Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

But what about Zofia Łoziewicz? Why had she been expelled? Because someone had rung from outside. No-one outside should ever know that the nuns were hiding Jews.
When the uprising broke out in August 1, 1944, the residents of the institution took shelter in nearby cellars.
At midnight one of the nuns came and brought some soup in a watering can. … Suddenly a strong blast of air from a nearby explosion hit the window. A column of dust and lime poured over the cellar. Maciuś jumped off the table and shook the dust and pieces of lime off. The priest stretched out his hand. ‘Did it frighten you, Maciuś?’ he asked. He drew him close. ‘Are you scared?’ … The priest took the child’s head in his hands and brought it towards himself, smiling kindly. The boy leaned against the priest’s knees … I looked at the two of them and wondered whether the priest knew or didn’t. Didn’t he suspect anything? He lived in the institution, so could he really not know about the Jewish women in hiding there, and the Jewish men too? …

The priest repeated the child’s name tenderly. He put one hand lightly on his head in a gesture of benediction. His hand hung for a moment in the air and then descended as lightly as a caress. He didn’t ask if he was obedient and loved Jesus, like priests often do. The two of them hugged each other and listened to the shots and the noises of exploding buildings, and at every louder explosion they shuddered simultaneously.

Just then we heard a loud stamping of feet somewhere deep underground and suddenly a unit of insurgents appeared out of the darkness of the tunnel. … There were a few dozen of them. Some had rifles, some had revolvers and some had Molotov cocktails. They also carried machine-guns and grenades tied to their belts. They were very young. There was one Jew among them. …

At eight o’clock we attended mass in the cellar on the other side of the courtyard. The altar, pews and confessional had been moved there. About a dozen soldiers went to confession before the battle. The shelter was down there. The chapel was in the shelter and next to it, in the wide, dark space which used to be a store-room, about a hundred sick people lying in bed. The midget came out of the open door of this huge shelter and knelt on the concrete floor by the altar. She was followed by the girl with the paralysed hand and the girl with the ecstatic face. They both knelt by the altar. Then the monstrous woman dragged herself in and crouched down beside them. Finally one of the nuns came in holding the girl with chorea. The girl was nodding her head and walking strangely. Every muscle on her face twitched when, rolling her eyes and waving her hands, she sat down at last and made the sign of the cross with a disobedient hand.

The soldiers on the pews watched this human debris. They saw the terror on their faces and the way their bodies shook at every shot, they saw their terrified eyes looking through the small window at the sky with its billows of dark smoke. It was a pathetic sight, this fear of death on the part of creatures so very disabled by fate. They didn’t leave the shelter for a single second and hid under the thickest walls when they heard the buzzing of a plane. …

There was a group of about fifty people. They were surrounded by gendarmes and ordered to march through the gate to Leszno Street, which was on fire. That was the first selection. A moment later the whistle could be heard again. Now they summoned the nuns, the priest, the organist, the lay servants and everyone not connected with the institution who had found themselves in the place on the first day of the Rising. …

The courtyard paved with small, yellow bricks. In the middle a walled circle and in the circle grey earth where grass or even flowers should have grown. Now it contained graves, six crosses on six mounds. Five old women from our institution, and the sixth grave belonged to the insurgent. In the courtyard 16 nuns, the priest, the organist and the lay servants, all in a row. …

I started saying goodbye to the priest and the nuns. I thanked them warmly for looking after me and everything good they had done for me while I was in the institution. Maciuś stood lost next to the priest and nuns. He turned pale and shivered when the priest placed both his hands on his head and blessed him for the journey into the unknown. …

‘Schnell! Schnell!’ shouted one of the Germans … I wanted to prolong the moment. Marysia took the child by the hand and they both went quickly towards the gate. One of the Germans hit me on the back with a whip and pushed me in their direction with his fist. … Then we went out onto Leszno Street and it was one sea of flames. It was 14 August 1944 at eleven in the morning.

At the beginning of May 1945, when we returned from the camp and were staying in Kraków, I met a nun on the street wearing the habit of the Felician Sisters. I went up to her and asked, ‘Sister, what happened to the Felician Sisters in Warsaw? They had an institution on Leszno Street. I lived there for a while.’

‘The nuns and the priest were allowed to go to Kraków. The lay servants were taken to Germany.’

‘What about the rest? The 180 old and sick people.’

‘They shot them all and set fire to the house. The house bunt down with all of them in it.’ …

‘When did it happen, Sister?’

‘It happened on 14 August, at twelve o’clock, at noon exactly.’

The Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union ran schools and boarding schools and engaged in clandestine teaching during the German occupation. They are known to have sheltered many Jews, both children and adults, in their convents throughout Poland including Warsaw, Kołomyja, Kraków, Lublin, Lwów, Siercza near Wieliczka, and Tarnów. The following account is by Sister Maria Stella Trzecieska, who was involved in the rescue activities. (Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, pp.352–59.)
Faced by the whole magnitude of peril that threatened for various ‘crimes’ during World War II, many nuns assumed personal responsibility for various deeds and kept their superiors and mates wholly uninformed. Mothers Superior behaved in a like manner. That fact today, after the lapse of many years, is a serious limitation on our ability to recreate the true scale of the aid which we gave, to the extent our capabilities allowed, to our Jewish brethern.

Accordingly, what follows is just a handful of reminiscences based on authentic reports of Sisters who were, for one reason or another, involved in those matters. This was not an organized action (our principal tasks were clandestine instruction and running of canteens, especially for the working intelligentsia). But daily situations created a need for assisting people, and that we did.

In Warsaw we ran a boarding house for 60 female students on behalf of the Central Relief Council (RGO). The house was at 5, Przejazd St. There were several Jewish girls among our charges and not one of them perished despite the Warsaw Uprising and the summary deportation of the entire boarding house, together with the Sisters, to the camp at Bietigheim and later to Heilbronn. They all had ‘Aryan’ identity documents. The outbuildings of our compound at Przejazd St. formed part of the Warsaw Ghetto, so both the Sisters and their young charges lived through the infernal experience of the Ghetto Uprising and the ensuing massacre of the Jews. They were eye-witnesses of the most tragic scenes imaginable. Among others, they saw how Jews, intent on saving their children, hurled them from ghetto windows down to their acquaintances or relatives who were standing outside. Many a time, the children were smashed against the pavement.

We stored our modest supplies of food in the basement of the boarding house. Many a time the provisions would vanish and Sisters would hear a patter of feet in the basement. Soon they discovered that there was an aperture in the cellar wall through which Jews pushed forward to the basement. Thenceforth, Sisters left food in front of that passage and the food disappeared. In connection with that hole and the venturing of Jews beyond the ghetto precincts, the Sisters lived through a harsh experience when an armed Nazi ordered Sister Izabela S. to lead him into the basement. She was to be shot if Jews were found there. Luckily, they were not, nor was the aperture discovered. The Sister survived but she was immediately moved to another house. Nor was that the end of the affair. One day, a Jew pierced through the ghetto wall right into our dormitory. He begged us to fetch him somebody with whom he had an agreement about the escape. It was a dramatic moment—he standing in the breach and guards nearby. The house on Przejazd St. was encircled by guards who kept watching that Jews did not run away from the ghetto. The Jews escaping through the hole dug in our basement were helped courageously by Sister Teodozja Hoffman who directed them in disguise to a home for the aged in the same outbuilding. There was another incident. A certain young Jewess insisted by all means to get into the ghetto in order to join her family there. Sister Lia P., though she realized the extent of the danger, led her through the chain of guards and saw that the Jewess found her way, by covert tracks of course, to her family.

Also in Warsaw, at 7, Oczki St., we ran a canteen in which we cooked an average of 2,000 meals every day on behalf of the Central Relief Council (RGO). Lots of people milled about the street until 4 p.m. After that hour, when everything calmed down, Jewish children turned up as if they had sprung from the earth. They penetrated to that district all the way from the ghetto. In the main, they were small boys and were excellently organized. One of them would stand guard at the point where Oczki St. runs into Starynkiewicz Square and another at the intersection of Oczki St. and Chałubiński St. In case of danger the little tot would whistle and the children vanished like air. Usually, there were several sometimes over a dozen children, each carrying a can. The food was always there for the Sisters would already have made an allowance for the arrival of the children. Quietly and efficiently, the cans were filled. This became part of the daily routine at Oczki St. throughout the existence of the ghetto. Not once was there a bad break and, although the ghetto was at a distance of from 7 to 8 minutes brisk walk from the canteen, the children always managed to keep the appointment.

After the demolition of the house on Łowicka St., we lived in a villa of Mrs Potocka at 107a Puławska St., also in Warsaw. In the years 1942–1943, Sisters Konstantyna and Imelda took a charming Jewish girl into safekeeping. Her assumed name was Marta Krzywicka. The Sisters rented a room with Mrs Horwat for her. Shortly afterward, a policeman took an interest in her and she had to change her domicile. Marta remained in hiding in Warsaw until her father sent her a passport from Uruguay. She went with the whole transport full of misgivings: will the Germans keep an agreement? Alas, the entire transport was exterminated in Frankfurt.

At about the same time, a certain Jewish female physician was hiding at Puławska St. under Mrs Potocka’s and our care. She was from Stanisławów. She later died of cancer. We also took into safekeeping the mother-in-law of Professor [Szymon] Askenazy and placed her at Królikarnia as a purported cancer patient. This we could do thanks to the assistance of Mrs Potocka and Father [Edward] Wojtczak. She died a natural peaceful death there, and was baptized before passing away. We likewise helped professor Askenazy’s daughter Janina, whom a traitor later gave up to the Gestapo. She was tortured and murdered at the Gestapo headquarters in Warsaw at Szucha Avenue.

Our Cracow [Kraków] convent on Starowiślna Street and the subordinated convent in Siercza also assisted the Jews, though the task was difficult in view of German presence in the Siercza house. For example, we hid Janeczka, one of the third-form pupils from the primary school away for a few months. We gave financial assistance to rescue our seventh-form pupil, Hala Friedman, from the hands of the Gestapo. Unfortunately, that worthy girl did not survive despite frantic efforts of her faithful nanny. The money, as it later turned out, was pocketed by blackmailers and we never again heard of Hala. Also, we concealed in our house a woman whose first name was Felicja (we do not know her surname). A very painful experience was the kidnapping by the Gestapo of two little girls—Ludka and Hanka Boroniec, whom we were hiding away among Polish and several other Jewish girls in Siercza. An automobile pulled up at night, a band of Gestapo officers rushed into dormitory, lighting electric torches into the faces of the sleeping children and pulled the two semiconceious girls out of their beds. Also in Siercza, a Mr Hilman was our cart driver for a long time.

On behalf of the RGO [Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, a social welfare agency] we ran a home for resettlers in Cracow on Krupnicza St. For a while the director of that home was the Mother Superior of our Lvov [Lwów] convent, a fine human being with a perspicacious mind and the best of hearts. There were Jewish children among the resettlers. Among others, Sister Celestyna T. escorted a Jewish child from Kołomyja in the east there. There were also Eryka M., Genia K., and others.

After the abolition of that home, thirty children, one-half of them Jewish, were moved to Rękawki St. One day, another four-years-old tenant was added. He was brought by a tram conductor who told us the boy had been left on his tram all day, nibbling at a piece of bread. We called the boy ‘Antoś’. He later went to Kochanów where the RGO moved the children’s home from Rękawki St. with the others. Our Ursuline Sisters tidied up an abandoned house there, preparing it for the same complement of children. Apart from the Sisters, the little Jews had other invisible caretakers; their next of kin of those families which escaped from the hands of the enemy. From time to time, one or another would turn up for a momentary visit to see their beloved children and then would disappear in a mysterious fashion. One night, for example, a Sister saw a father sitting at the bed of a sick child. All of those children survived.

Jagusia, a 15-years-old, fled to our house in Tarnów while Jews from the local ghetto were being driven to the railway station. She stayed with us in hiding for a fortnight, and then we put her somewhere else. The girl survived.

Many resettlers passed through our Lublin convent during the war. There was a considerable number of Jews among them who hid away for shorter or longer periods. Among them was 18-years-old Marysia from Chełmno, who spent a month there. Mr Stanisław D. worked and lived with us for a couple of years, and thanks to that he survived. We also gave material assistance to our former pupils of Jewish origin. Our Sister Wiktoria Bogacz helped the Lublin community in an especially selfless manner. People used to call her ‘Mother of the Poor’. Thanks to the unqualified endorsement to the action, given by the then Mother Superior of the convent, the splendidly righteous Mother Tekla Busz, Sister Wiktoria doled out up to a thousand bowls of soup every day. Nobody ever asked: who are you with a Semitic face? The nature of Sister Wiktoria Bogacz was best defined by her name (Bogacz stands for ‘rich’ in Polish). This simple-hearted but magnanimous Sister never seemed to run short of bread, soup, or even ‘delicacies’ like a piece of sausage or lard, which she gave away to Poles, Jews, and inmates from the Majdanek camp alike.

Mother Teresa Dettlaff, the Mother Superior of our Kołomyja convent, aided Jews on a large scale, and the Sisters from her convent participated resolutely in her action. Most especially on grim days of terror—round-ups or executions—our Kołomyja house became an asylum for those that had managed to run away with their lives. With terrible despair, they would look through basement windows and see their relations and acquaintances being led away for execution. Sister Hiacenta S. [Suchla] served most frequently as our courier, escorting Jews to their hideouts. Situations were sometimes fraught with drama but, luckily, our aid was most effective. It required, however, plenty of vigilance, acumen, courage and sacrifice. Among her many charges, Sister Hiacenta escorted Mrs Rozalia Wrońska (an assumed name), [the daughter of a local pharmacist], to our convent in Zakopane, and then on to Raciechowice to her family who had selflessly been giving a helping hand in that action. She brought Mr Ebstein [Eckstein?], a dentist to that same place. He later went into hiding in Nowy Sącz [with the family of Sister Celestyna Tatarczyk] where he spent a long time and managed to survive. At the beginning of 1943, Sister Hiacenta escorted 4-years-old Ewa Zawadzka (an assumed name) to her native regions of the country. The trip with the child was a dangerous ordeal for she panicked at the sight of troops and policemen and could easily betray both of them. Therefore, a few months later, she had to be moved to her mother who had been hiding away further eastward. The undersigned, being a member of the Lvov [Lwów] convent, escorted little Ewa from Tarnów to Stanisławów. The child behaved quietly, but just before reaching Stanisławów she addressed some woman with a telling Jewish accent: ‘I think I know you, Mrs’ … Naturally, I was greatly alarmed, but everything ended all right. A third nun took Ewa on her further journey east and the child survived the war.

Apart from the event related above, the Lvov convent helped Mother Teresa Dettlaff in rescuing Kołomyja Jews on several occasions. Accordingly, on 24 October, 1942, Sister Ewelina Z. [Zasada] escorted 10-years-old Ewa Kassler [Kesler?] from Lvov to Warsaw where she accommodated the girl with the Order of the Family of Mary. The girl survived the war. She was a step-daughter of the above-mentioned Mr Ebstein. His wife, Ewa’s mother, fared worse. She made her residence in Lvov but was not cautious enough and perished. Blackmailers cashed in on our contacts with her. They followed the tracks down to Kołomyja. The situation was dangerous. They threatened Sister Celestyna T. with arrest; eventually, a hard-gotten ransom of 10,000 złotys saved us and calmed the storm. Acting with foresight, however, the superiors of the Order transferred Mother Teresa Dettlaff to Cracow.

In 1941 or 1942, we took Professor Józef Feldman into safekeeping for the two weeks’ duration of an anti-Jewish campaign. We placed him at 12, Jacek [św. Jacka] St. During that time, illicit identity documents were made out in his name. He got them, left for Warsaw, and survived.⁵⁷⁵

Mother Elżbieta Łubieńska and Mother Władysława Lewicka assumed responsibility for our aid to Jews in Lvov. For both of them the Ebstein affair, related above, was a harsh experience. First one then the other headed the convent. During her term as Mother Superior, Władysława Lewicka was truly fearless in aiding camp inmates and refugees. It was she who admitted a Mrs Roszko, an elderly Jewish convert, together with her adult daughter Maria to the convent for about a year. The elder Mrs Roszko later moved from the convent to the flat of Mrs Antoniewicz, the mother of one of our nuns, where she died a peaceful death. Her daughter took another hiding place, was eventually escorted by Sister Celestyna T. to a gamekeeper’s house, and survived the war.

We also gave a helping hand to a Lvov kiln manager (Rosenberg?). Mother Władysława took his jewelry and trunks and other belongings into safekeeping. Every once in a while, his 15-years-old daughter, Marysia, would come and spend part of the day with us while he was taking out some of his things for ransom. He survived for a long time. We do not know what happened to him later.

The Gadziński family, our neighbours in Lvov, also took a young Jewish couple into hiding. They deposited their belongings with us and then would select some of the things, little by little, to pay for their upkeep.

One more fragment from our Lvov contacts. We were on friendly terms with Doctor K. and his family. That excellent man devoted plenty of attention and loving care to the poor, whom he not only examined but also supplied with medicines. Mrs K was of Jewish origin. One day, when he was in town, the Gestapo came and searched the flat. That brave woman, his wife, succeeded in destroying all papers compromising her husband (he was a member of an organization), and did it practically in the presence of the Gestapo. In the meantime, a chimney-sweep entered. … He then left the flat, but kept a watch in the street until he could warn the Doctor that the Gestapo had come to his home. Mrs K. and her son (a school boy) were arrested as hostages for the Doctor. The organization forbade him to report to the Gestapo and he despaired lest the Jewish origin of his wife be discovered. He spent a few days with us, later came every day to fetch some bread. Mrs K. was detained for six months, then set free together with the son.
Confirmation of the rescue activties of the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union in both Warsaw and Kraków can be found in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, at page 360 (Warsaw); Part 2, at pages 928–29 (Kraków).
[1] In 1942, when the Germans deported the Jews from the village of Szreniawa to the nearby Cracow [Kraków] ghetto, the Sznajders tried to find a hiding place with Christian farmers in the village. However, the only member of the family who managed to find a hiding place was 16-year-old Genia Sznajder, who was taken in by Barbara Dobrolubow, an old school friend of hers who, together with her family, looked after Sznajder devotedly, without expecting anything in return. A few weeks later, the Dobrolubows decided to send her to relatives of theirs in Warsaw, where no one knew her, on the assumption that, with her Aryan looks, she had a better chance of surviving there. In Warsaw, Sznajder was taken in by Zygmunt and Jadwiga Koczorowski, Dobrolubow’s uncle and aunt, who looked after her, obtained Aryan papers for her, and registered her at a convent high school belonging to the Urszulanki [Ursuline] Sisters. The Koczorowskis showed loving concern for Sznajder, who stayed in the home run by the sisters until the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising in late summer 1944. Sznajder was sent to Germany with the other children of the home and Koczorowski was sent to a concentration camp. After the war, they met up again in Warsaw and Sznajder stayed with the Koczorowskis until she finished her studies. In 1954, Sznajder immigrated to Israel.
[2] 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, 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.
Confirmation of the activities of the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union in Kraków can also be found in the accounts of Felicja Kohn from Lwów, and Wanda Załuska, a woman of Jewish origin from Kraków. (Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, pp.259, 262; Małgorzata Melchior, Zagłada a tożsamość: Polscy Żydzi ocaleni na “aryjskich papierach”: Analiza doświadczenia biograficznego [Warsaw: IFiS PAN, 2004], p.152.)
[1] In Cracow [Kraków] I was put up for the night by the mother superior of a convent (Mother Superior Łubieńska of the Ursuline Sisters), despite continuous visitations by the Gestapo. Another sister from the same convent recommended me for suitable jobs, thus making it possible for me to survive. … Also in Cracow I was very warmly received by Myszka P., who got hold of a Kennkarte for me, from the Reverend [Edward] Lubowiecki.
[2] The nuns in the convent [in Kraków] were extraordinary. They helped us—my family, the PPS [Polish Socialist Party] organization, and later Żegota—tremendously during the war. I would have been unable to secure half of the birth certificates and identity documents without the help of that Ursuline convent. They behaved extraordinarily.
The following is based on the recognition by Yad Vashem of Helena Kruszelnicka, and her mother, and Malwina Kruszelnicka, in 2008 (The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: ):
Before the war, Felicity Tendler lived with her parents, Anna (née Eck) and Edward, in Lwów. They were a happy family; Edward practiced medicine in Lwów and nearby Tumacz. Felicity was very small, and has very few memories of her prewar life. … When the Nazis occupied Lwów, Edward Tendler contacted Helena Kruszelnicka, a friend who was also acquainted with Anna’s physician brother, Leon Eck. Kruszelnicka lived with her 75-year-old mother Malwina, and worked as a … [Show more]secretary. Edward persuaded Kruszelnicka to take in little Felicity. There was no financial arrangement involved; the arrangement was made only through the bonds of friendship. Before departing, Edward gave Kruszelnicka the address of his niece in Melbourne, as well as that of Anna's sister in Denver, Colorado. He would never see his daughter again; he perished in the Janowska camp.

Felicity stayed hidden in Helena and Malwina’s basement in Lwów from 1941 until 1943. She never allowed out, and there was little food. False papers were obtained for her under the name of Krystyna Torosiewicz and later, Krystyna Kruszelnicka. In 1943, Helena took Felicity to the Saint Ursula’s Convent in Kraków, where she joined the boarding school. For the remainder of the war she remained at the convent, without contact with anyone she knew. When the other children went home for the holidays, she was looked after by the nuns. She was frightened and felt imprisoned, but she was safe and survived the war, despite its interminable dangers. She remembers how one night, two German soldiers came to the convent looking for Jewish children and got very close to her, but fortunately did not discover her.
After the war, Helena retrieved Felicity from the convent and they settled in Kraków.
The story of Wanda Załuska (née Nelken) is especially interesting. Although baptized a Catholic at birth in 1913, her mother had converted to Catholicism as a teenager and had married Dr. Benedykt Nelken, a Jew. Wanda was a graduate of the high school of the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union in Kraków, and an art history student at the Jagiellonian University. In 1938, she married Kazimierz Załuski, a Catholic, who spent the war years in England. A member of the Polish Socialist Party, Wanda joined the Polish underground, the Home Army, and devoted her efforts to helping Jews, first in her native Kraków, then in Warsaw. Using her contacts with the Ursuline Sisters and Archbishop Adam Sapieha of Kraków, she obtained false birth and baptismal certificates for Jews. When conditions in Kraków became hazardous, she moved to Warsaw. She brought false documents to Jews inside the ghetto. At the orphanage run by Janusz Korczak, she taught Jewish children how to pass as Catholics, brought them out of the ghetto with the help of the Home Army, and placed them with the Ursuline Sisters, who also ran institutions in Warsaw.⁵⁷⁶
Extensive assistance was provided by the Albertine Sisters, formally the Congregation of the Sisters Serving the Poor (Siostry Posługujących Ubogim Trzeciego Zakonu Regularnego św. Franciszka z Asyżu, commonly known as Siostry Albertynki), in many of their convents and institutions throughout Poland. (The following accounts, which were compiled in 1961, are also found in Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, 145–57.)
When the Servant of God Brother Albert [Adam Chmielowski] founded his orphanages in 1888, he helped everyone regardless of their status, nationality or religious beliefs. The orphanage took in Catholics, Ruthenians, Jews, in other words everyone.

Religious organizations founded by Brother Albert worked in this same spirit. The Albertine Sisters never turned away anyone who needed help from their orphanages. In the years before the outbreak of the war in 1939, the nurseries run by this order contained many Jewish children who were cared for with the same love as the other children. When in 1942 the terror against the Jews increased sharply, many Jewish children found shelter in the order’s orphanages. Jews were to be found in 29 institutions operated by this order. In all 95 Jews were taken in, of whom 50 survived in hiding. Twelve were apprehended and killed; the fate of 35 people is not known. These statistics are based on the testimony of 50 Sisters who are still alive. However, many Sisters who were involved in the running of the order’s orphanages have died and thus many facts will never surface.

The following are summaries of statements obtained from the Albertine Sisters. Many of the names of persons who received assistance have been forgotten over time. In some cases people were never asked their names because it was safer not to know. Many of those helped never provided their real names; often they used false identification.