Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Polish Roman Catholic Clergy and Religious

Murdered by the Germans for Assisting Jews
Sacrificing one’s life is not a simple act of kindness. No one has the right to demand of others that they should help someone if it means laying down their lives. Many honest Jewish survivors who were rescued by Poles have stated that they do not know if they would have been able to rescue Poles under such circumstances. Some have said emphatically that they would not have undertaken such a risk. While Catholic bishops encouraged and approved of rescue activties by the clergy, they did not command their clergy to perform such deeds of heroism. No religious code, including Jewish, imposes such an imperative or condemns those who are not willing to put their lives on the line for others. Otherwise, except for a handful of people, we would all fail this test. “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13) is not a command; at the very most, it is an exhortation. For Christians the gift of life is God’s greatest gift. Jesus Himself pleaded with His Father to spare him from imminent His death on the cross, if at all possible. At a screening of The Labyrinth: The Testimony of Marian Kolodziej, an award-winning film by Ron Schmidt, SJ,⁶¹⁶ at Regis College, University of Toronto, in March 2013, Dr. David Novak of the Centre for Jewish Studies commented that sacrificing one’s life is not even condoned in Jewish teaching. The Torah teaches that a person is obliged to help, and to share, but at a point when helping endangers one’s own life nothing in the Torah permits that. Arguably, the Torah does not even look favourably on Jews risking their lives for non-Jews.
No other nation has ever paid a higher price for helping Jews than the Poles. This sacrifice demands enormous respect and profound humility, especially from Jews. Unfortunately, Yad Vashem has been remiss in its responsibility to honour those Poles who sacrificed their lives to help Jews. Among the several thousand Polish women, men, and children—often entire families and sometimes even whole communities—put to death by the Germans for coming to the assistance of Jews, there were dozens of priests and religious. Not all of the victims of German repressions cited below can be definitively confirmed as being attributable solely to helping Jews. Often there was more than one reason for a priest’s arrest and execution. In such instances, although the exact charge levelled by the Germans may not have been known, the priest in question was known to have been active in rendering assistance to Jews. In some cases, the name of the priest in question has not been identified. (Those incidents are usually based on the testimony of Jews recorded many years after the fact.) Not all of these cases have been recorded in Wiktor Jacewicz and Jan Woś’s monumental register of members of the Polish clergy killed during the German occupation, Martyrologium polskiego duchowieństwa rzymskokatolickiego pod okupacją hitlerowską w latach 1939–1945, 5 volumes (Warsaw: Akademia Teologii Katolickiej, 1977–1981) [afterwards Jacewicz and Woś, Martyrologium].
Wacław Zajączkowski, in his Martyrs of Charity: Christian and Jewish Response to the Holocaust, Part One (Washington, D.C.: St. Maximilian Kolbe Foundation, 1987) lists—together with source references—the following priests as having been killed, usually by summary execution, for assisting Jews:
[1] Fr. Antoni Grzybowski, a Jesuit from Albertyn near Słonim, was executed on October 20, 1943 for providing shelter to Jews in the Jesuit Novitiate (Entry 39);
[2] Rev. Andrzej Osikowicz (Osikiewicz), pastor of Borysław, was deported to Majdanek for openly encouraging his parishioners to assist Jews and perished there on December 29, 1943 (Entry 74)⁶¹⁷;
[3] Rev. Henryk Opiatowski, vicar and Home Army chaplain from Brańsk, was arrested on July 15, 1943 for assisting Jews, partisans and escaped Soviet prisoners-of-war, imprisoned in Bielsk Podlaski, and executed soon afterwards (Entry 76)⁶¹⁸;
[4] Rev. Mieczysław Akrejć, pastor of Brasław, in northeastern Poland, perished in June 1942 while interceding on behalf of persecuted Jews (Entry 77);
[5] Rev. Jan Urbanowicz, dean and pastor of Exaltation of the Holy Cross Parish in Brześć nad Bugiem in Polesie (Polesia), was executed in June 1943 for aiding Jews by issuing false baptismal certificates and finding shelters for them; he also spoke out against the looting of Jewish property (Entry 84)⁶¹⁹;
[6] Rev. Teodor Popczyk of St. Barbara’s Parish in Częstochowa was shot on June 16, 1943, after being identified by a Jew who had received false documentation from this parish (Entry 124)⁶²⁰;
[7] Rev. Adam Sekuła, assistant pastor of Dobra near Limanowa, in southern Poland, was killed in the jail in Nowy Sącz on April 7, 1941 after refusing to betray the names of Jews to whom he had issued baptismal certificates (Entry 141);
[8] Fr. Michał Klimczak (Father Dionizy), guardian of the Conventual Franciscan monastery and pastor of Our Lady of the Angels (Matki Bożej Anielskiej) parish in Grodno was executed on July 15, 1943 (Entry 168)⁶²¹;
[9] Monsignor Albin Jaroszewicz, dean and pastor of St. Francis Xavier parish in Grodno, was not executed on July 14, 1943, as claimed (Entry 168).⁶²² Although arrested by the Germans, he survived the war⁶²³;
[10] Rev. Władysław Grobelny, vicar of Kobryń near Brześć nad Bugiem, was executed on October 15, 1942 together with the Jews he was helping (Entry 222)⁶²⁴;
[11] Monsignor Jan Wolski, pastor of Kobryń, was executed on October 15, 1942 for assisting partisans and Jews who fled from the ghetto (Entry 223);
[12] Monsignor Zygmunt Surdacki, the Apostolic Administrator of the diocese of Lublin, was deported to Auschwitz for, among other reasons, aiding Jews and perished there on April 30, 1941 (Entry 271)⁶²⁵;
[13] & [14] Two unidentified young priests were shot to death on February 21, 1942 in the Lwów suburb of Zamarstynów, when they were apprehended in their attempt to bring two Jewish families to their monastery (Entry 278)⁶²⁶;
[15] Another unidentified monk from Lwów was shot dead on February 28, 1942 when he was caught carrying food and money to the ghetto and tried to escape (Entry 279)⁶²⁷;
[16] Rev. Fabian Poczobutt-Odlanicki, dean and pastor of Łunin and delegate of the Polish government in exile for Polesie (Polesia), was executed on August 4, 1944 for organizing aid for Jews and partisans (Entry 300)⁶²⁸;
[17] Rev. Antoni Mackiewicz, pastor of Mir near Stołpce (voivodship of Nowogródek), was executed in Kołdyczewo concentration camp on November 14, 1942, along with other Poles, for helping Jews (Entry 322). However, according to other sources, although he did assist Jews, Rev. Mackiewicz was arrested in the sweep directed against t2he Polish intelligentsia in the region⁶²⁹;
[18] Rev. Tadeusz Kaczmarczyk, an assistant pastor from Nowy Sącz who refused to betray the Jews to whom he had provided baptismal certificates, even under torture, was executed on August 21, 1941 (Entry 343);
[19] Rev. Władysław Deszcz, also from Nowy Sącz, who provided Jews with baptismal certificates and other forms of assistance (he smuggled himself into the ghetto to bring sacraments to converted Jews) was executed on August 21, 1941 (Entry 344). According to another source, however, the two priests from Nowy Sącz were arrested in May 1941 for their suspected role in the escape of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish underground, from the local hospital where he was being held in between interrogation and torture sessions, and were executed in a mass reprisal against 32 Poles in Biegonice⁶³⁰;
[20] Monsignor Witold Iwicki, vicar general of the diocese of Pińsk, after refusing an offer of clemency, was executed in Janów Poleski on January 22, 1943 for assisting Jews (Entry 376);
[21] Rev. Paweł Dołżyk, pastor of Derewna (Pińsk diocese), was shot to death on August 8, 1943 for aiding partisans and Jews (Entry 377);
[22] Monsignor Józef Bajko, pastor of Naliboki near Nowogródek (Pińsk diocese), and
[23] his assistant, Rev. Józef Baradyn, were locked in a barn and burned alive in August 1943 for aiding Jews and partisans (Entry 378);
[24] Rev. Leopold Aulich, dean of Iwje (Iwie) and pastor of Kamień near Nowogródek (Pińsk diocese), and
[25] his vicar, Rev. Kazimierz Rybałtowski, were both executed on July 24, 1943 on suspicion of aiding Jews and partisans (Entry 379);
[26] Rev. Błażej Nowosad, pastor of Potok Górny near Tomaszów Lubelski, was beaten by the SS Galizien in order to extract information about the location of Polish partisans and Jews hiding in the vicinity and then shot to death on December 19, 1943 (Entry 395);
[27] Fr. Adam Sztark, administrator of the parish in Żyrowice, provided various forms of assistance to Jews. He placed Jewish children in the convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Słonim, where he was the chaplain. He was arrested on December 18, 1942 together with two Sisters from this convent, Kazimiera Wołowska, the mother superior, and Bogumiła Noiszewska. All three of them were executed the following day in a mass execution of several hundred Poles (Entries 463 and 702)⁶³¹;
[28] Fr. Wojciech Kopliński, known as Father Anicet, a Franciscan from the Capuchin monastery on Miodowa Street in Warsaw, was arrested in June 1941 for, among other reasons, helping Jews. He was deported to Auschwitz where he perished in a gas chamber on October 16, 1941 (Entry 531)⁶³²;
[29] An unidentified priest from Warsaw who worked closely with Maria Malicki and her brother Tadeusz Romaszewski in providing false baptismal certificates and identification to Jews was shot to death on December 19, 1942, after being identified by one of the Jews who was caught with the false documents (Entry 537). According to Teresa Prekerowa, the priest in question was the pastor of the cathedral parish of St. John the Baptist, who was executed after a certificate he issued for Maria Rajbenbach fell into the hands of the Gestapo.⁶³³ However, not all the information in the latter account is accurate. Both Tadeusz Romaszewski and his sister, Maria Malicka, were employed in the chancery (record office) of the Warsaw cathedral parish of St. John the Baptist. Although they were members of the extreme right-wing Szaniec group (a continuation of the interwar National-Radical Camp “ABC”), they issued scores of false baptismal and birth certificates to endangered Jews, as well as Christian Poles. Maria Malicka was betrayed to the Gestapo by her brother’s fiancée, Irena Lis, who—unknown to the organization—was a Gestapo agent. The Gestapo arrested Maria Malicka and her husband Marian Malicki, who was sent to Majdanek, where he perished. Maria Malicka was imprisoned in Warsaw, but survived the war. Tadeusz Romaszewski went into hiding. The information about the priest’s death has not been confirmed, and appears to be an embellishment.⁶³⁴
[30] Monsignor Roman Archutowski, rector of the Archdiocesan Seminary of Warsaw, was arrested (a second time) in November 1942 for, among other reasons, helping Jews. He was imprisoned in Pawiak and tortured. He was deported to Majdanek on March 25, 1943 and died there on April 18, 1943 (Entry 547)⁶³⁵;
[31] Rev. Franciszek Garncarek, pastor of St. Augustine’s church in the Warsaw ghetto, was murdered on December 20, 1943; he was shot on the steps of the presbetery of another church outside the ghetto (Entry 574)⁶³⁶;
[32] Fr. Józef Leńko, from the Missionary Congregation of St. Vincent, a vicar at Holy Cross parish in Warsaw, was arrested for the second time and brought to Pawiak prison on February 7, 1944 for helping Jews. He was deported to Gross-Rosen concentration camp where he perished on May 20, 1944 (Entry 585). Fr. Leńko was particularly active in issuing false baptismal certificates to Jews⁶³⁷;
[33] Fr. Leon Więckiewicz, from the Missionary Congregation of St. Vincent, a vicar at St. Augustine’s church in the Warsaw ghetto, was arrested for helping Jews on December 3, 1943; he was deported to Gross-Rosen concentration camp where he died on August 4, 1944 (Entry 590).⁶³⁸ However, according toanother source, it is believed that the immediate cause of Fr. Więckiewicz’s arrest was not his extensive assistance to Jews but his open display of support for a group Poles slated for execution⁶³⁹;
[34] Rev. Alfonsas Lipniūnas, a Lithuanian priest from Wilno, where he was assistant rector of the Ostra Brama chapel and a preacher at the University Church of St. John, was arrested by the Gestapo on March 17, 1943 for his sermons admonishing those who stole Jewish property and participated in violence against Jews. He was sent to the Stutthof concentration camp; he fell ill with typhus when being moved from the approaching Soviet forces and died on March 28, 1945 (Entry 642)⁶⁴⁰;
[35] & [36] Two Basilian Fathers from the Uniate monastery in Wilno were arrested for helping Jews and not heard of again (Entry 643);
[37] Rev. Józef Kuczyński, pastor of Wsielub near Nowogródek (Pińsk diocese), was executed on July 31, 1942 for sheltering Jewish children (Entry 665).⁶⁴¹
[38] Rev. Feliks Zachuta of Kraków was arrested for his clandestine baptismal activity towards the end of 1943 and executed in the Płaszów concentration camp in May 1944.⁶⁴²
Other priests put to death for helping Jews who are identified in Zieliński, Życie religijne w Polsce pod okupacją 1939–1945 include:
[39] Rev. Franciszek Żak from Dolina (archdiocese of Lwów) was shot for rendering assistance of various forms to Jews (such as helping them escape to Romania and Hungary and providing false birth certificates)—p.157;
[40] Rev. Bolesław Gramz, pastor of Idołta near Brasław—pp.44 and 54⁶⁴³;
[41] Witold Sarosiek, pastor of Kundzin—pp.50 and 54⁶⁴⁴;
[42] Monsignor Karol Lubianiec, dean and pastor of Mołodeczno and vicar general for Byelorussia—pp.44 and 54⁶⁴⁵;
[43] Rev. Kazimierz Grochowski, pastor of St. Andrew’s parish in Słonim—p.44.⁶⁴⁶
The last four priests who hailed from the archdiocese of Wilno were also involved in other “subversive” activities—pp.44 and 54.
[44] Rev. Dominik Amankowicz, pastor of Widze (archdiocese of Wilno), collapsed and died on July 26, 1941 as a result of the news of the execution of Jews brought to him by terrified Jews who had sought shelter in the church rectory—p.52;
[45] Rev. Romuald Świrkowski, pastor of Holy Spirit parish in Wilno, located near the ghetto, assisted Jews in escaping from the ghetto and finding shelters for them. He was arrested on January 15, 1942 and executed in Ponary on May 5, 1942. The precise reason for his arrest is unknown. According to one version, he was betrayed by one of the Jews whom he had sheltered—p.52. Possibly, his arrest was due to his being the Archbishop’s curia’s representative on the Voivodship Council attached to the Command of the Wilno District of the Union of Armed Struggle⁶⁴⁷;
[46] Rev. Piotr Pianko, the administrator of the parish in Szumowo near Zambrów, was shot on September 4, 1941 in his liturgical vestments for refusing to announce German orders calling on the population to obey the German authorities, surrender their arms and capture Soviet soldiers—p.74.⁶⁴⁸ The memoirs of Józef Klimaszewski (nom de guerre “Cień”) indicate that Rev. Pianko also incurred German wrath for defending the Jews.⁶⁴⁹ There exists a different version of the execution of Rev. Pianko, as well as Rev. Aleksander Łuniewski, by German gendarmes⁶⁵⁰;
[47] Rev. Leon Bujnowski, pastor of Niedźwiedzica (Pińsk diocese), was arrested on June 27, 1943 during a religious ceremony on suspicion of, among other reasons, helping Jews and perished soon after—pp.83–84⁶⁵¹;
Rev. Jan Urbanowicz (supra [5], Martyrs of Charity, Part One, Entry 84)—p.84;
Rev. Józef Kuczyński (supra [37], Martyrs of Charity, Part One, Entry 665)—p.84;
[48] Rev. Władysław Klimczak, pastor of Porzecze, near Pińsk, was executed in July 1943 for aiding Jews—p.84;
[49] Rev. Jan Grodis, principal of Romuald Traugutt high school in Nieśwież (Pińsk diocese)—p.84. According to a Jewish source, Rev. Grodis, who “was beloved by his students and especially the Jewish ones, … expressed his deep shock at the German policies towards the Jews and respected the Jewish suffering.”⁶⁵²
[50] Rev. Edward Tabaczkowski, pastor of Tłumacz, who sheltered a Jewish student in the church rectory and provided many false baptismal certificates and other forms of assistance to Jews, was put to death on October 20, 1942—pp.154–55.⁶⁵³ It is believed that Rev. Tabaczkowski was betrayed to the Gestapo by a Jewish woman from Tłumacz.⁶⁵⁴
An account in Chciuk, Saving Jews in War-Torn Poland, 1939–1945, at page 33, identifies:

[51] an unnamed priest in the village of Ossowo near Wilno, who was killed for extending help to Jews.

Kamil Barański, in his Przeminęli zagończycy, chliborobi, chasydzi…, at pages 84 and 173, also identifies:

[52] Rev. Remigiusz Wójcik, administrator of the parish in Święty Stanisław near Stanisławów (archdiocese of Lwów), who hid a Jewish woman in the bell tower of the church. After his arrest by the Ukrainian police in September 1942, Rev. Wójcik was taken to the Gestapo prison in Stanisławów where he was held and beaten for three days and, on the fourth day, he was ripped apart by dogs in the prison courtyard.⁶⁵⁵

Franciszek Stopniak, “Katolickie duchowieństwo polskie i Żydzi w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej,” Polskie podziemie polityczne wobec zagłady Żydów w czasie okupacji, Conference Papers, Warsaw, April 22, 1987 (Warsaw: Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce–Instytut Pamięci Narodowej and Polskie Towarzystwo “Sprawiedliwych wśród Narodów Świata,” 1988), at page 70, cites:

[53] Rev. Dominik Przyłuski, pastor of Garbów near Lublin, who died of a heart attack after his rectory was inspected by the Germans. The Jews hidden there were not found.

Additional clergymen identified as having been killed for helping Jews include:
[54] Father Maximilian [Maksymilian] Kolbe, who was arrested in February 1941 for, among other reasons, his protective care of over 1,500 Jewish refugees lodged in the Franciscan monastery in Niepokalanów and who was eventually put to death in Auschwitz on August 14, 1941⁶⁵⁶;
[55] Rev. Józef Pawłowski, the rector of the Higher Seminary in Kielce (until November 1939) and pastor of the cathedral parish, who was arrested on February 10, 1941 for ministering to the faithful and extending aid to Jews and others. He was deported to Auschwitz and then to Dachau, where he was murdered on January 9, 1942⁶⁵⁷;
[56] Rev. Jan Gielarowski, the pastor of Michałówka near Radymno, with the assistance of an elderly priest from a nearby village, provided false baptismal certificates to a number of Jews and sheltered Jews in the parish rectory. At least one of the Jews survived the war. Rev. Gielarowski was arrested by the Germans but did not give anyone away. He was deported to Auschwitz where he died in April 1943.⁶⁵⁸
According to a family source,

[57] Rev. Paweł Szczygieł, the retired pastor of the parish of Jakubkowice near Nowy Sącz, was arrested on April 14, 1942 on charges of smuggling food into the ghetto in Nowy Sącz, which he used to visit under the pretext of caring for his parishioners. He was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp where he died on October 31, 1942.⁶⁵⁹

Memoirs of Jewish survivors also contain additional examples of Polish priests who were believed to have been executed for their rescue efforts on behalf of Jews. Joseph Riwash, Resistance and Revenge 1939–1949 (Montreal: n.p., 1981), at page 144, records that

[58] Rev. Romuald Dronicz, the pastor of Wołkołata in northeastern Poland, who, like many other priests in the area, fed and sheltered Jews, did not take advantage of an opportunity to escape, and was exexcuted by the Gestapo in July 1942.⁶⁶⁰

According to the memoirs of Peter Silverman, David Smuschkowitz, and Peter Smuszkowicz, From Victims to Victors (Concord, Ontario: The Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, 1992), at pages 246–47 and 325,

[59] & [60] two priests from Ikaźń and Prozoroki were shot in a forest outside of Głębokie in northeastern Poland in March 1942 after being arrested for imploring their parishioners to assist Jews and not to take part in persecution directed against them.⁶⁶¹ According to Polish sources, Rev. Władysław Maćkowiak, pastor of Ikaźń, and his vicar, Rev. Stanisław Pyrtek, were arrested in December 1941 for their ardent preaching and illegally teaching religion to children. They were detained in the jail in Brasław, and later in Głębokie, along with Rev. Mieczysław Bohatkiewicz, who was arrested in Dryssa in January 1942. All three of them were executed by the Germans on March 4, 1942 in Borek forest near Berezwecz, outside Głębokie.⁶⁶²

Another Jewish survivor, Wili Fink, mentions:

[61] an unidentified Polish priest in the Wilno area, “who paid with his life for those (birth) certificates given to Jews.”⁶⁶³

According to a Jewish wartime report, at the beginning of December 1939, [62] a priest was hanged near the synagogue in Gostynin because he traded with the Jews.⁶⁶⁴ According to Polish sources, however, after the pastor and dean, Rev. Apolinary Kaczyński was arrested in October 1939 along with some thirty Polish and Jewish hostages, three young vicars, Rev. Antoni Dubas, Rev. Stanisław Krystosik, and Rev. Kazimierz Stankiewicz, volunteered to take his place and were executed by the Germans along with the other hostages on December 1, 1939. Rev. Kaczyński was released but arrested again in April 1941. He died on December 26, 1941 due to severe beatings he endured while in prison.
Francesca Bram (née Grochowska) recalls that

[63] the village priest of Grodziec demonstrated tremendous compassion and organized community assistance for the Jews expelled from Konin to surrounding villages in the summer of 1940. According to her testimony, “The Germans sought an opportunity to arrest him and this happened after he helped the Jews in Grodziec. Soon afterwards came news of his death.”⁶⁶⁵ Rev. Franciszek Jaworski, the pastor of Grodziec, was arrested by the Germans on August 26, 1940 and deported to Sachsenhausen, and then transferred to Dachau. Fortunately, he managed to survive the war.⁶⁶⁶

Yehudis Pshenitse of Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki recounts the story of

[64] an unnamed parish priest from her town to whom she, as a young girl, turned to assistance after being separated from her family. Not only did the priest shelter her but also, after he was reported to the Germans, he refused to surrender her. Having been beaten mercilessly by the Germans and left to die, the priest had the young girl brought to him, blessed her, and implored his housekeeper to find a safe hiding place for her. He died in her presence. “His body was pierced in several places, and his face was unrecognizable.”⁶⁶⁷

The Grajewo Memorial Book mentions:

[65] Rev. Aleksander Pęza of Grajewo, who “tirelessly” called on the Christian population, at the daily masses, not to cooperate with the Germans and their anti-Semitic provocations. When word of this reached the Germans, he was shot. Various dates are given for Rev. Pęza’s death. The most authoritative—on his tombstone—is July 15, 1943.⁶⁶⁸

Another source of danger for priests, and Poles in general, who assisted Jews in Poland’s southeastern provinces, were the activities of Ukrainian nationalists who waged a campaign of ethnic cleansing aimed at the non-Ukrainian elements, particularly the Poles and the Jews. A case in point is Rev. Błażej Nowosad (supra [26]), who was murdered in Potok Górny near Tomaszów Lubelski. Two other similar examples are found in Edward Prus, Holocaust po banderowsku: Czy Żydzi byli w UPA? (Wrocław: Nortom, 1995), pp.148 and 150, respectively:
[66] Rev. Antoni Wierzbowski of Bybło (Rohatyn county, voivodship of Stanisławów) was murdered by Ukrainian nationalists in November 1943 along with a school teacher after refusing to betray the whereabouts of five Jews hidden in a shelter⁶⁶⁹;
[67] Rev. Andrzej Kraśnicki from Jazłowiec (Buczacz county, voivodship of Tarnopol) was tortured, abducted, and killed by Ukrainian nationalists in December 1943 killed for refusing to break his confessional vow and reveal information about parishioners who were sheltering Jews.
[68] When the Gestapo took a group of Jews from Kolno through the village of Borkowo near Łomża on July 9, 1941, the housekeeper rang the church bell to announce the morning mass. Believing this to have been done as a sign of solidarity with the Jewish prisoners passing near the church, they arrested the pastor, Rev. Stanisław Rejmentowski, and his housekeeper. They disappeared without a trace, and were likely executed in a nearby forest.⁶⁷⁰
Relying on Soviet and Jewish sources, Israeli historian Leonid Smilovitskii (Smilovitsky) has confirmed that the Germans executed priests in a number of towns of northeastern Poland for helping Jews (Brasław, Brześć, Grodno, Wilejka, Mołodeczno, and Pińsk), and mentions some of those priests by name:

[69] Rev. Mieczysław Kubik, the dean and pastor of Nieśwież (formerly rector of the church of the Transfiguration of Our Lord in Nowogródek),

[70] Rev. Michał Dalecki, the dean and pastor of Nowogródek,

[71] Rev. Tadeusz Grzesiak, the pastor of Kleck,

as well as the aforementioned Rev. Władysław Grobelny (of Kobryń) [supra 10], Rev. Józef Kuczyński (of Wsielub) [supra 37], Rev. Fabian Poczobutt-Odlanicki (of Łunin) [supra 16], Rev. Jan Urbanowicz (of Brześć) [supra 5], and others.⁶⁷¹
According to Polish sources, the aforementioned Rev. Kubik, the dean and pastor of Nieśwież, was executed in Baranowicze in 1942 for contacts with partisans and for assisting Jews.⁶⁷² This information is also confirmed by Józef Halperin, who was imprisoned with Rev. Kubik in Baranowicze.⁶⁷³
[72] Rev. Aleksander Ciszkiewicz, rector of an auxiliary church in the parish of Niedźwiedzica (Pińsk diocese), was arrested by the Belorussian police during a hunt for Jews and handed over to the Gestapo. He was executed in Hult 1942 near Nieśwież.⁶⁷⁴
[73] Rev. Zygmunt Miłkowski, pastor of Wiszniew, was arrested for helping Jews on August 1943 and executed later that year in Wilejka.⁶⁷⁵

[74] Rev. Antoni Udalski, formerly the pastor of Wołożyn, was arrested in Soleczniki Wielkie near Wilno by Lithuanian police in mid–1942 for helping Jews. He was imprisoned and put to death in Wołożyn in 1943.⁶⁷⁶

[75] Rev. Ludwik Peciak, the dean and pastor of the parish in Kołomyja, provided birth certificates to many Jews, among them Mila Sandberg Mesner, Lola Sandberg, Jasia Elberger, and Iser and Toni Reisman. The Reismans were caught by the SS and murdered, and Rev. Peciak’s signature on their documents may have led to his arrest in November 1942 by Ukrainian police, who delivered him to the Gestapo. After being imprisoned in the Majdanek concentration camp, he perished in the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 16, 1943.⁶⁷⁷
Many additional cases which cannot be confirmed independently at the present time are recorded in Franciszek Kącki’s Udział księży i zakonnic w holokauście Żydów, second revised and expanded edition (Warsaw: Adiutor, 2002). Some of the repressions of clergymen attributed to assisting Jews have been disproved or are doubtful. For example, there is the case of the Salesian Fathers from the Ks. Siemca Institute on Lipowa Street in Warsaw, mentioned in Wroński and Zwolakowa, Polacy Żydzi 1939–1945, p.352. According to Adina Blady Szwajger, a Jewish woman who worked in the child welfare section of the Central Relief Council (RGO) housed in the Salesian Fathers’ residence, the priests and the secular staff suspected of involvement in underground activities were taken away by the Germans in the spring of 1944 without any explanation and hanged in the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. The reason for their execution remains unknown.⁶⁷⁸
Prior to October 15, 1941, when the death penalty was officially decreed in the General Government for any assistance rendered to Jews, members of the clergy were generally deported to concentration camps for their activities on behalf of Jews, e.g., Father Maximilian Kolbe, Father Anicet (Wojciech Kopliński), Rev. Franciszek J. Gabryl of Kraków,⁶⁷⁹ and Rev. Witold Dzięcioł of Kielce.⁶⁸⁰ Fr. Kolbe and Fr. Anicet perished; the latter two priests survived. A number of other priests who were arrested for assisting Jews survived incarceration in prisons or camps or managed to escape and hide:

• 
  Rev. Julian Chruścicki (Chróścicki), pastor of Włochy (a Warsaw suburb), who was active in the Central Relief Council (RGO), was arrested on September 18, 1942 and imprisoned in Pawiak and Majdanek (miracuously, he was released from Majdanek on May 15, 1944)⁶⁸¹;
  
• 
  Rev. Władysław Miś, pastor of All Saints parish in Kraków, was arrested on September 1, 1942 for issuing a false baptismal and birth certificate to a Jewish woman; he survived three concentration camps⁶⁸²;
  
• 
  Rev. Stanisław Szwaja, a catechist, was arrested in Kraków on November 12, 1942 for aiding Jews; he managed to survive four concentration camps (Auschwitz, Gross-Rosen, Sachsenhausen, and Dachau)⁶⁸³;
  
• 
  Rev. Ignacy Świrski, professor at the Stefan Batory University in Wilno, had to hide from the Germans near the village of Turgiele for two and a half years⁶⁸⁴;
  
• 
  Rev. Mieczysław Kmita, curate of a parish church in Białystok, was warned of his impending arrest and fled to Śliwna, where he hid until the end of the war⁶⁸⁵;
  
• 
  Rev. Stanisław Próchniewicz, the pastor of Rozbity Kamień near Sokołów was arrested on September 13, 1943, along with the organist and several parishioners, on suspicion of sheltering and helping escaped Soviet prisoners of war and Jews. He was taken to Pawiak prison in Warsaw but released on October 6, 1943, probably for lack of evidence.⁶⁸⁶
  

Wacław Zajączkowski, in his Martyrs of Charity, Part One, at p.257 (Entry 591), as well as Szymon Datner, in Las sprawiedliwych (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1968), p.103, list the names of eight Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul who were executed in Warsaw’s Wola district in August 1944 for refusing to surrender the Jewish children who were housed in their orphanage on Dzielna Street which was later transferred to the vicinity of the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the New Town:

[1] Zofia Dziewanowska,

[2] Helena Jezierska,

[3] Zofia Kowalczyk,

[4] Anna Apolonia Motz,

[5] Maria (Marianna) Nadolska,

[6] Józefa Ogrodowicz,

[7] Aurelia Pomierny, and

[8] Maria Florentyna Wilman.

Other nuns listed by Zajączkowski:

[9] & [10] Two Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary—Kazimiera Wołowska (Sister Maria Marta of Jesus), the superior of the convent, and Bogumiła Noiszewska (Sister Maria Ewa of Providence), a medical doctor—were arrested in Słonim (voivodship of Nowogródek) on December 18, 1942 for sheltering Jews in the convent and on its grounds. They were executed the following day in a mass execution of several hundred Poles together with the Jesuit priest, Fr. Adam Sztark, administrator of Żyrowice parish and chaplain of the Sisters’ convent in Słonim, who had brought Jewish children to the convent (Entries 463 and 702).⁶⁸⁷ Their story is detailed earlier on.

[11] Sister Jadwiga Assadowska, the superior of the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Wołkowysk near Białystok in eastern Poland, was repeatedly arrested on suspicion of assisting Jews and others (Entry 663).
Another nun who lost her life for sheltering sickly Polish and Jewish children from Warsaw and assisting Jews escaping across the nearby Polish-Slovak border was [12] Sister Maria Klemensa (Helena Staszewska), who was the superior of a convent of the Ursulines of the Roman Union in Rokiciny Podhalańskie near Rabka. She was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1943, and perished in Auschwitz in July of that year.⁶⁸⁸ Sister Maria Julia, born Stanisława Rodzińska, the superior of a convent and director of an orphanage in Wilno, was arrested on July 12, 1943. She was imprisoned in Pravieniškės (Prowieniszki) outside Kaunas, and then in Stutthof concentration camp where she died of typhus on February 20, 1945. She shared her meagre food rations with fellow prisoners in the Jewish barracks and, according to a Jewish inmate, lifted their spirits by her inner strength.⁶⁸⁹
It should be remembered that Catholic priests and nuns constituted only a small but representative portion of Polish rescuers and the several thousand Poles who were burned alive, executed or died from torture because they befriended Jews. In total, several thousand Christian Poles—men, women and children, entire families and even whole communities—were tortured to death, summarily executed, or burned alive for rendering assistance to Jews. Hundreds of cases of Poles being put to death for helping Jews have been documented though the list is still far from complete (the author is aware of scores of additional cases).⁶⁹⁰
Some Holocaust historians who deprecate Polish rescue efforts, such as Lucy S. Dawidowicz, have attempted to argue that essentially there was no difference in the penalty that Poles and Western Europeans, such as the Dutch, faced for helping Jews.⁶⁹¹ However, the sources on which Dawidowicz relies belie this claim. Western Europeans very rarely faced the prospect of death for helping Jews. The preeminent Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg described the situation that prevailed in the Netherlands as follows: “If caught, they did not have to fear an automatic death penalty. Thousands were arrested for hiding Jews or Jewish belongings, but it was German policy to detain such people only for a relatively short time in a camp within the country, and in serious cases to confiscate their property.”⁶⁹² According to a Dutch historian, “usually, if Gentiles who helped Jews were punished, they were punished with short-term Schutzhaft, or protective custody; only severe cases were sent to concentration camps in Germany.”⁶⁹³ In Belgium, a decree of June 1, 1942 warned the local population against sheltering Jews under punishment with “imprisonment and a fine.”⁶⁹⁴ Nor is there evidence of any death penalty being issued for helping Jews within Germany proper. According to a German historian, “German law did not specifically probibit helping Jews. … In cases of violation, the non-Jewish German party was threatened with protective custody or three months in a concentration camp.”⁶⁹⁵ Moreover, unlike in occupied Poland, a significant group of people defined as “mixed race” and even Jews married to Germans could escape most of the Nazi regime’s anti-Semitic policies, provided they and their children did not practice the Jewish faith. However, thousands of Jews subsequently committed suicide when their protection came to an end.⁶⁹⁶ Likewise, in Austria no specific penalty was legally established for concealing Jews, yet rescue efforts there, as in Germany proper, were exceedingly rare.⁶⁹⁷ Although the death penalty was also found on the books in a few jurisdictions such as Norway and the Czech Protectorate, there too it was rarely used. Such laxity was virtually unheard of in occupied Poland, where the death penalty was meted out with utmost rigour. Several Norwegian resistance fighters were executed for helping Jews to escape to Sweden, and a number of persons were imprisoned.⁶⁹⁸ Several dozen individuals in the Czech Protectorate were charged by Nazi special courts and sentenced to death.⁶⁹⁹ Rescuers were also put to death in some Eastern European countries such as Lithuania and the occupied areas of the Soviet Union.⁷⁰⁰
Historian István Deák has eloquently summed up the argument in the following way:

The penalty for assisting or even trading with a Jew in German-occupied Poland was death, a fact that makes all comparisons between wartime Polish-Jewish relations and, say, Danish-Jewish relations blatantly unfair. Yet such comparisons are made again and again in Western histories—and virtually always to the detriment of the Poles, with scarce notice taken of the 50,000 to 100,000 Jews said to have been saved by the efforts of Poles to hide or otherwise help them … one must not ignore the crucial differences between wartime conditions in Eastern and Western Europe. ⁷⁰¹