiding place for the two men in a convent near Tluste [Tłuste], run by three Sisters of Mercy [Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul] and their Mother Superior [Klara Linowska]. Baruch Milch later recalled: ‘These heroic women ran the religious services of the parish, conducted the choir, played the organ and managed the kindergarten. Later in the summer they opened a secret shelter for foundlings. Among these tiny outcasts were about six or eight Jewish children left by desperate parents roaming the fields and forests, or just found abandoned at the monastery’s threshold.’ On one occasion the three nuns found in their backyard a four-year-old boy, speaking only Yiddish. ‘They gathered him into their midst. As long as the murderers were unaware of what was going on behind the walls the self-sacrificing women shared their scanty provisions, fed their charges, cared for them and took them to the church.’
In his memoir, Can Heaven Be Void? (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2003), at pages 164, 227, 254–56, Baruch Milch describes the rescue of Lusia Geller and Manya Nirnberg, involving the help of Rev. Szkodziński:
Slowly, we started to sneak our way into the village we had been seeking, Czerwonogrod [Czerwonogród], a village that was inhabited largely by Poles. Former patients of mine from the old days lived in every other house. The Polish village priest [Rev. Szczepan Jurasz] had been very helpful to Jews in the past, and there was a convent where the nuns were hiding some Jewish children. ...

Alone, Lusia [Geller], escaping a Ukrainian gang of murderers, went on to the local priest [Rev. Stanisław Szkodziński], who lived on the other side of the town [of Tłuste]. At midnight, she knocked on the window. The priest’s sister, a good-natured spinster, overcame her fear, opened the window and called the priest, who allowed Lusia to climb in.

After Lusia told them what had happened, the priest and his sister fed her and tucked her in a warm bed, where she fell deeply asleep. The next morning, she asked the priest’s sister to visit the labor camp and speak with the German commandant, Patti. She met with Mr. Konigsberg, the camp foreman, and pleaded with him to save Manya [Nirnberg, Lusia’s adopted sister]. Konigsberg’s assistant was roped in, and the assistant, being on good terms with the Ukrainian police, managed to extricate the girl from the police and transfer her to the camp. Manya, barefoot, chalk-white, dressed in nothing but a nightgown and a thin blouse, related how the Ukrainian police had laughed at her when she said she wanted to die. They stood her up against a wall in the courtyard and several policemen lined up opposite her with pistols and fired, deliberately missing. A German came over and told them to leave her alone. “One doesn’t shoot at those who want to die but only at those who want to live,” he explained.

The priest’s sister informed Lusia that Manya was alive and well. Lusia burst into tears and begged to be sent, along with Manya, to the Lisowce camp, where she would find her mother and sisters. There was typhus in the camp at the time, and Mrs. Geller, fearing that the two girls would succumb to the disease, bribed the camp manager, a Pole named Korczak, to quarter Lusia and Manya with a Polish family. She treated Manya like her fourth daughter. He complied willingly … The Polish family was honest, devoutly Catholic, and hoped that the girls would convert after the war. Korczak watched over the girls and met their needs. …

[On March 26, 1944:] To be on the safe side, we [Baruch Milch and other Jews hidden by the Zieliński family] stopped on the way to Tłuste for a few days with the Polish priest who knew where we had been hiding. While there, we visited the convent and found a few Jewish children whom the nuns had concealed. …

Surreptitiously, I [Baruch Milch] began planning to leave Zaleszczyki in the company of some Polish families. With help from the local Polish priest, I obtained papers in the name of Dr. Jan Zielinski [Zieliński], the real name of the Zielinskis’ son who disappeared in the Soviet Union during the war. My “adopted son,” Zalman Sperber, got papers in the name of Jozio Zielinski [Józio Zieliński]. …

Even though the Soviets and the new Polish government had agreed in writing that Jews and Poles with Polish citizenship could return to Poland, I could not get permission to leave the USSR because of my profession and rank. Therefore, I scheduled the exodus of the expanded Zielinski family for a week in which I was to attend a symposium in Czortków, whence the transports to Poland set out. Some Poles in the transport knew what I had in mind, because I had done much for them and we got along very well. Even the Polish railwaymen knew.
Rev. Stanisław Szkodziński, the pastor of Tłuste, and his young vicar, Rev. Bronisław Majka, are also identified by Krystyna Smolik (née Fey, born in 1930) as the protectors of her family. After the family converted to Catholicism in secret in Skałat, she, her younger sister and, eventually, her mother, Bronisława Fey, relocated to Tłuste where they lived under the care of the priests. Sister Teresa of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, who ran a shelter in that town, provided them with food. They also received assistance from the two Frankl sisters, who were teachers, and Jan Świąder, a forester who also sheltered another Jewish woman.⁵⁷³
It was widely known among the Polish population that many Jews were passing as Poles. In Warsaw alone it is estimated that there were more than 20,000 Jews living on the Aryan side. Discretion was the order of the day, especially among rescuers including Catholic institutions. Probing questions were not asked. The less said the better; the less one knew the better. The following account attests to the silent assistance extended to the family of Adam Starkopf by a number of Poles, including nuns and priests near Warsaw. (Adam Starkopf, There Is Always Time To Die [New York: Holocaust Library, 1981], pp.201–211.)
In January 1944, however, I was forced to part from both my wife [Pela] and child [Jasia] because Pela had to go to the hospital. Her abdominal pains had returned and it was clear to me that she needed more competent care than she could receive at the clinic in Lochow [Łochów]. One of the men in the lumberyard told me about Professor Czyzewicz [Czyżewicz], who was chief of surgery at the Szpital Dzieciatka [Dzieciątka] Jezus—the Hospital of the Holy Infant Jesus—in Warsaw. I had heard of this doctor even before the war, and I knew that he was an outstanding surgeon. I did not know his human qualities, but I feared that if Pela continued to go without proper treatment, we might one day find ourselves faced with a life and death emergency. And so I decided to take the chance and have Pela examined by Prof. Czyzewicz in Warsaw.