Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy
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na Rzeszowszczyźnie w latach 1939–1945 (Rzeszów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2011), 183–84.
153 Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers, 49–50, 162, 175, 281, 282; based on the testimony of Magdalena Orner, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/6745. 154 “Przechowywanie Żydów przez Matkę Teresę od św. Józefa–Janinę Kierocińską (1885–1946), współzałożycielkę Zgromadzenia Sióstr Karmelitanek Dzieciątka Jezus w Sosnowcu,” Internet: 155 Marcin Gugulski, “Wielka Sobota 1944,” April 23, 2011, Internet: 156 Testimony of Marion Weinzweig, September 1997, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In her Yad Vashem testimony, Eva Bergstein (Nisencwaig) states that the nuns were not aware that she and her cousin Lucy were Jewish, or else “we would be handed over to the Germans by the nuns.” See Internet: 157 “Klimontów,” Virtual Shtetl, Internet: 158 Zdzisław Przygoda, The Way to Freedom (Toronto: Lugus, 1995), 62, 65, 88. 159 See also the testimony of Franciszka Aronson (Fryda/Frieda/Frania Szpigner, later Aronson), Irit Romano (Irena Kuper), and Miriam Sada in Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, 171–77, 191–97; Kurek, Dzieci żydowskie w klasztorach, 114–20, 215–20, 226–27; Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers, 90, 90, 96, 151–52, 156, 161, 177. See also Irit R. [Romano] Holocaust Testimony (HVT–1805), Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, Yale University Library. 160 Historian Joanna Wieliczka-Szarkowa states that, in the early part of 1943, 57 Jewish girls and 66 boys were brought to the Father Boduen Home. See Joanna Wieliczka-Szarkowa, “Nie wolno nam odmówić,” Nasz Dziennik (Magazyn), March 14–15 , 2015. 161 Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, 52. 162 Klara Jackl, “Father Boduen Children’s Home, a Gateway to Life,” June 10, 2012, Internet: 163 Anna Sierpińska, “Uroczystość nadania tytułu ‘Sprawiedliwi Wśród Narodów Świata’ … w Domu Małych Dzieci im. Ks. G.P. Baudouina w Warszawie, 22 lutego 2007 r.,” Internet: 164 Kołacińska-Gałązka, Dzieci Holocaustu mówią..., vol. 5, 316. 165 Testimony of Antonina Baraniak, November 23, 1946, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 5114. Mania Powązek entrusted her child Antonina Baraniak. After a Gestapo raid on her premises, during which Baraniak successfully concealed the child, she turned to Rev. Marceli Godlewski, who arranged for the child to be accepted by the Father Boduen Home. After the war, the child was reclaimed by her father. Sara (later Teresa Lisiewska) and her brother Mojżesz (later Wiktor) were sheltered there in 1942–1943. See Katarzyna Meloch and Halina Szostkiewicz, eds., Dzieci Holocaustu mówią…, volume 4 (Warsaw: Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie “Dzieci Holocaustu” w Polsce, 2012), 51–52. 166 “The Topilsky Family Poses in Their Garden Outside their home in Lodz,” USHMM Photo Archives, Internet: 167 Testimony of Janina Prymowicz, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 5276. Both Sabina Żelazko and her child survived. 168 Joanna Michlic, “Stories of Rescue Activities in the Letters of Jewish Survivors about Christian Polish Rescuers, 1944–1949,” in Glenn Dynner and François Guesnet, eds., Warsaw: The Jewish Metropolis (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 522–23. 169 Lena Küchler-Silberman, My Hundred Children (New York: Laurel-Leaf/Dell, 1987), 22–23, 53, 223. This source, however, is not particlarly reliable, as Küchler claims that she dealt with Father Boduen in person. Father Boduen (Baudouin) was an 18th century French missionary whom the institution was named after. 170 Grynberg, Księga sprawiedliwych, 286. 171 Grynberg, Księga sprawiedliwych, 289. 172 According to Mieczysław (Miecio or Mosze) Kenigswein, later Moshe Tirosh, after their escape from the ghetto, the Kenigswein family was sheltered by the Rączek family for a few months before moving in with the Żabińskis. Later the family split up, with a shopkeeper agreeingto adopt Stefania (Stefcia or Sara). Mrs Wala cared for Mieczysław until the Warsaw uprising of August 1944, when he was separated from her. The Polish underground placed Mieczysław in an orphanage, under the care of nuns, which was evacuated to southern Poland where they were housed in a convent. Since Mieczysław was circumcised, his Jewish origin was no secret. Afterwards, he was transferred to an orphanage in Kraków where he was claimed by his mother. The youngest of the three children, Stanisław (Szmulik), was also evacuated from Warsaw with other foundlings to city of Częstochowa. See Vanessa Gera, “A Holocaust Survivor Remembers: Lost in the Rubble of Warsaw,” Associated Press News, May 9, 2015. 173 Kurt Streeter, “A Holocaust Survivor Raised a Fist to Death,” Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2011; Testimony of Natalie Gold-Lumer, February 11, 1996, Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, University of Southern California, Interview code 8524. 174 Leokadia Schmidt, Cudem przeżyślimy czas zagłady (Kraków and Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1983), 54, 160, 203–6, 218, 242–43, 256. 175 “Aniele… stróżu moj…”, Świecie Nasz–Comiesięczny Magazyn Polonii, Internet: 176 Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, 21. 177 Anna Mieszkowska, Irena Sendler: Mother of the Children of the Holocaust, (Santa Barbara, California: Praeger, 2011); translation of Anna Mieszkowska, Matka dzieci Holocaustu: Historia Ireny Sendlerowej, Second edition (Warsaw: Muza, 2005). A revised edition of Mieszkowska’s biography was published under the title Ptawdziwa historia Ireny Sendlerowej (Warsaw: Marginesy, 2014). 178 Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, 255–56. 179 Grynberg, Księga sprawiedliwych, 478; Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 6274. 181 Kurek, Dzieci żydowskie w klasztorach, 111. 182 Henryk Masłowicz, born in the Wierzbnik ghetto in December 1940, was smuggled out of the ghetto in 1942 and placed in a convent in Kraków. He was subsequently taken by a woman who hid him in an attic above a candy store. After the war he was seized by a Jewish social worker and taken to Israel. He was reunited with his father eight years later, and settled in Ecuador. See “Henry Maslowicz, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Internet: 183 Testimony of Maria Kasman, March 10, 1948, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 3334; Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, 173. 184 Grzegorz Przybysz, “Ks. Franciszek Kawiecki: Wspomnienia,” Internet: 185 Testimony of Albin Małysiak, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.93/47476 [ID: 7428386]; Grzegorz Górny, Sprawiedliwi: Jak Polacy ratowali Żydów przed Zagładą (Izabelin-Warsaw: Rosikon, 2013), 116. 186 In all fairness, it it should be noted that when Czubak and Goldfein arrived in Białystok, the ghetto was under siege and searches were underway for Jewish escapees. The mother superior invited them to stay for lunch, but explained that a longer stay could imperil the entire convent. See Michel Borwicz, Vies interdites (Tournai, Belgium: Casterman, 1969), 108–9. As documented later on, the convent of the Missionary Sisters of the Holy Family in Białystok was known to have provided food and other forms of assistance to Jews. 187 In Łapy, a woman directed Czubak and Goldfein to a priest, who arranged for a carriage to take them to Dąbrowa. See Borwicz, Vies interdites, 109. 188 There is no basis to question the authenticity of Dr. Goldfein’s detailed account, provided in 1944, which is corroroborated by another account she provided shortly after the war—see the testimony of Dr. Goldfajn, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 138, and by the account of Joseph Elman, a family friend. There is no question that her presence was known to the Sisters during her first stay at the convent, and that she left because she was summoned back to the ghetto. There is no question that she also left the convent on good terms after her second, shorter stay. Why else would Genowefa Czubak (Sister Dolorosa) have returned to the convent after the German occupation and Dr. Goldfein solicited help for the nuns? After her return to Prużana, Czubak had a falling out with her religious order. The circumstances of that falling out are not clear, but were doubtless compounded by the invitation she and Dr. Goldfein received from Ilya Ehrenburg to go to Moscow to record their wartime experiences. Yad Vashem has disseminated a markedly different, and rather unlikely, version of these events, based on testimony by Genowefa Czubak provided many years later. According to Yad Vashem, “Czubak hid Goldfajn [Goldfein] in her convent cell without the Mother Superior’s knowledge. After hiding in Czubak’s cell for about a month, Goldfajn’s presence was discovered and she was sent back to the ghetto, while Czubak was severely reprimanded. In January 1943, when the Germans destroyed the Pruzhana ghetto, Dr. Goldfajn managed to escape from the transport. Having nowhere else to go she returned to the convent, where once again she was turned away by the Mother Superior. Czubak, unable to accept the Mother Superior’s decision, dressed Goldfajn in a nun’s habit and left the convent, her—her home for 18 years—together with her. The two women wandered through the surrounding villages, staying in farmhouses and living off donations. Somehow or other they survived until the area was liberated in July 1944. After the war, Dr. Goldfajn emigrated to France, while Czubak, who was not allowed back into the convent, moved to Lodz [Łódź].” See Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, 161. A somewhat different version is found in Borwicz, Vies inerdites, 104–13, which acknowledges that all of the nuns in the convent were supportive of the rescue effort, except for the new superior who thought that Dr. Goldfein’s disappearance would be detected and emperil the entire convent. Unfortunately, some historians have gone out of their way to disparage the assistance of the Polish Catholic clergy. Mordecai Paldiel, of Yad Vashem, has claimed: “In Eastern Europe, the clergy who extended assistance to Jews were few and far between, but there were notable exceptions”; “In Poland, an exceptional [sic] priest in this regard was Father Stanislaw [Stanisław] Mazak …” See Paldiel, Sheltering the Jews, 56, 91. Similarly, Yehuda Bauer, also of Yad Vashem, reduced the assistance of the Polish Catholic clergy to next to nothing: “Nor was the Catholic clergy any help at all. With some very honorable exceptions, the clergy by and large not only echoed the antisemitic sentiments, but led them”; “Against the background of church antisemitism in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, the action of the Uniate archbishop of Lwow [Lwów], Count Andreas Szeptycki, who ordered his clergy to save Jews despite his antisemitic views, stands out. So do the actions of the Ursuline sisters, and other individual monastic houses and occasional village priests.” See Yehuda Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), 57, 59–60. Philip Friedman has advanced unfavourable and sweeping comparisons to other countries for which there is no basis in fact. In his book Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust (New York: Conference on Jewish Social Studies; and Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1980), Friedman writes at pp.416–17: “On the whole, the attitude of the lower clergy paralleled that of the various ethnic groups. Where the local population was full of sympathy for the persecuted Jews, almost all [sic] the priests participated in rescue activities; this was the case in Italy, Belgium, France, Czechoslovakia, and parts of Hungary as in the Protestant countries and in the Greek Orthodox Bulgaria and Greece. Where the majority of the population was anti-Semitic, there were also anti-semitic clergymen whose attitudes encouraged the enemies of the Jewish people. How much more should we appreciate, then, that amidst those East European peoples devoured by anti-Semitism, some clergymen had the courage to oppose the anti-Jewish wave, sometimes paying for it with their own lives.” Only a small minority—in some cases a miniscule one—of the clergy was involved in the rescue of Jews in the countries enumerated by Friedman. The leading historian on the Holocaust in the Czech lands states authoritatively that “the assistance of clergy in the Protectorate was negligible. None of the foremost representatives of the Catholic Church protested publicly against the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws.” See Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (Lincoln: The University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), 221. Furthermore, contrary to what Friedman suggests, no priest—in Poland at least—lost his life at the hands of the native population for helping Jews. American historian Jan Tomasz Gross employs more “refined” but equally perverse arguments to attempt to paint the Polish Catholic clergy as Nazi collaborators. In his essay “On Collaboration,” he argues that the definition of collaboration should also include “collaboration by omission,” whereby individuals and institutions remain passive vis-à-vis the policies of the occupier. Armed with that broad definition, Gross points to the passivity of the Catholic clergy in the face of the persecution of the Jews as an example of collaboration. See Jan Tomasz Gross, “O kolaboracji,” Zagłada Żydow: Studia i materiały, volume 2 (2006): 407–16. 189 Testimony of Lorka Waszkowitzer, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 3217, noted in Michał Czajka, Marta Janczewska, and Apolonia Umińska-Keff, eds., Relacje z czasów Zagłady Inwentarz: Archiwum ŻIH IN-B, zespół 301, Nr. 3001–4000 / Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Catalogue: Jewish Historical Institute Archives, Record Group 301, No. 3001–4000 (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2005), volume 4, 98. 190 Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers, 163; based on the testimony of Tamar Lubliner, Yad Vashem Arhives, file O.3/1397. 191 Grynberg, Księga sprawiedliwych, 370–73. 192 “The Florek Family,” Internet: 193 Philip Friedman, Their Brothers’ Keepers (New York: Holocaust Library, 1978), 126; Philip Friedman, ed., Martyrs and Fighters (Polish Jews, Inc., 1954), reprinted in Roselle K. Chartock and Jack Spencer, eds., Can It Happen Again? Chronicles of the Holocaust, (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 1995), 248–49; (Reb) Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony of Jewish War Criminals, Part One (Brooklyn, New York: Neturei Karta of U.S.A., 1977), 34–35; Simon Zuker, comp., The Unconquerable Spirit: Vignettes of the Jewish Religious Spirit the Nazis Could Not Destroy, Second revised edition (New York: Zachor Institute, 1980/1981), 78; Wacław Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One (Washington, D.C.: St. Maximilian Kolbe Foundation, 1987), 290 (Entry 724). According to a Jewish source, discussions took place in March 1942, with the offer of asylum coming from “the highest ranks of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.” According to a Polish source, the offer of assistance was inspired by Canon Roman Archutowski, the rector of the Archdiocesan Seminary. However, another rabbi by the name of Khane did accept an offer of shelter and was hidden in the archdiocesan library. See Kącki’s Udział księży i zakonnic w holokauście Żydów, 54. 194 Ewa Kurek suggests that, since no church source mentions the proposal of saving children from the Warsaw ghetto, it may be that it was actually put forward, as other sources indicate, by Irena Sendler of the Social Welfare Department of the Warsaw Municipal Council, who worked closely with the Central Relief Council (RGO) in placing hundreds of Jewish children in religious institutions, primarily convents. See Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, 229–30. 195 (Reb) Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, Part One (Brooklyn, New York: Neturei Karta of U.S.A., 1977), 35. 196 Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 535. 197 The underground Catholic organization Front Odrodzenia Polski (FOP—Front for the Rebirth of Poland), the precursor of the Council for Aid to Jews, was co-founded in 1941 by the prominent Catholic author Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Rev. Edmund Krauze of the Missionary Fathers’ Church of the Holy Cross in Warsaw, and included in its members Rev. D. Nowicki and Rev. Jan Zieja. Its activities were well regarded by the Catholic hierarchy and supported by the clergy. See Encyclopedia Katolicka (Lublin: Towarzystwo Naukowe Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 1989), volume 5, columns 726–27. According to Teresa Prekerowa: “By searching out and furnishing these kinds of identity documentation … the Church authorities provided an invaluable service to Jews who were hiding, including many who were charges of Żegota. In Warsaw, among the most helpful in this regard were the parishes of All Saints, Blessed Virgin Mary, Holy Cross, St. Anthony, Christ the Saviour and others. The Catholic FOP, an organization that formed part of the Council for Aid to Jews, had the broadest contacts with pastors, though members of Jewish underground organizations also frequently established [direct] contact with certain priests and nuns. Helena Merenholc, for example, obtained many baptismal and marriage records from the parish in [suburban] Łomianki.” See Teresa Prekerowa, Konspiracyjna Rada Pomocy Żydom w Warszawie 1942–1945 (Warsawa: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1982), 148. Further: “Catholic priests rendered an enormous service to Jews in hiding by supplying them with authentic baptismal and marriage certificates of the people who, by that time, were dead, or had vanished or were absent from the country (before and during World War II, church parishes in Poland performed functions of Registries).” See Teresa Prekerowa, “The Relief Council for Jews in Poland, 1942–1945,” in Chimen Abramsky, Maciej Jachimczyk and Antony Polonsky, eds., The Jews In Poland (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 166. The authors of a biography of the famed Polish courier Jan Karski, who attempted to inform a disbelieving Western World about the realities of the Holocaust, and who was very closely connected with FOP, strongly suggest that FOP was attacked by the Catholic establishment for its support of the Jews: “Yet, in the name of Catholicism, the Front’s members put their lives on the line to support the Jews. They encountered the hostility not only of the Germans, but also of elements within the Church establishment. A Vatican official who was in contact with Poland during the war wrote of the ‘intense battle’ waged by traditionalist priests against the FOP. The group’s members, wrote the official, ‘lacked any serious dogmatic foundation.’ Their publications ‘were crammed with false ideological propositions whose frank heresies made them really dangerous.’ These people had no history of philo-Semitism, yet they took up the cause of Jewry in the face of major obstacles; something must have changed in their hearts.” See E. Thomas Wood and Stanisław M. Jankowski, Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994), 106. However, the sources these authors cite (discussed below) do not in any way corroborate the implied claim that the pro-Jewish activities of FOP were under attack by the Church establishment. The Vatican “official” referred to is Luciana Frassati, the Italian wife of the Polish diplomat Jan Gawroński. Frassati’s book Il destino passa per Varsavia (Bologna: Cappelli, 1949; reissued by Milano: Bompiani, 1985) is quoted extensively in Carlo Falconi, The Silence of Pius XII (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 168–70. She writes: “[FOP’s] members, in good or bad faith, lacked any serious dogmatic foundation. Their leaflets, entirely financed by the ZWZ [Związek Walki Zbrojnej—Union For Armed Struggle], were crammed with false ideological propositions whose frank heresies made them really dangerous. My interlocutor quoted a few extracts which justified distrust of the whole movement. [Falconi omits the impugned extracts cited by Frassati at pp.201–2 (1985 edition), which are all theological in nature and totally unrelated to the Jewish issue: “Natural ethics don’t exist in practice. They don’t exist even where there is no shadow of Christianity or Catholicism. The grace of redemption is the fountain of life. All that is good is caused and inspired by Grace. In Catholic life, Grace is the principle element for the development of life; natural ethics, therefore, for a Catholic cannot exist in any manner … The national instinct comes from the intimate nature of man; the religious one from the external nature.”] The priest was very depressed and told me he had started an intense battle against these statements. But though his campaign seemed simple and just in appearance, in practice it was very hard-going by reason of the strange opposition, indirect though it was, brought by various Catholic authorities, including bishops and archbishops, as well as superiors of religious orders and communities. An active priest who was known for his pro-papal zeal and his tenacious and unbending opposition to these half-heresies, was transferred without explanation from Warsaw into the country [in the capacity of a private chaplain. Even though he presented to the responsible superior the reasons which did not permit him to abandon the city in such a critical moment, he did not secure a revocation of the order and had to leave.] Yet he did not give up: taking advantage of the peace and solitude of the country, he had written a violent pamphlet defending the Holy Father. And as he intended to print 10,000 copies of it, he was desperately looking around for the necessary money.” Thus, according to Frassati, this priest’s one-man campaign, based on purely theological grounds, against some statements made by FOP unrelated to Jews, was effectively silenced by his banishment to the countryside after it had met with the opposition of the Church leadership. This is a far cry from what Wood and Jankowski suggest was the prevailing situation. As for having had no history of philo-Semitism, the authors (Wood and Jankowski) are apparently unaware of Kossak-Szczucka’s prewar writings, for example, her well-known memoir Pożoga: Wspomnienia z Wołynia 1917–1919, in which she described rivetingly the Ukrainian pogroms of Jews in Płoskirów (Proskurov), in Volhynia, which she witnessed with horror in February 1919. Kossak-Szczucka’s appeal (“The Protest”) has been minutely “dissected” and widely criticized by pundits because of the author’s anti-Semitic views and its supposed anti-Semitic content which, allegedly, had the effect of dampening, rather than increasing, societal support for the downtrodden Jews. As in the case of Father Maximilian Kolbe, that narrow approach is a misfocus because both of them espoused traditional, mainstream Catholic teachings and were to some extent a mirror image of traditional Jewish views about Christians. Tellingly, Władysław Bartoszewski, then a young idealist, recalls “The Protest” as his rallying call and its author as his beacon. See Witold Bereś and Jerzy Skoczylas, “Władysław Bartoszewski— świadek epoki,” Gazeta Wyborcza, February 16, 2002. “The Protest” has been criticized for appealing to the Poles’ Christian convictions rather than to their civic duty to come to the assistance of fellow citizens (i.e., the Jews). This charge seems particularly flimsy since its stated intention was to give primacy to universal Christian teachings over narrow nationalistic ambitions, however justified. Given the author’s personal involvement in the rescue of Jews, her sincerity has never been effectively challenged. Kossak-Szczucka also levelled harsh criticism at those Catholics who failed to see that the commandment to love one’s neighbour extended to the Jews in other publications such as the pamphlet entitled “Jesteś katolikiem … Jakim?” (“What kind of Catholic are you?”). See Władysław Bartoszewski, “75 lat w XX wieku: pamiętnik mówiony (6)”, Więź (Warsaw, July 1997): 118–19. “The Protest” contains a passage referring to Jews as “political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland,” and states that despite the massive crimes perpetrated by the Germans, many Jews “hate us more than they hate the Germans, and … make us responsible for their misfortune.” There is more than ample evidence for that charge in Jewish wartime and postwar writings. Emanuel Ringelblum noted, in his wartime journal, that hatred towards Polish Christians grew in the Warsaw ghetto because it was widely believed that the Poles were responsible for the economic restrictions that befell the Jews. See Emanuel Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego: Wrzesień 1939–styczeń 1943 (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1983), 118. Jews played into this by spreading anti-Polish propaganda, going so far as to claim that the Poles were inciting the Germans. A wartime report from the Warsaw ghetto spoke of the author’s efforts to convince Jews “about the feelings in Polish society towards the Jews. They are inciting the occupier against the Jews, in order to save themselves by this stratagem.” He also questioned the sincerity of the Polish democratic opposition and preached about the “abject baseness of behavior among the Poles.” See Marian Małowist, “Assimilationists and Neophytes at the Time of War-Operations and in the Closed Jewish Ghetto,” in Joseph Kermish, ed., To Live With Honor and Die With Honor!…: Selected Documents from the Warsaw Ghetto Underground Archives “O.S/” [“Oneg Shabbath”] (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1986), 619–34, here at pp. 631, 633. A jealousy built on false premises and contempt set in. Many Jews could not comprehend why it was they, rather than the Poles, who were suffering the brunt of the German brutality. Stories spread in the ghetto that Poles were leading “normal lives” outside the ghetto: “Everything there is brimming with life. Everyone eats and drinks until they are full. … On the other side, the houses are like palaces … there is freedom to the full … complete safety … justice reigns.” See the diary of Jehoszua Albert cited in Marcin Urynowicz, “Stosunki polsko-żydowskie w Warszawie w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej,” in Żbikowski, Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945, 563. A Jewish woman who survived in “Aryan” Warsaw declared, shortly after the war, that the Germans were ordered to hate the Jews and the Gestapo had to kill them, but she did not mince her words about the true nature of the Poles, whom she condemned as a whole: “Why did the Germans carry out this—unheard of in the history of crime—mass murder of the Jews precisely in Poland? It was not only because this was where the largest concentration of Jews was, but above all and mainly because they knew that in Poland they had the moral support of the majority of the population for this savagery, because they counted in advance on the approval of the lion’s share of the Poles … That’s why the Germans found it worthwhile to transport Jews from the most distant countries of Europe to Auschwitz and Treblinka, to the General Government, because in no other country, on no other patch of land, could these their deeds be imaginable.” See the memoir of Maria Nowakowska in Żbikowski, Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945, 532. Of course, there is absolutely no trace of any such rationale in official German documents from that period and reputable scholars have made short shrift of such views which were, to their discredit, rather widespread among Polish Jews. Yisrael Gutman, director of research at Yad Vashem and editor in chief of the four-volume work The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1990), has gone on record to state: “I should like to make two things clear here. First, all accusations against the Poles that they were responsible for what is referred to as the ‘Final Solution’ are not even worth mentioning. Secondly, there is no validity at all in the contention that ... Polish attitudes were the reason for the siting of the death camps in Poland. Poland was a completely occupied country. There was a difference in the kind of ‘occupation’ countries underwent in Europe. Each country experienced a different occupation and almost all had a certain amount of autonomy, limited and defined in various ways. This autonomy did not exist in Poland. No one asked the Poles how one should treat the Jews.” See Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies, volume 2 (1987): 341. 198 The report in question, “O położeniu Kościoła katolickiego w Polsce po trzech latach okupacji hitlerowskiej, 1939–1942,” was reprinted in Chrześcijanin w świecie, no. 70 (October 1978), 25–53; the relevant passage is found at p. 33. Even before the war, in response to anti-Jewish disturbances, Cardinal Hlond condemned violence against Jews, just as other members of the Polish hierarchy had done. In his partoral letter of February 29, 1936, he wrote: “... it is not permissible to assault, strike or injure Jews. In a Jew you should also respect and love a human being and your neighbour.” According to Jewish Telegraphic Agency dispatch of November 17, 1931, “The Metropolitan of Cracow [Archbishop Adam Sapieha] has issued an appeal to his clergy and to all Catholics, in which he exhorts the population to keep the peace and not to allow themselves to be led away by acts of provocation committed against the Jews. The Metropolitan goes on to condemn those who are inciting the people against the Jews and demands that they should be punished.” 199 Joseph Tenenbaum, In Search of a Lost People: The Old and New Poland (New York: Beechhurst Press, 1948), 236. An academic at York University in Toronto, however, claimed: “The [Polish] clergy, generally speaking … was against the Jews and preached in the churches not to help save those who tried to escape from the camps or detention. The Polish Cardinal Hlond was officially against saving or helping those who could have been saved … These are historical facts which cannot be denied.” See Isaac Bar Lewaw, “Jews in Poland,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 3, 1978. 200 Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War (New York: The Penguin Press, 2009), 64. Writing in a similar vein, American historian Timothy Snyder, who has no expertise in this area, put forward the following equally bizarre conclusions for which there is scant, if any hard evidence: “The dominant Roman Catholic Church in Poland took no stance against the mass murder of the millions of Jews who had lived for centuries among its adherents. Catholic doctrine at the time deemed Jews collectively responsible for the killing of Jesus, and Catholic teachings about modernity connected the blight of communism to Judaism. As a result, the motivations of Roman Catholics who rescued Jews had to arise from some sort of individualism, either their own or that of their parish priests. Such Roman Catholics tended to express religious beliefs that were unorthodox or heretical.” See Timothy Snyder, Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning (New York: Tom Duggan Books, 2015), 291. In fact, many Polish rescuers as well as their Jewish charges pointed to the rescuers’ strong Catholic faith as their motivation for risking their lives to help Jews. Unfortunately, one can find statements in the memoirs of highly educated Holocaust survivors who are oblivious to the wartime fate of the Polish Catholic clergy. See, for example, Carolyn Gammon and Israel Unger, The Unwritten Diary of Israel Unger (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013), at p. 156: “Perhaps the most depressing feeling was seeing the huge church next to the town were Jews had been assembled and tortured prior to being murdered. We saw priests and nuns walking to the church. … It was very rare that the Catholic clergy protested against what was being done on their doorstep.” Unger, whose family was rescued by Poles in Tarnów, also writes candidly: “I desperately wanted to be Canadian. I was ashamed of being born in Poland. I still have difficulty with that today. Poland was something I did not want to be associated with. I have no feelings for Poland. It is too much of a Jewish graveyard.” Ibid., 72. 201 István Deák, “Memories of Hell,” The New York Review of Books, June 26, 1997. 202 Maciej Kledzik, “Biało-czerwona opaska z gwiazdą Dawida,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), March 12, 2005; Berenstein and Rutkowski, Assistance to the Jews in Poland 1939–1945, 40. 203 Author’s note: The story of Rev. Puder being in the ghetto is a legend. The circumstances of his rescue are described earlier in the text. 204 Ludwik Hirszfeld, Historia jednego życia (Warsaw: Czytelnik 1946; Pax, 1957), translated as Ludwik Hirszfeld: The Story of One Life (Rochester: Rochester University Press, 2010). See especially pages 244–46 and 261 of the English translation. 205 Author’s note: Converts, as well as assimilated Jews, were generally disliked in the ghetto. Rabbi Chaim Aron Kaplan expressed tremendous rancor toward Jewish converts, attributing to them the vilest of motives and rejoicing at their misfortune: “I shall, however, have revenge on our ‘converts.’ I will laugh aloud at the sight of their tragedy. … Conversion brought them but small deliverance. … This is the first time in my life that a feeling of vengeance has given me pleasure.” See Abraham I. Katsh, ed., Scroll of Agony: The Warsaw Diary of Chaim A. Kaplan (New York: Macmillan; and London: Collier-Macmillan, 1965), 78–79, 250 The Orthodox members of the Jewish council attempted to deny Christian Jews the rights and help provided to Jews in the ghetto. See Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto, 70. Converts were repeatedly harassed when they left church services and, on occasion, even the German police had to intervene to protect them from enraged Orthodox Jews. See the diary of Alceo Valcini, the Warsaw correspondent of the Milan Corriere della Sera, translated into Polish as Golgota Warszawy, 1939–1945 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1973), 235–36. Valcini’s portrayal is fully supported by a report filed by a Jewish Gestapo informer: Crowds of Jews would gather in front of the Christian churches on Sundays and Christian holy days to take in the spectacle of converts attending mass. At Easter in 1942, the crowd of onlookers at the church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Leszno Street was so large that the Ordnungsdienst (Jewish police) stationed a special squad there to maintain order and protect the converts. Cited in Christopher R. Browning and Israel Gutman, “The Reports of a Jewish ‘Informer’ in the Warsaw Ghetto—Selected Documents,” in Yad Vashem Studies, volume 17 (1986): 263. Hostilities also occurred during the Sunday mass at All Saints’ Church, where a large mob of Hasids gathered with sticks to beat up the converted Jews as they left church. The Jewish order police was called in to disperse the Hasids. See Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto, 85. A Jewish woman, who was not a convert, describes in her memoirs how Jews in the Warsaw ghetto harassed Jewish Christians who attended church services. See Ruth Altbeker Cyprys, A Jump For Life: A Survivor’s Journal from Nazi-Occupied Poland (New York: Continuum, 1997), 32. A Pole who entered the ghetto recalled the caustic remarks made by onlookers about Jews who attended religious services at All Saints’ Church. See Waclaw Sledzinski, Governor Frank’s Dark Harvest (Newtown, Montgomeryshire, Mid-Wales: Montgomerys, 1946), 120. This is confirmed by another Jew who observed Jewish youths standing in the street as converts walked to church services and calling out mockingly, “Good Yontiff!” (Good holiday!). See Gary A. Keins, A Journey Through the Valley of Perdition ([United States]: n.p., 1985), 86. A similar situation prevailed in Kraków: when priests and nuns would enter the ghetto to tend to the spiritual needs of converts, they were spat on and cursed by indignant Jews. “Converts were not popular in the ghetto. … We’re foreigners and they hate us.” See Roman Frister, The Cap, or the Price of a Life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 84, 89–90. 206 Grynberg, Księga sprawiedliwych, 155. 207 Testimony of Alina Brodzka-Wald, Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, University of Southern California, Interview code 45905; Ewa Wilk, “Uśmiech do losu: O ludzkiej egzystencji ostatnia rozmowa z prof. Aliną Brodzką-Wald,” Polityka (Warsaw), November 20, 2010. 208 Anna Natanblut, “Di shuln in varshevergeto,” Yivo Bleter: Hodesh-Shrift fun Yidishn Visnshaftlekhn Institut, vol. 30, no. 2 (1947): 173–85. 209 Katarzyna Piotrkiewicz, “Kto ratuje jedno życie—ratuje cały świat,” Łowiczanin: Kwartalnik Historyczny, no. 2 (41), July 2013: 1, 4. 210 Testimony of Ada Rems, November 21, 1945, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1221. 211 Zieliński, Życie religijne w Polsce pod okupacją hitlerowską 1939–1945, 664. 212 Testimony of Fruma Bregman, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1984, noted in Michał Czajka, Marek Jóźwik, Teresa Mahorowska, and Apolonia Umińska-Keff, eds., Relacje z czasów Zagłady Inwentarz: Archiwum ŻIH IN-B, zespół 301, Nr. 901–2000 / Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Catalogue: Jewish Historical Institute Archives, Record Group 301, No. 901–2000 (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2000), volume 2, 370. See also Barbara Engelking and Dariusz Libionka, Żydzi w powstańczej Warszawie (Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów, 2009), 219. 213 Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 805–7. 214 Kołacińska-Gałązka, Dzieci Holocaustu mówią..., vol. 5, 16–17. 215 Testimony of Ludwika Oberleder Haran, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/5434. 216 The number of Jewish converts to Christianity who resided in the Warsaw ghetto is variously estimated at between 2,000 and 6,000. According to official sources, as of January 1, 1941, just after the closing of the ghetto, there were some 1,750 Jewish Christians, but this figure is likely low. Generally, the converts were not well liked by the Jews and even suffered harassment at their hands. See Dembowski, Christians in the Warsaw Ghetto, 66–68. 217 Karol Madaj and Małgorzata Żuławnik, Proboszcz getta (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2010). 218 Marceli Godlewski, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: 219 Testimony of Rudolf Hermelin, March 8, 1948, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 4151. 220 Gazeta: Newsletter of the American Association for Polish-Jewish Studies, no. 2 (2009). 221 Meloch and Szostkiewicz, Dzieci Holocaustu mówią…, volume 4, 137–42. 222 Edward Reicher, Country of Ash: A Jewish Doctor in Poland, 1939–1945 (New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2013), 159–60, 173–74, 211; Aniela Woroniecka, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: 223 Testimony of Aniela Reicher in Andrzej Chciuk, ed., Saving Jews in War-Torn Poland, 1939–1945 (Clayton, Victoria: Wilke and Company, 1969), 37. See also Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 680. 224 Henryk Meller, born in Kraków in 1932, was another Jewish boy who stayed at home for boys in the Kraków suburb of Bronowice. He was transferred there after his identity became known at the main institution for homeless boys in Kraków, where he had been sent by the police as a street urchin. The authorities at the main institution assured the police that the boy’s identity was in order, but evidently thought it best to shelter him elsewhere for his safety. Henryk Meller recalled conditions in Bronowice as “good and the work easy.” See Borwicz, Vies interdites, 75. 225 Account of Anna Weissberg, July 2, 1945, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 432. 226 Paweł Machcewicz and Krzysztof Persak, eds., Wokół Jedwabnego (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej—Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2002), vol. 2, 317 n58. 227 Henryk Palester, who was known to be a convert, continued to live openly in his apartment in Warsaw’s Mokotów district. See Ewa Teleżyńska, “Po drugiej stronie bramy,” in Zagłada Żydów: Studia i materiały, volume 7 (2011): 233–51, here at p.236. Wanda Likiernik, a Jewish woman who had married into an assimilated family of converts, survived in a small town outside Warsaw: “Mother was ostensibly Mrs. Malinowska, and her real name was supposed to be a closely guarded secret. In fact, all of Konstancin and its environs knew her true identity, but nobody had betrayed her to the Germans.” See Stanisław Likiernik, By Devil’s Luck: A Tale of Resistance in Wartime Warsaw (Edinburgh and London: Mainstream, 2001), 153. A similar account concerns the Herman family from Lwów, father, mother and a daughter Ewa, who converted and settled in a small town near Warsaw: “The Herman family occupied a small house in Włochy, all for themselves. … They all three had a very distinctive Semitic features each of them looked not like one Jew, but like ten Jews, together. I think that all the surrounding knew that they are Jews, it was impossible not to. They survived the war …” See Arnon Rubin, Against All Odds: Facing Holocaust: My Personal Recollections (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 2005), 151. Maria Turek (née Grunewald), a Catholic convert married to a Pole, lived openly in Kraków without being denounced or blackmailed. See Krystyna Samsonowska, “Pomoc dla Żydów krakowskich w okresie okupacja hitlerowskiej,” in Żbikowski, Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945, 852. In Sokoły near Białystok, there lived a convert named Meizner, with his wife and two children. “Meizner was circumcised; even the lines of his face bore witness to his obvious Jewishness. At first sight, his wife looked like a typical Jewess; her manner of speaking also could not hide her origins. ... Meizner’s apostasy was a manner of livelihood and maintenance, and nothing else. He did not go to church, and he never went to the priest to confession. … at the time of expulsion, Meizner found shelter in the villages, in spite of the fact that the farmers knew of his Jewish origins and the recognition that they would be given the most severe punishment for hiding a Jew. The Polish police also knew who Meizner was and were silent. The apostate went around freely, as if the entire matter of persecution did not relate to him.” See Michael Maik, Deliverance: The Diary of Michael Maik: A True Story (Kedumim, Israel: Keterpress Enterprises, 2004), 181–82. Czesław Wala, then a young boy, lived with his mother, a Jewish woman who had converted to Catholicism, and his sister in Rudnik near Stalowa Wola. During the war the residents of Rudnik and the nearby village of Stróża protected the Wala family. See Interview with Czesław Wala, by Małgorzata Pabis and Franciszek Mróz, “Miejsce, ktore ukazuje piękno polskiej duszy,” Nasza Arka, no. 1 (2010): 11. Shlomo Berger, who passed as a Pole in a small town near Czortków, working for Tadeusz Duchowski, the Polish director of a company, recalled: “I rented a room in Niźniów with one of the Polish workers. I learned from him that the man who was in charge of the office was the son of a judge who was a Jew who had converted to Catholicism. The son was probably raised as a Christian, but by German criteria he was still Jewish. The people at the office knew who he was, but nobody said anything.” See Ronald J. Berger, Constructing a Collective Memory of the Holocaust: A Life History of Two Brothers’ Survival (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995), 55. 228 Grzegorz Chajko, Arcybiskup Bolesław Twardowski (1864–1944): Metropolita lwowski obrządku Łacińskiego (Rzeszów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, Oddział w Rzeszowie, 2010), 386–88; Grzegorz Chwajko, “The Clergy of the Archdiocese of Lviv of the Latins in Aid of the Jewish Nation during the Years of the German Occupation from 1941–1944: An Outline of the Events,” The Person and the Challenges, vol. 3 (2013), no. 2: 143–55, here at 145–47. 229 Marcin Janowski, “Polityka niemiecka władz okupacyjnych wobec ludności polskiej i żydowskiej w Przemyślu w latach 1939–1944,” in Kresy Południowo-Wschodnie: Rocznik Przemyskiego Centrum Kultury i Nauki Zamek, volume 3/4, no. 1 (Przemyśl 2005–2006): 215; Rączy, Pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej na Rzeszowszczyźnie 1939–1945, 76, 79; Rączy and Witowicz, Poles Rescuing Jews in the Rzeszów Region in the Years 1939–1945 / Polacy ratujący Żydów na Rzeszowszczyźnie w latach 1939–1945, 167; Toni Rinde Oral History Interview by Carolyn Ellis, October 7, 2010, Florida Holocaust Museum in conjunction with University of South Florida Tampa Library and Holocaust and Genocide Studies Center. 230 Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, 603–4; Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 820–21. 231 Michał Kalisz and Elżbieta Rączy, Dzieje społeczności żydowskiej powiatu gorlickiego podczas okupacji niemieckiej 1939–1945 (Rzeszów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, Oddział w Rzeszowie, 2015), 105–10. The testimony of Sabina Bruk (Honigwachs), April 1961, Yad Vashem Archive, file 03/1841, is reproduced, in part, in document 16, at pp. 153–55. See also the account of Sister Renata Pytko, May 10, 2014 (in the author’s possession). 232 Testimony of Regina Rueck (Rück), November 17, 1945, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw). See also Yad Vashem Archive, file O.62/172A (renumbered as file 03/1841). 233 Testimony of Eugenia Jare, January 16, 1946, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1406. 234 Zuzanna Schnepf-Kołacz, “‘In the Ciechania Presbytery’: The Story of Saving Zofia Trembska: A Case Study,” Holocaust: Studies and Materials (Warsaw: Polish Center for Holocaust Research), volume 2 (2010): 363–83; Kalisz and Rączy, Dzieje społeczności żydowskiej powiatu gorlickiego podczas okupacji niemieckiej 1939–1945, 93–94. 235 Przywracanie pamięci Polakom ratującym Żydów w czasie Zagłady / Recalling Forgotten History For Poles Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust: (Warsaw: Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland, The Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera, and Museum of the History of Polish Jews, 2007), 51; “Ewa Kupferblum,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archives, Internet: 236 Alicja Gościmska and Ryszard Kamiński, Laski w czasie okupacji: 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Archidiecezji Warszawskiej, 1987); account of Sister Maria Anicella, Sister of the Blessed Sacrament, August 23, 1983. 237 Sławomir Sznurkowski, “Miejsce wybrane przez Boga—sanktuarium św. Anny k. Częstochowy,” Magazyn Familia, July 19, 2012. 238 Tomasz Pietrzak, “Nieznane oblicze kard. Wyszyńskiego,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), February 16, 2016. 239 Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, 712; The Sitkowski Family, The Polish Righteous, Internet: 240 Jacek Leociak, Ratowanie: Opowieści Polaków i Żydów (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2010), 168–69, 176–78, based on memoir of Franciszka Grünberg, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 302, number 97. 241 Ewa Kurek, Poza granicą solidarności: Stosunki polsko-żydowskie 1939–1945 (Kielce: Wyższa Szkoła Umiejętności, 2006), 216; translated as Polish-Jewish Relations 1939–1945: Beyond the Limits of Solidarity (New York: iUniverse, 2012). 242 Testimony of Zofia Haas Roze, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/2885. 243 Testimony of Helena Diamand (Dobek), June 2, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 2561. 244 Rev. Jałbrzykowski’s interventions on behalf of Jews are acknowledged in numerous sources. See Krahel, Archidiecezja wileńska w latach II wojny światowej, 111–13; Paldiel, Sheltering the Jews, 209. 245 Krahel, Archidiecezja wileńska w latach II wojny światowej, 117–18. 246 See also Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, 355. 247 Krystyna Samsonowska, “Pomoc dla Żydów krakowskich w okresie okupacji hitlerowskiej,” in Żbikowski, Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945, 848. 248 Jarosław Sellin, “Arcybiskup Adam Stefan Sapieha a Holokaust,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 4 (2014): 784. 249 Esther Fairbloom, March of the Living Canada, February 28, 2014, Internet: 250 Testimony of Maria Mikulska, January 13, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 2511; Maria Mikulska, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: 251 Their story is recorded at length in Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, 307–22. See also Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, 391–97. 252 See also Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, 124–25. 253 Testimony of Fania Feldman, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1872. See also Berenstein and Rutkowski, Assistance to the Jews in Poland, 40; Borwicz, Vies interdites, 124–25; Krahel, Archidiecezja wileńska, 116. Regarding Aniela Byszewska and her son, see “Wielki nienznany wilnianin,” October 15–21, 2015, Tygodnik Wileńszczyzny, Internet: 254 According to Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer, “the Polish teacher Matoros [sic] … was both the mayor appointed by the Germans and a friend of the Jews. … Matoros not only helped youngsters from the underground group [to whom he issued bogus labour certificates] but also personally saved Nahum Alperovicz,” and assisted his family. He “also aided Jewish refugees, exposing himself to considerable danger.” Matoros was executed, with his family, in the summer of 1942, apparently because of his contacts with the Polish underground. See Yehuda Bauer, “Kurzeniec—A Jewish Shtetl in the Holocaust,” Yalkut Moreshet: Holocaust Documentation and Research [Tel Aviv], no. 1 (Winter 2003): 143, 147, 151–52. 255 “Dwora Winokur-Rozencwaig and Her Mother Bela Winokur-Kantorowicz-Shechter—The Survivors,” The Polish Righteous, Internet: 256 Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, 217–18; Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 814–15; Krahel, Archidiecezja wileńska w latach II wojny światowej, 124–26. 257 Unfortunately, this widely cited study is rather one-sided and terribly flawed, especially those chapters authored by Shmuel Krakowski. Although there are relatively few documented examples of improper behaviour on the part of the Polish Catholic clergy, the authors state: “As the recorded evidence shows, the attitudes of the priests towards the Jewish fugitives varied; and their influence upon the local population reflected the lack of unanimity.” The authors then set out in their survey three examples of unfavourable conduct and four positive ones, as if both types of conduct were almost equally prevalent. See Yisrael Gutman and Shmuel Krakowski, Unequal Victims: Poles and Jews During World War II (New York: Holocaust Library, 1986), 244–25. There is no mention, for example, of the extensive assistance provided by nuns, yet this book is treated by many Western historians as the leading text on the issue of wartime Polish-Jewish relations. Shmuel Krakowski also refers to a “report originating with the Polish Catholic Church,” covering the period from June 1 to July 15, 1941, which was transmitted to the Polish government in London by the Delegate’s Office (Delegatura), as exhibiting “anti-Semitic sentiments in their most extreme form.” The report is cited seemingly to corroborate the existence of widespread hostility toward Jews on the part of the Catholic Church. Ibid., 52–53. Relying on Krakowski, that same document has been referred to recently by Israeli historian Saul Friedländer in his The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 184–85. Friedländer stresses that it is “a report originating with the Polish church itself” and makes much of “its quasiofficial nature.” While conceding that it did not represent the general attitude of Polish Catholics toward Jews, he argues it indicated “some measure of concurrence” among the underground leadership with regard to the so-called Jewish question, which was supposedly characterized by “extreme anti-Jewish hatred,” as manifested in this report. British historian Richard J. Evans goes even further in his The Third Reich at War (New York: The Penguin Press, 2009), 64, where he states: “As a semi-official report of the Polish Church to the exiled government declared in the summer of 1941, the Germans ‘have shown the liberation of Polish society from the Jewish plague is possible’.” He then concludes that the Polish Catholic Church not only did not take a clear stance against the Germans’ murderous policies towards Polish Jews, “if anything, the opposite was the case.” Another historian who has jumped on this bandwagon is Alexander Prusin, who claims that the “Polish clergyman” who wrote this report “praised the genocide,” and that “such views were not necessarily the ravings of a religious fanatic” but were representative of the Polish underground, as “attested to by a report sent to London in September 1941 by the AK [Armia Krajowa—Home Army] commander Stefan Rowecki.” See Alexander V. Prusin, The Lands Between: Conflict in the East European Borderlands, 1870–1992 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 173. The document in question is reproduced in its entirety in Krzysztof Jasiewicz, Pierwsi po diable: Elity sowieckie w okupowanej Polsce 1939–1941 (Białostocczyzna, Nowogródczyzna, Polesie, Wileńszczyzna) (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN and Rytm, 2001), 1195–1203. The report does not set out the name of its author (a reading of the text indicates it was written by one person); the author may not even have been a member of the clergy; and, on its face, the report does not purport to be an official document of the Church in Poland or to express the views of its leadership. It is difficult to understand how leading Holocaust historians could manage to overlook these obvious problems and attribute the document to the Church as a whole. The report was analyzed incisively by Polish historian Tomasz Szarota, who points out these obvious facts and provides some valuable context and perspective. Szarota surmises that the author may not have been a member of the clergy at all, but notes that he did have access to some members of the Episcopate. The author’s personal views gravitate toward the extreme elements within the Church such as Rev. Stanisław Trzeciak. When he wrote the report, the Holocaust was not yet underway and therefore the author clearly did not have in mind the physical annihilation of the Jews. In any event, the mainstream factions of the Polish underground did not share the author’s extremist views. The author’s call for the mass emigration of Polish Jews was something that was in fact being championed at that time by Zionist circles and their supporters in the West, who called for the creation of a national Jewish state in Palestine populated by two million Jews from Poland. See Tomasz Szarota, “‘Sprawozdanie kościelne z Polski za czerwiec i połowę lipca 1941go roku’: Próba analizy dokumentu,” in Julian Warzecha, ed., Słowo pojednania: Księga pamiątkowa z okazji siedemdziesiątych urodzin Księdza Michała Czajkowskiego (Warsaw: Biblioteka “Więzi,” 2004), 669–82; the article also appeared in Tomasz Szarota, Karuzela na Placu Krasińskich: Studia i szkice z lat wojny i okupacji (Warsaw: Rytm, and Fundacja “Historia i Kulutura”, 2007), 198–216. As for General Rowecki’s report, which Prusin manipulates (like Abraham Brumberg does), British historian Norman Davies points out that “the quotation takes on a new slant, and might seem to imply either that Polish attitudes were based on fixed prejudice, or even that the Poles approved of the Nazis’ genocidal policies. Significantly, and very conveniently, Mr. Brumberg keeps quiet about the second half of the quotation. The original text of the report, in describing the factors influencing Polish opinion at the time, goes on to say three things: firstly, that virtually nobody approved of German actions; secondly, that Nazi persecution of the Jews was causing a backlash of sympathy; and thirdly, that pro-Jewish sympathies were inhibited by knowledge of Jewish activities in the Soviet zone.” Like Brumberg, Prusin mistranslates the report to read “the country is overwhelmingly anti-Semitic,” thus wrongly implying that anti-Semitism was a fixed attribute of the Polish population. General Rowecki, however, used the phrase “nastawiona antysemicko,” which is rather different, implying a nastawienie, an “attitude,” “adjustment,” “disposition,” or “inclination” that can change according to circumstances. It is important to bear in mind that General Rowecki’s report was written before the Holocaust got underway and that news of the widespread killings of Jews in Eastern Poland was not widely known in central Poland. See “Poles and Jews: An Exchange,” The New York Review of Books, April 9, 1987. 258 According to another version, Fr. Sztark was arrested along with the two Sisters and murdered the following day, December 19, 1942. 259 Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One, 202 (Entry 379). 260 Testimony of Fanya Gonsky, Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, University of Southern California, Interview code 41837. 261 Testimony of Helena Lindzinowa, July 11, 1946, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 4573. 262 Aleksandra Klich, “Teodor Kubina: Czerwony biskup od Żydów,” Gazeta Wyborcza, March 1, 2008; information from Rev. Jan Związek, retired diocesan archivist. 263 See also Jan Pietrzykowski, “Księża diecezji częstochowskiej w walce z okupantem,” Wrocławski Tygodnik Katolików, May 10, 1970. 264 Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, 106. 265 Miriam Rubin, Ghetto Fighters House Archives (Israel), catalog no. 3155, registry no. 11505. 266 Jon Magidsohn “Mom’s Eulogy,” Internet: 267 Testimony of Maria Widawska (assumed name), Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1698. See also the accounts of the Albertine Sisters found later in the text, regarding a five-year-old boy named Jędruś who was sheltered in Czstochowa. 268 Zieliński, Życie religijne w Polsce pod okupacją hitlerowską 1939–1945, 687; Bolesława Proskurowska, “Memories,” in Jerzy Mizgalski and Jerzy Sielski, eds., The Jews of Częstochowa: The Fate of Częstochowa Jews 1945–2009 (Toruń: Adam Marszałek, 2012), 356–57. 269 The Plewa Family, The Polish Righteous, Internet: 270 Testimony of Henryka Trauber, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1385. Trauber states that, while in Rudki, she approached the episcopal office in Przemyśl for permission to be baptized but was informed that she needed the permission of the German authorities to do so. 271 Testimony of Priwa Grinkraut, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/3283. 272 Sabina Rachel Kałowska, Uciekać, aby żyć (Lublin: Norbertinum, 2000), 93–94; translated as Sabina Rachel Kałowska, No Place for Tears: From Jędrzejów to Denmark (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2012). 273 Aleksandra Bańkowska, ed., Archiwum Ringelbluma: Konspiracyjne Archiwum Getta Warszawskiego, vol. 6: Generalne Gubernatorstwo: Relacje i dokumenty (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny im. Emanuela Ringelbluma, 2012), 474. 274 Goldie Szachter Kalib, with Sylvan Kalib and Ken Wachsberger, The Last Selection: A Child’s Journey Through the Holocaust (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1991), 161, 163–64. 275 Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, 536. 276 The Bolt Family, The Polish Righteous, Internet: 277 Borwicz, Vies interdites, 71–72. 278 Polscy Bohaterowie: Ci, którzy ratowali Żydów: Wystawa w hołdzie Sprawiedliwych Wśród Narodów Świata, prezentuje sylwetki osób odznaczonych, mieszkających w Krakowie i okolicach / Polish Heroes: Those Who Rescued Jews: A Tribute to the Righteous Among the Nations, Featuring Those Who Live in the Kraków Region Today (Kraków: Muzeum Galicja/Galicia Jewish Museum, 2006), 22. 279 Testimony of Jakob Jehoszua Herzig, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/193; “Names of Jews of Pilzno Who Survived the Occupation Thanks to the Help of Poles,” Virtual Shtetl, Internet: 280 Kalisz and Rączy, Dzieje społeczności żydowskiej powiatu gorlickiego podczas okupacji niemieckiej 1939–1945, 110–11. 281 Aleksandra Namysło and Grzegorz Berendt, eds., Rejestr faktów represji na obywatelach polskich za pomoc ludności żydowskiej w okresie II wojny światowej (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2014), 409; Kalisz and Rączy, Dzieje społeczności żydowskiej powiatu gorlickiego podczas okupacji niemieckiej 1939–1945, 111–12. 282 Internet: 283 Gutman and Krakowski, Unequal Victims, 227; Testimony of Anna Wilf, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/2567. 284 Testimony of Krystyna Libera, April 2, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 2285. 285 Stefan Chaskielewicz, Ukrywałem się w Warszawie: Styczeń 1943–styczeń 1945 (Kraków: Znak, 1988), 34. 286 Chaskielewicz, Ukrywałem się w Warszawie, 137. 287 Blanca Rosenberg, To Tell at Last: Survival under False Identity, 1941–45 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 133. 288 Jan Żaryn, “The Catholic Church Hierarchy vis-à-vis Polish-Jewish Relations Between 1945 and 1947,” in Łukasz Kamiński and Jan Żaryn, eds., Reflections on the Kielce Pogrom (Warsaw: Institute of National Remembrance, 2006), 86; Jan Żaryn, “Schronienie na plebanii,” Rzeczpospolita, January 19, 2008. 289 Testimony of Jurek Górski, November 9, 1945, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 5326. 290 Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, 86–87; Wroński and Zwolakowa, Polacy Żydzi 1939–1945, 349. 291 According to another source, a unidentied Jewish woman, who wore a nun’s habit, was sheltered in the Poor Clares’ convent in Stary Sącz. See Józef Bieniek, “Fakty z jednego powiatu,” Wieści, no. 18, May 5, 1968. 292 Wroński and Zwolakowa, Polacy Żydzi 1939–1945, 349; various references are provided in the Wikipedia entry for Helena Stuchłowa, Internet: 293 Andrzej Krempa, Zagłada Żydów mieleckich, Second revised edition (Mielec: Muzeum Regionalne w Mielcu, 2013), 184, based on the testimony of Szaje Altman, October 17, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 2973. 294 Krempa, Zagłada Żydów mieleckich, 177, 184. 295 Krempa, Zagłada Żydów mieleckich, 194. 296 Jan Grabowski, Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2013), 113, based on a letter in the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1365. 297 See also also Norman Salsitz and Amalie Petranker Salsitz, Against All Odds: A Tale of Two Survivors (New York: Holocaust Library, 1990), 249–52. 298 Earlier in A Jewish Boyhood in Poland, at p.244, Salsitz stated that his father, a merchant in Kolbuszowa, supplied Catholic churches in the area with candles and other items used in various church ceremonies. 299 See also Kurek, Dzieci żydowskie w klasztorach, 211–15, 232–34. 300 Jarosław Sellin, “Arcybiskup Adam Stefan Sapieha a Holokaust,” Kwartalnik Historii Żydów, no. 4 (2014): 783. 301 Grynberg, Księga sprawiedliwych, 266. 302 Zbigniew K. Wójcik, Rzeszów w latach dugiej wojny światowej: Okupacja i konspiracja 1939–1944–1945 (Rzeszów and Kraków: Instytut Europejskich Studiów Społecznych w Rzeszowie and Towarzystwo Sympatyków Historii w Krakowie, 1998), 163; Rączy, Pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej na Rzeszowszczyźnie 1939–1945, 77, 315, 317. 303 Joanna Siedlecka, Czarny ptasior (Gdańsk: Marabut; Warsaw: CIS, 1994), 43–49. See also Tadeusz Rek, Ksiądz Eugeniusz Okoń 1881–1949 (Warsaw: Ludowa Spółdzielnia Wydawnicza, 1962), 182–83; Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 534–37 (account of Janina Dembowa, a Jewish woman); Stanisław Myszka, Radomyśl nad Sanem: Dzieje miasta i parafii (Stalowa Wola: Muzeum Regionalne, 2003), 184–88. 304 Rączy, Pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej na Rzeszowszczyźnie 1939–1945, 117. 305 Testimony of Zelman Baum (Wacław Kozieniec), May 12, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, testimony 2425. 306 Hera, Polacy ratujący Żydów, 210. The sworn statements of Leon Lewkowicz and Stefania Weingrün Westreich, August 16, 1947, are found in the Instytut Pamięci Narodowej Archives, sygnatura 1021/167, vol. 3, k. 319, 322. 307 Borwicz, Vies interdites, 184–85. 308 Testimony of Adela Fiszer, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 2525, noted in Michał Czajka, Maria Młodkowska, and Apolonia Umińska-Keff, eds., Relacje z czasów Zagłady Inwentarz: Archiwum ŻIH IN-B, zespół 301, Nr. 2001–3000 / Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Catalogue: Jewish Historical Institute Archives, Record Group 301, No. 2001–3000 (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2001), volume 3, 216. 309 Testimony of Wanda Mehr, February 20, 1997, Shoah Foundation Institute Visual History Archive, University of Southern California, Interview code 26609. Wanda Mehr’s parents and youngest brother were offered sanctuary by a Ukrainian priest in Gródek Jagielloński. They stayed in the church cellar for about two months, but were denounced by the priest’s hired hand and seized by the Germans. 310 Testimony of Berta Kahane, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/2541. 311 Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, 140. 312 Andrzej Tarasek, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: <>. 313 Zila Rennert, Trois wagons à bestiaux: D’une guerre à l’autre à travers l’Europe centrale, 1914–1946 (Paris: Phébus, 2007), 192; Borwicz, Vies interdites, 174–78. 314 Michał Maryniarczyk, “Ja cię przechowam! Konspekt scenariusza filmu dokumentalnego,” punkt.ca, no. 5–6 (2006): 10–11. 315 Kurek, Dzieci żydowskie w klasztorach, 113–14. 316 Grynberg, Księga sprawiedliwych, 380. 318 Account of Rozalia Makowiecka-Serafin of Wrocław, December 2, 1997 (in the author’s possession); Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, 742–43; Testimony of Szymon Kahane, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1034; Edward Zawada, “Siemianówka pomaga Żydom,” dated August 1, 2003, Internet: 319 Natan Ortner, ed., Uhnow Memorial Book (Tel Aviv: The Uhnow Organization of Israel, 1981), 68, 70. 320 Statement of Stanisław Burza-Karliński dated February 9, 1993. 321 Marek J. Chodakiewicz, After the Holocaust: Polish-Jewish Conflict in the Wake of World War II (Boulder, Colorado: East European Monographs; New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 195; Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 827–28, 858–59; Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One, 189–90 (Entry 317); Daniel Wojciechowski, “Ksiądz biskup Szczepan Sobalkowski (1901–1958)—charyzmatyczny kaznodzieja i wychowawca młodzieży,” Nasz Dziennik, July 28–29, 2007; Daniel Wojciechowski, “Zasłużony w ratowaniu Żydów skazanych na zagładę: Ksiądz infułat Jan Widłak (1892–1974),” Nasz Dziennik, September 27–28, 2008. 322 Daniel Wojciechowski, “Dwukrotny więzień Mokotowa: Ks. Mieczysław Połoska (1896–1981),” Nasz Dziennik, January 5–6, 2008. 323 Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., 1022; Zieliński, Życie religijne w Polsce pod okupacją hitlerowską 1939–1945, 717; Słownik polskich teologów katolickich 1918–1981 (Warsaw: Akademia Teologii Katolickiej, 1983), volume 6, 684–85; Ryszard Bender, “Piorżyński Marian,” in Encyklopedia “Białych Plam” (Radom: Polskie Wydawnictwo Encyklopedyczne), volume 14 (2004), 150–53; Rączy, Pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej na Rzeszowszczyźnie 1939–1945, 78–79. 324 Testimony of Jakub Lang, December 21, 1945, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1340. Rev. Kazimierz Masłowski and Rev. Jan Synior also instructed several Jews on religious matters and prepared them to receive the sacraments. See Pietrzykowski, Towarzystwo Salezjańskie w Polsce w warunkach okupacji 1939–1945, 155. 325 Testimony of Leokadja Bochner, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 234, noted in Jóźwik, Mahorowska, and Umińska, Relacje z czasów Zagłady Inwentarz: Archiwum ŻIH IN-B, zespół 301, Nr. 1–900 / Holocaust Survivor Testimonies Catalogue: Jewish Historical Institute Archives, Record Group 301, No. 1–900, volume 1, 93–94. 326 Berenstein and Rutkowski, Assistance to the Jews in Poland, 40; Testimony of Stanisław Cichocki, April 12, 1947, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 3392. 327 “The ‘Righteous Among Nations’ Have Been Awarded,” October 21, 2008, Internet: 328 I.M. Lask, ed., The City of Zloczow (Tel Aviv: Zloczower Relief Verband of America, 1967), columns 113, 152. 329 Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, 311, 422, and volume 5: Poland, Part 2, 833; I.M. Lask, ed., The City of Zloczow (Tel Aviv: Zloczower Relief Verband of America, 1967), columns 142–43; Samuel Lipa Tennenbaum, Zloczow Memoir (New York: Shengold, 1986), 228–78. 330 As Jewish testimonies disclose, some Jews were also hostile to the idea of accepting other Jews into their hiding places, as this would increase the risk of discovery, and Polish rescuers took in Jews over the protest of their existing Jewish charges. See, for example, the testimony of Braha Bergman and David Efrati in Elżbieta Isakiewicz, Harmonica: Jews Relate How Poles Saved Them from the Holocaust (Warsaw: Polska Agencja Informacyjna, 2001), 174, 219; Interview with Sheila Peretz Etons, April 30, 1999, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; David Shtokfish, ed., Sefer Drohiczyn (Tel Aviv: n.p., 1969), 26 ff. (English section); Issur Wondolowicz, “Between the German Hammer and the Polish Anvil,” in Shmuel Kalisher, ed., Sokoly: B’maavak l’haim (Tel Aviv: Organization of Sokoły Emigrés in Israel, 1975), 208 ff., translated as Sokoly: In the Fight for Life, Internet: 331 Testimony of Janina Heszeles, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw), record group 301, number 1954. |