Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

After a few days, I went to 43 Mokotowska Street to live with Aleksander and Maria Jaźwiński, who had no children. … I was with them until Christmas.

I returned to Zielna Street. From there, on December 27, 1940, I was taken in by Mother Michaela Moraczewska, Mother General of the Sisters of the Holy Mother of Mercy [Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy]. The Sisters had a correctional residence for girls in Warsaw at 3/9 Żytnia Street. Mother Alojza was the educator of the particular class in which I was placed, and I was now called Genia, but before that, they called me Elżbieta. There, I learned colorful embroidery.

In May 1941, while seeing a doctor in the health center on Okopowa Street, I was recognized by the nurse, Helena Wiśniewska. Therefore, [out of caution] I had to immediately change my place of residence. I went to the Grochów district to 44 Hetmańska Street, where the same order of Sisters had another correctional residence. I was given the name Urszula. It affected me greatly, knowing of the danger to me and to them. … I learned to work in the garden and in the hothouse. I was there more than a year, and then I went again to Ninka on Zielna Street, where I stayed until June 1943. … [After being recognized on the street] I returned to Zielna Street, and together with Ninka went to Żytnia Street to Mother Alojza to ask her for help. She wrote a letter to the Sisters in Częstochowa, who lived at 3/9 Saint Barbara Street, and she asked a lady she knew to take me there.

From the thirteenth of June, 1943, onward, I stayed there and was given the name Mirka. This was also a correctional residence. I went there with a Kennkarte [German identity document] issued at 3/9 Żytnia Street. In Częstochowa, I also changed my place of residence several times.
Another Jewish charge at the Magdalene convent in Częstochowa was Stella Obremska (born in 1926, later Kolin) from Warsaw, who escaped from the labour camp in Skarżysko-Kamienna in August 1944 and made her way to Częstochowa.⁹⁹
Nuns were part of a network that worked closely with lay welfare institutions in Warsaw in sheltering Jews. The overnight hospice (dom noclegowy) for women from the lowest strata of society, located on Leszno Street near the main gate of the Warsaw ghetto, was run by the Municipal Women’s House; both these institutions were operated and financed by Department of Social Welfare. The aforementioned Sister Bernarda (Julia Wilczek) of the Magadelene Sisters and the Sisters of Charity are mentioned in accounts describing the activities of two valiant women, Kazimiera (Halina) Szarowaro, the manager of the hospice on Leszno Street, and Zofia Wróblewska-Wiewiórowska, an employee of the hospice, both of whom were recognized by Yad Vashem. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 2, pp.777–78; “Portrait of Zofia Wiewiorowska,” USHMM Photo Archives, Internet: ; Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, p.635.)
Kazimiera Szarowaro and her daughter, Zofia Kwiatkowska, lived in Warsaw during the war. Kazimiera managed an overnight guesthouse next to the Municipal Women’s House. The guesthouse (as well as the Women’s House) stood near the ghetto on Leszno Street. During the German occupation, Szarowaro as well as her daughter lent considerable help to people who were hiding because of persecution. Since the Municipal Women’s House and the overnight guesthouse were near the ghetto Kwiatkowska and her mother often helped people who were escaping from the ghetto and gave them illegal shelter in their apartment. Many times these people stayed for a long time under their complete care. At this time the Lodging House was run by the Municipal Women’s House, at 96, Leszno St., and both these institutions were managed and financed by the Department of Social Welfare at 74, Złota St.

In the summer of 1942, when the Germans started to liquidate the ‘small ghetto’ … Women of Semitic type with insanity and fear of death in their eyes began to reach the porter’s lodge of our House more and more frequently, asking for a place to sleep and for asylum. They had false papers, Kennkarten (identity cards) issued by the City of Warsaw authorities. We placed the women in the common ward, but usually they left this asylum. After seeing the horrible conditions among the crowd of drunkards, beggars and insane women, they went to seek refuge somewhere else. …

The Jewish escapees were passed on to us by a nun, Bernarda, with whom we kept in touch until the end. It was she who placed the younger ones in various boarding houses, private homes or institutions. The Municipal Women’s House also crowded with Jewesses—girls in the boarding house and dormitories, governesses, guardians of the girls found refuge and occupation there. We never spoke, of course, about their origin, accepted their false papers in good faith …

We arranged for the hidden women to get in touch with their families; the underground organization supplied them with medicine, food and clothing.

Zofia Wiewiorowska [Wiewiórowska], together with Halina Szarowaro, managed a night hospice (“Dom Noclegowy”) for women from the lowest strata of society, which was located near the main gate of the Warsaw ghetto. Two rooms in the hospice served as a small hotel, and another as a small infirmary. There, Zofia hid a number of Jewish women throughout the war. In addition, she served as a liaison and courier for Jews hiding in nearby Radosc [Radość], delivering money for their upkeep. Zofia placed Anna [Wolfowicz, Irena Cygler’s mother] in one of the rooms in her hotel. Although Anna had false papers under the name of Anna Sierczynska [Sierczyńska], she had Semitic looks, and was unable to safely leave her hiding place. She remained in the hotel until the Warsaw ghetto uprising, in August 1944. After the fall of the Wola district, where the hospital was located, she managed to blend in with the crowds of Poles expelled from Warsaw. She was sent to forced labor in Germany, where she survived until the end of the war.
Zofia also arranged for false Catholic birth certificates for Hendel and Irena [Cygler]. With these, they applied for Kennkartes (official identification cards) under the names of Kazimierz Laski [Łaski] and Teodozja Lewandowska. With the help of a Catholic nun, Sister Bernarda, Zofia then arranged a job for Hendel, working in a vegetable garden in the suburbs of Warsaw. This job, his false papers, his appearance, and his command of the Polish language enabled him to survive there until August 1944. He fought in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, as a member of the AL (People’s Army) in the Old City district. He was wounded and hospitalized at Plocka [Płocka] Street, and later evacuated to the field hospital in Ursus, in the vicinity of Warsaw. He was liberated there in January 1945 by the Red Army.

Like Hendel, Irena spoke Polish perfectly, but her looks betrayed her Jewish origins and she was forced to change her place of employment frequently. Zofia always assisted in finding a new job for her. Finally, Sister Bernarda found a job for Irena in the Szarytki [Sisters of Charity] convent orphanage at ul. Ordynacka, where she worked first in the kitchen, and later as a children’s caretaker in the orphanage. Irena stayed there until the Warsaw ghetto uprising. She also was able to leave with the Polish population expelled by the Germans. She found Hendel in Ursus shortly before liberation.
In February 1942, Zofia [Wiewiórowska] began working as a manager in the hospice and shelter for women at 93 Leszno Street, which was part of the Municipal Women’s Home under the auspices of the Division of Social Services. The hospice was located close to one of the entrances to the Warsaw ghetto at Żelazna Street. Together with her immediate superior, Kazimiera Szarowaro, Zofia Wiewiórowska helped to arrange short- and long-term stays at the shelter for women who had escaped from the Warsaw ghetto, especially in the summer of 1942, during the deportation of Warsaw ghetto Jews to Treblinka. While some were placed with trusted families and institutions, others continued to stay at the shelter. Though some of them had false identity papers, Zofia was well aware that they were Jewish. Among those who turned to Zofia for help in the fall of 1942 was a pianist, Niusia (Anna) Wolfowicz. Niusia and her daughter Irena had survived the liquidation of the ghetto in Żelechów (Garwolin County, Lublin District), and had moved to Warsaw. When Irena went to Częstochowa to look for her boyfriend, Hendel Cygler (later, Kazimierz Łaski), she visited Alina Sybyłówna [Sebyła], a friend from school and Zofia Wiewiórowska’s niece who gave her Zofia’s Warsaw address. Zofia placed Niusia Wolfowicz in one of the rooms of the small hotel that was part of the hospice. She had false identity papers in the name of Anna Sierczyńska, but due to her looks, she stayed inside until August 1944, when the Warsaw Uprising broke out. Hendel Cygler escaped from the ghetto in Częstochowa in April 1943, and Zofia arranged an original birth certificate for him under the name of Kazimierz Łaski and a birth certificate for Irena under the name of Teodozja Lewandowska. These documents allowed them to apply for official identity cards. Zofia organized a place to stay for Hendel Cygler in the basement at 62 Chłodna Street and put him in touch with Sister Bernarda, who found him work in a vegetable garden. Zofia also arranged work for Irena Wolfowicz and eventually likewise put her in touch with Sister Bernarda, who found Irena a place in the orphanage run by the Szarytki Convent. Irena stayed at the orphanage during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 and found her fiancé shortly after the liberation. […] Among other Jews who were hidden at the shelter was Zofia Władimirowa Łukaszewicz, who presented herself as a White Russian émigré [sic]. Zofia Wiewiórowska and her colleague, Kazimiera Szarawaro [sic], organized private tutorials for her so that she could make a living teaching French and German. Other Jews who were hidden in the hospice were Irena Drweska-Ruszczyówna, Miss Szapiro, and Maria Fisher, who worked as a nurse in the hospice infirmary.
Zofia Wiewiórowska provides additional information about the activities of Sister Bernarda in her account in Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, at pages pp.132–33.
The Jewish escapees [from the Warsaw ghetto] were passed on to us by a nun, Bernarda, with whom we kept in touch until the end. It was she who placed the younger ones in various boarding houses, private homes or institutions. The Municipal Women’s House also crowded with Jewesses—girls in the boarding house and dormitories, governesses, guardians of the girls found refuge and occupation here. We never spoke, of course, about their origin, accepted their false papers in good faith … In the hospital of the House there were a few ‘sick’ persons who simulated illness, so as not to go outdoors, being afraid of contact with the rest of the lodgers. Among them was Mrs Szapiro, wife of a film manager.
The Magdalene Sisters also took in Jews at their shelter in Lwów. After their mother was seized from their home and taken to the ghetto on August 1942, Danuta Macharowska (born in 1928) and her brother, Ryszard Macharowski (born in 1930), roamed the streets of Lwów begging for food. In February 1943, someone brought them to the attention of the Polish Welfare Committee and they were placed with nuns. Danuta stayed at the shelter run by the Magdalene Sisters on Zadwórzańska Street, where she remained until after the war. There she met another Jewish girl, Fela (Felicja) Meisels, who had stayed earlier with the Felician Sisters and whose story is set out later. Danuta posed as a Catholic and bonded with Sister Kazimiera, with whom she remained a life-long friend. Her brother, Ryszard, was placed at a shelter for boys. Because he was circumcised and it was feared that his cover as a Catholic would be discovered by the other charges, in June 1943, Ryszard was sent to live with Polish families, first a doctor in Lwów, and then on a farm in Zimna Woda. Both children were baptized by Rev. Tadeusz Załuczkowski, the pastor of St. Elizabeth church, in April 1944, and made their First Holy Communion. In 1946, both children were reunited with their father, Ignacy Macharowski, who had been interned in Hungary as a Polish soldier, and returned to Łódź after the war. Unfortunately, he died of cancer very soon after their reunion.¹⁰⁰
A number of Jewish children were brought to the Magdalene Sisters’ convent in Rabka¹⁰¹ near Zakopane, whose charges included Beata Lew and Halina Lamet. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, p.127.)
In 1942, Krystyna Lew escaped from the Warsaw ghetto together with her eight-year-old daughter, Beata; her son, Marek; and her sister, Helena Pocimak. Armed with Aryan papers, which they had obtained from a Polish acquaintance, the fugitives appealed for help to Helena Byszewska, her sisters Jadwiga Gostkiewicz and Maria Szulinska [Szulińska], and Wiktoria Kolbinska [Kolbińska]. Before the war, these four women had maintained a business relationship with the Lew family, which in the course of time had evolved into genuine friendship. When they learned of the distress of their Jewish friends, the women immediately undertook to help them. Helena took Marek into her apartment, and subsequently found refuge for Krystyna and her daughter as well as a hideout elsewhere for Helena Pocimak. The women set up a joint fund, from which 150 zlotys [zloty] were allocated monthly to Krystyna and Helena Byszewska. In due course, the janitor’s daughter began to suspect that Beata was Jewish, and fearing denunciation Helena Byszewska decided to transfer her to a convent. Helena’s daughter, Anna, taught Beata the rudiments of the Catholic faith, and the child was sent to a convent [of the Magdalene Sisters in Rabka near Nowy Targ], where she remained until the end of the war. … Jadwiga, Maria, and Wiktoria were of constant assistance to Helena and Anna, and in times of danger hid the fugitives in their homes.
From 1942 Adela Nowosielska sheltered two Jewish children in her home in Rabka: Boruch Szafir, four years old, and Ewa Seifmann, one and a half years old. When Boruch fell ill, he was taken to the hospital in nearby Nowy Targ, where the Seraphic Sisters (Daughters of Our Lady of Sorrows) were employed as administrators and nurses. Sister Roberta Dudek, the head of the local convent, made every effort to conceal the fact that Boruch, who was circumcised, was Jewish. Nonetheless, at least some of the lay staff at the hospital must have been aware of that fact, yet no one betrayed him. Adela Nowosielska recounted the story in Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, at pages 404–405, as follows:
I kept the boy Boruch Szafir, son of Chana Łaja, née Korn, and Froim Szafir, the father, who lived before the war in Ostrów Kielecki. At the time the boy of four was given to me, he was called Boluś in order to avoid dangerous suspicion. Boluś became very sick of appendicitis in the autumn of 1943. During the night, I took him to the hospital in Nowy Targ where it was found during the preliminary examination that he was circumcised and so they were afraid to take him in. A nun (Sister Roberta of the Seraphic order) transferred me with Boluś to the German ward for women and children and put me in a private room for prisoners where I remained with the child for four months. I went home to Rabka only once a week in order to leave my dispositions and food for my children and then my 14-years-old daughter replaced me with Boluś. In consequence, she acquired a serious case of neuritis and I had to stay constantly, day and night, with the sick Boluś. Obviously, I spent much money for the hospital, doctors and services at the hospital; I did everything to keep the child alive. There is no need to add that in concealing Boluś I exposed my children and myself to a death sentence at the hands of the Nazi Gestapo.
At least six Jewish children were left as foundlings at the shelter run by the Seraphic Sisters in Drohobycz. For everyone’s safety, the children’s Jewish names were not known at the time. After the arrival of the Soviet army, the children were reclaimed by their relatives. The nuns refused to accept any payment for rescuing the Jewish children.¹⁰² The Seraphic Sisters accepted at least one Jewish child at their children’s shelter in Stryj. Pola (Tamara) Richter, who went by the name of Michasia, survived the war and left Stryj with the the Sisters when they relocated to Gliwice, in Upper Silesia. The child had been left near the gate of the nuns’ convent by an unkown woman, and was taken in as a foundling. A Jewish woman who was brought into Sisters’ confidence, praised the kindness and compassion of the Mother Michalina, the superior, who turned away no child in need of help. Pola was a member of the Fischbein family who were sheltered in Stryj by a Polish couple, Bronisław and Maria Jarosiński. The Polish benefactors were arrested by the Gestapo in November 1943 together with their Jewish charges and executed. According to the Jarosińskis’ son, Leszek, who was also arrested at the same time but released due to the intervention of a woman, they had been betrayed by a Jew who was not accepted into the shelter because of a lack of room. (The Jarosińskis were already sheltering a Jewish family consisting of five people.). The Jarosińskis’ two young daughters, who were not home at the time of the arrest, were also spared. Pola managed to escape detection during the raid on the home. The three Jarosiński children were placed in the same children’s shelter as Pola, which was later transferred to Gliwice. Upon arriving in Gliwice, the Jarosiński children were taken by their aunt. Pola Richter was removed from the convent on Gliwice by subterfuge. The Jewish committee sent someone there posing as the girl’s uncle, and the child was handed over to him.¹⁰³
Rev. Kazimierz Wasiak of the church of Our Lady of Victory (Corpus Christi parish), on Grochowska Street, in the Warsaw suburb of Praga (Kamionek), was instrumental in the rescue of a number of Jews. He connected Irena Śmietanowska (née Waksenbaum) of Warsaw, who had converted when she married Józef Śmietanowski, and their children Stefan (born in 1930) and Aleksandra (born in 1937), with his sister Maria Pac (Józef Śmietanowski’s distant cousin) and her husband Stanisław Pac, who owned a mill in the village of Życzyn near Dęblin, and provided Irena a false birth certificate in the name of Bednarska to conceal her Jewish origin. The Śmietanowski family lived in Życzyn under the protection of the Pac family from summer 1940. Józef Śmietanowski was killed in a brawl with a mill worker in February 1942. (The mill worker’s denunciation of the Śmietanowskis was fortunately intercepted by the Polish underground.) Aleksandra stayed with the Albertine Sisters in Życzyn for several weeks. Afterwards she and her mother moved back to Warsaw, where they took shelter in the rectory of Our Lady of Victory Church. In addition to Rev. Wasiak, the rectory housed the parish pastor, Rev. Feliks De Ville, and another priest. Irena and Aleksandra lived at the rectory from summer 1942 until their return to Życzyn in summer 1943. They were reunited with Stefan and together survived the war in Życzyn. Aleksandra was issued a false birth certificate by Rev. Wacław Lechowicz of Życzyn under the assumed name of Bednarska. Rev. Wasiak also brought to Życzyn, from Warsaw, a Jewish woman named Maria Rybakowska (actually Wieniewicz) and her daughter Katarzyna. They too survived the war in Życzyn under the protection of the Pac family.¹⁰⁴ In addition to the aforementioned Aleksandra Śmietanowska, the Albertine Sisters of Życzyn also sheltered Hanka Arbesfeld (born in 1935)¹⁰⁵ and Hanna Krall, a well-known journalist who counted 45 Poles who risked their lives to rescue her.¹⁰⁶
Another survivor describes the fate of her aunt, Frania Fink, a native of Zamość, who survived in Warsaw leading the life of a beggar. She frequented Catholic churches where she begged, received assistance, and occasionally shelter. Her identity as a Jew was known or suspected by many. Although occasionally taunted by some young ruffians, she was not betrayed during the two years she lived on the streets on Warsaw. (Joseph Freeman, Kingdom of Night: The Saga of a Woman’s Struggle for Survival [Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 2006], pp.113–15.)
Frania had lived in Zamosc [Zamość], along with her husband and thee daughters, when the war broke out in 1939. They managed to endure ghetto conditions with the help of Polish friends who provided food and money. They also gave Frania a false ID, which she could use in case of an emergency.

In October 1942, the Zamosc ghetto was brutally liquidated by the German forces. By then, one daughter had escaped to Russia and another had left the ghetto and was working in a factory on the Aryan side. During the liquidation, my aunt removed her armband with the Star of David and sneaked out of the ghetto to get some food for her daughter and husband. Upon her return she witnessed the liquidation of the Jews of Zamosc. From afar she saw the town’s Jewish inhabitants shot by the SS and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police. Horrified, she ran back to her Polish friends crying: “It is time for me to get out of this place. I’m alone. My husband and little girl have been sent away by the Germans with our people. I have nowhere to go. I cannot stay here, endangering the life of your family. May the Lord take care of you. Thank you for helping me. Some day I will return and pay you back for the things which you did for me and my family.

To get out of the city she took care to pass as a gentile. Fortunately, she hade [sic] blond hair and blue eyes and spoke fluent Polish without any accent. Leaving nothing to chance, she boarded a train wearing a big cross on her chest and under her arm was a Christian prayer book. Reasoning that it was easier to get lost in a bog city, she left Zamosc, for the Polish capital of Warsaw, where she assumed the appearance of a beggar. Warsaw was a crowded metropolis, full of people trying to do their best to persevere. But survival was not easy, even for Poles, as the Germans planned to transform the entire population into slaves working for the Fatherland. As a result, the streets of Warsaw were teeming with paupers just looking for handouts. Many stationed themselves at the entrances of churches, so they could plead with worshipers for food and money.

My aunt was a lost sole in Warsaw, without funds and without shelter. She slept where she could—sometimes invited into homes by strangers, sometimes on the street. It was a very hard and dangerous life, but she had no choice. Ironically, it was the Catholic churches that provided the greatest refuge for my Jewish aunt. She found a priest who gave her permission to solicit on the steps of the sanctuary. He also allowed her to wash her clothes and take care of herself in the rear of the church, but only during the warmer months. In the winter she had to clean her face and hands with snow and frequently went weeks without washing herself. The harsh cold and rains of winter left her sick, and she often had to find refuge by sleeping on the hard wooden benches inside the church. Already familiar with Catholic liturgy, she prayed and sang along with other worshipers, with a prayer book in one hand and a cross in the other. But this, too, was not easy. At times, Polish youths taunted her by calling “to stoy Zydowka” [“to stój Żydówko”] (“[Stand] You Jew!”), forcing her to flee to another part of the town and finding another church for safe harbor. …

For two years my aunt had to endure the shame of posing as a beggar woman, living off the magnanimity of church officials and the generosity of strangers. She also lived through the Warsaw uprising in August 1944, when the Germans destroyed the city, killing hundreds of thousands of Poles. She saw how the Nazis eradicated Polish patriots who dreamed of a democratic Poland, while the Red army cynically watched from the other side of the Vistula. The Germans left Warsaw in ruins, liquidating almost all the inhabitants of the city. Those who did not perish were sent either to labor camps in Nazi Germany or to transit camps in Poland. My aunt was arrested and spent the remainder of the war in one such camp in eastern Poland, from where she was liberated by Russian and Polish forces in January 1945.

It was only with great difficulty that she returned to Zamosc after the war in Europe came to an end. Immediately she reconnected with her Polish friend who, true to his word, returned the hardware store that Frania had left with his years earlier. She got back her home, too, but she was alone. It was very difficult for her to go on living, so it was that our finding each other came as a blessing.
Moshe and Eva Weinman (Wajnman) befriended Rev. Józef Garbala, the pastor of a Polish National Catholic (Kościół Polskokatolicki) parish in Skarżysko-Kamienna. Rev. Garbala taught them prayers so they could pass as Christians. After their conversion in 1940, the family lived for a period of time as Christians. Their oldest daughter, Ruth, obtained false documents under the name of Krystyna Kowalska and went to stay with the pastor of the Polish National Catholic in the village of Hucisko near Końskie. That priest was also sheltering a Jewish couple going by the name of Majewski, who may have been implicated in the disappearance of Ruth. (After the war Majewski worked for the State Security office in Katowice.) After the loss of their parents, the oldest son, 16-year-old Witold, took the youngest sibling, Henryk, who was born in March 1941 and was not circumcised, to Kraków in December 1943. He left him at the entrance of the building at 45 Krakowska Street, near the Albertine Sisters’ orphanage, wrapped in a blanket. As Witold watched from a distance, the caretaker, Józef Wadek, took Henryk away. Henryk was taken to the Albertine Sisters’ orphanage on Koletek Street, where he was known as Stanisław. After the war, Henryk was adopted by Stanisław Jankowski and his wife, who did not want to return the child when his brother, Witold, found him. Witold then took his 7-year-old sister Danuta, known as Dana or Danusia (her Hebrew name was Rachel; later she became Dena Axelrod), born in 1936, to Warsaw and left her at St. James church (actually the church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary of St. James parish) on Grójecka Street near Narutowicz Square. Her brother instructed her to turn to a priest for help pretending to be Barbara Ślązak, a lost child. She was taken to the office of the Polish social welfare agency, where lost children were brought. (According to one version, Danuta was first taken in by a Polish family who then left her at a police station, and an unknown Polish policeman rescued her and brought her to the social welfare agency office.) Danuta was introduced to Stanisław Kornacki, an official at the agency, who became her guardian. She stayed in the one-room apartment he shared with his family. In July 1944, just before the Warsaw Uprising broke out, Kornacki placed Danuta in a boarding school on Marysińska Street, on the outskirts of Warsaw, which was relocated to Poronin near Zakopane after the city was evacuated. Kornacki continued to care for Danuta throughout the war. She returned to his home in May 1945 and remained with him until November 1947. Henryk and Danuta were eventually reunited with their brother Witold, who also survived. A Polish friend, Jan Szalla, found Witold a job as a farm hand on an estate in Głosków near Warsaw, where he was known as Witold Winiarski. The estate was managed by Count Jan Skarbek-Tłuchowski, who used to provide food to Jews hiding in the forests. Count Skarbek-Tłuchowski had been expelled by the Germans from his own estate in Kije near Pińczów. They were later evicted to a small farm in the nearby village of Częstoniew. When Witold returned to Skarżysko after the liberation, he met up again with Rev. Garbala who took him in and cared for him. Witold followed Rev. Garbala when he was transferred to another parish in Grudziądz. Witold attended high school there and served as an altar boy. In the summer of 1946, he decided to return to the Jewish community.¹⁰⁷ The story of Dana Wajnman is found in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, at page 375.
In January 1943, six-year-old Dana Wajnman’s elder brother [Witold] smuggled her out of the Przeborz [Przedbórz] ghetto, in the Kielce district, and took her with him to Warsaw. Upon their arrival, Dana’s brother told her to enter a church [St. James] and tell the priest that her parents had died in the war and that she had nowhere to go. The priest accompanied little Dana to the offices of the RGO [Rada Główna Opiekuńcza—a social welfare agency] where an RGO official, Stanislaw [Stanisław] Kornacki, questioned her. After she fearfully admitted that she was Jewish and told him her story, Kornacki, stirred to compassion, arranged for Dana to stay in an orphanage near Warsaw under an assumed identity, where he used to visit her and bring her candy and clothing. Dana also used to stay with Kornacki on occasion. Dana remained in the orphanage until January 1945, when the area was liberated. After the war, when he discovered that Dana’s parents had perished, Kornacki adopted her and gave her his name. After his death in 1963, Dana Wajnman emigrated to the United States.
Rev. Józef Kamiński found shelter for Marian Kuszner, a Jewish boy born in 1937, who had been smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto and left at the Catholic Aid Centre. The boy, who was baptized and assumed the name Marzyński, was sent to the Orionine Fathers’ orphanage for boys in Łaźniew outside of Warsaw, which was also staffed by the Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived. Marzyński, who became an altar boy, recalled the precautions that were taken when Germans arrived at the orphanage: “And the chapel was used whenever Germans were around, probably buying some goods or being around. I was always taken by one of the brothers to the chapel, and I was hiding, either by serving the mass or sometimes behind the altar.”¹⁰⁸ (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, p.324.)
In the summer of 1942, Jozef Kaminski [Józef Kamiński], a priest, turned to Antonina Kaczorowska, and asked her to look after Marian Marzynski [Marzyński], a five-year-old orphan. After Kaczorowska, a matron at Warsaw’s Saint Roch hospital who lived on the hospital premises, agreed the orphan was brought to her apartment. Although she soon discovered that Marian was a Jew who had been smuggled out of the local ghetto, Kaczorowska decided to look after him. Kaczorowska obtained Aryan papers for Marian, whom she passed off as a relative. Inspired by her religious faith to look after the persecuted, Kaczorowska took good care of Marian without expecting anything in return. Marian stayed with Kaczorowska for eight months, after which a place was found for him in an orphanage run by a convent in the village of Lazniew [Łaźniew], near Warsaw, where he stayed under an assumed identity until April 1945. Throughout his stay at the orphanage, Kaczorowska came to visit him and brought him clothes and candy. After the war, his mother traced him and reclaimed him.
The Salesian Society (Society of St. Francis de Sales) sheltered Jews, primarily boys, at various institutions for boys in several localities: the Ks. Siemca Institute on Lipowa Street in Warsaw; an orphanage on Litewska Street in Warsaw; a boarding school in Głosków near Warsaw; a boarding school in Częstochowa; an orphanage in Przemyśl; and an orphanage in Supraśl.¹⁰⁹ Among the priests directly involved in the rescue of Jews were Rev. Jan Mazerski, the director of the Ks. Siemca Institute; Rev. Stanisław Janik, of the Ks. Siemca Institute, who procured false documents for Jews; and Rev. Adam Skałbania, the director of the school for boys in Głosków.
Artur Ney, born in Warsaw in 1930, was lived in the Warsaw ghetto together with his parents. He ventured out of the ghetto frequently, buying goods and then smuggling them into the ghetto for re-sale. When the ghetto uprising broke out in April 1943, Artur happened to be on the Aryan side, at the home of the Serafinowicz family, who offered him a base outside the ghetto. They made arrangements for Artur to stay with their relatives in a Warsaw suburb where he remained for a brief period. Artur then found employment as a farm hand in the village of Runów near Grójec, where he worked for the Puchała family. The family learned that he was Jewish but Artur felt safe among them. At one point, Artur was injured on the farm, and a nun, who was a nurse, came to see him twice to dress his wound. She too was aware he was Jewish. Artur returned to Warsaw in December 1943, when the Germans carried out a round-up in the village seizing Poles for labour in Germany. He turned to the Polish civilian welfare authorities for assistance. Realizing he was Jewish, they sent him to the Ks. Siemca Institute, a boarding school for boys run by the Salesian Society. Artur was known there as Piotr Grodzieński, using identity documents his father had obtained for him. The director, Rev. Jan Mazerski, who had assumed a false identity because he was wanted by the Gestapo,¹¹⁰ was aware of Artur’s Jewish origin. Eventually, of his own accord, Artur asked Rev. Stefanowski (likely an alias), his religion teacher, to christen him. Arthur learned that there was at least one other Jewish boy, who was a prefect, at this institution. Artur remembered him as a mean boy who took advantage of the younger boys. (In fact, there were several Jewish boys residing there. The Goldstein brothers, who had Semitic appearances, were referred there by the Warsaw Social Services Department. They went by the name of Cesarski.¹¹¹) Artur Ney relates the story of his stay in Warsaw in the following account. (Stanisław Wroński and Maria Zwolakowa, Polacy Żydzi 1939–1945 [Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1971], pp.331–32.)
I went to the emergency welfare department. In the ghetto I had purchased an “Aryan” birth certificate from a boy who was a convert who was later deported from the ghetto. They checked the document in the social welfare office and discovered that it belonged to a convert. So I was sent to an institute which was run by Rev. Jan Kapusta as a convert. He was there as a civilian, hiding from the Germans. His real name was Jan Marzerski [Mazerski]. He was a good person. Rev. Stafanowski also knew about me, and he was good to me too. The children who resided there knew nothing about me. While there I completed my sixth grade of public school. There were about 100 people there in total. The institute was located at 59 Sienna [Siemca] Street. I stayed there until the Uprising [in August 1944].

During the Uprising I joined the Home Army. They knew I was Jewish. The whole time I was in the first frontline in horrible conditions. I went there of my own free will, because they did not want to let me out of the institute. … On October 7 we all left Warsaw as the last patrols. We were taken to Pruszków. I ran away from the transport and made it to Łowicz. … I stayed there until the Soviet Army arrived.
During the Warsaw Uprising Artur was protected by the commander of his unit, Captain “Orzech,” and by an unidentified chaplain, both of whom knew he was Jewish. After the uprising, Captain “Orzech” and a driver by the name of Kazimierczak helped Artur to escape from the transit camp in Pruszków. Since he had no surviving family, Artur decided to return to the Salesians after the war. He stayed at their orphanage in Głosków-Zielone outside Warsaw for more than a year, while attending high school. He recalled, “The priests knew that I was Jewish but they didn’t treat me any differently.” In particular, he had fond memories of Rev. Henryk Ignaczewski, the director of the orphanage. A former employee of his deceased father was surprised to run into Artur. He put him in contact with an aunt and uncle who had also survived. They made arrangements for Artur to leave Poland with them, and Artur eventually settled in Canada.¹¹²
Fr. Adam Skałbania, the director of the Salesian Society’s school for boys in Głosków (Głosków-Zielone) near Warsaw, was awarded posthumously by Yad Vashem in 2006 for his rescue efforts. Among the Jewish boys he accepted at this institution were the cousins Jan Majzel and Karol Majzel, and Piotr Krasucki. (Adam Skałbania, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: .)
During the war, Adam Skałbania, a Catholic priest and member of the Silesian [sic] Order, worked as headmaster of a boys’ school run by the Order in Głosków, a small village some 18 km south of Warsaw. In the fall of 1942, Jan Majzel (b. 1928, later Jan Mostowski [Małkiewicz?], later Jan Philipp) arrived at the school, having previously hidden in Warsaw with his father. After placing his son in Skałbania’s care, Majzel’s father was captured and killed in Warsaw. Meanwhile, Majzel’s cousin Karol (b. 1932, later Łaskowski [Laskowski]) was hiding on the Aryan side with his mother. By the end of 1942 the threat of being discovered and arrested grew dangerously high. When she learned that Jan was already safely at the school, Karol’s mother went to beg Skałbania to accept Karol as a student too. Karol was taken in immediately, posing as a “charity case”—a poor orphan sent from another Salesian school. Karol’s mother also stayed at the school, passing as her son’s aunt. Altogether, over 30 other students were at the school, including Piotr Krasucki, who was also in hiding, along with several university professors whose life [sic] were in peril as “intellectuals”—all of whom needed to be fed and cared for. Few of them could pay any tuition, and the school was aided by some of the neighboring farmers. Skałbania, however, was the only person aware of the Jewish identities of some of his wards. … On Sundays, mass was held for all the villagers in the small schoolhouse, and there was always a risk that their true identities would be revealed. Despite the enormous peril to himself and others, Adam Skałbania felt that saving the persecuted was his moral obligation, and he willingly sheltered them for no reward. As Father Skałbania told Piotr Krasucki when they met in Łódź after the war, “The danger of death for us was possible, but for our charges it was imminent.”
According to a brochure, Righteous Among the Nations, published for the award ceremony held in Warsaw on June 14, 2010:
The boys had to keep their Jewish origin in secret. However, other boys from the school were easily guessing at it. One pupil even threatened Jan to inform on him to the Germans. The risk of disclosure was higher because the school was often inspected by the German soldiers. Another danger would arise on Sundays when the school attended Mass. People in church could pay attention to two little boys with dark looks. Fortunately, all of them survived the war. Later on they moved to Lodz [Łódź]. Rev. Skalbania [Skałbania] offered to orphaned Jan (his father was killed during the occupation) to live with him. Rev. Skalbania, a man of great heart and bravery, died in 1986 in Warsaw. Today Karol Laskowski lives in Brazil, his cousin Jan Philipp—in the United States. Up to this day, both of them remember their rescuer and guardian who lent them a helping hand although he risked his life.
Several Jewish boys were sheltered at the Salesian Society’s orphanage in Supraśl. Dioniza Lewin (Lewińska) from Warsaw was employed as a laundry woman under an assumed identity. Her 7-year-old son, Jan, was housed in the orphanage. Both of them survived the occupation. Dr. Brenmirel (or Brenmiller), a local doctor, and his wife stayed in a rectory in nearby Czarna Wieś for several weeks. The following priests were involved in the rescue: Rev. Władysław Dorabiała, the director of the institution, Rev. Julian Zawadzki, the administrator, Rev. Stanisław Piotrowski, Rev. Leon Kunat, and the seminarian Mikołaj Płoski. Several lay persons were on the staff of this institution.¹¹³
The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul had to relocate their orphanage from Białystok to Surpraśl in 1942 when the Germans took over their premises. They sheltered a number of Jewish children and a nun of Jewish origin. Three Jewish girls sheltered by the nuns—Maria Syrota, Józefina Kloze, and Henryka Phifer—and a Jewish boy were given over to the Jewish community after the war. In addition to the nuns, among them Sister Genowefa Łaguń, the rescue effort also involved the lay staff of the orphanage.¹¹⁴ Some of the Jewish charges had been brought to the orphanage by Marcin Czyżykowski, a Home Army liaison with the Białystok ghetto who was honoured by Yad Vashem for rescuing several Jews.¹¹⁵ (“The Czyżykowski Family,” The Polish Righteous, Internet: .)
During the war, Marcin Czyżykowski lived in Białystok, together with his wife Maria and two two-year-old daughters. From the moment that a gheto was established in the city, the Czyżykowski couple openly engaged in helping its inhabitants. The Białystok ghetto held over 40,000 Jews from the city and the surrounding area. Pre-war friends of the family had also ended up there.

Marcin Czyżykowski provided the ghetto with food and medicines. He also helped the neediest of members of Jewish organisations who were active outside the ghetto walls. In 1941, he joined the Home Army (AK) within which, as Bartek, he was assigned the duty of maintaining contact with the ghetto. As part of his activities, he supplied the ghetto with false documents which gave Jews the chance to escape and live on the Aryan side. He organised the transport of weapons to Jewish partisans and the escape of people into the forest.

He also saved Jewish children, leading them into the Aryan side and placing them into crèches, orphanages and kindergartens run by the Sisters of Charity. His actions required great courage and were enormously risky.

Czyżykowski wrote, “My assignment was to be the contact with the ghetto. I saved children through my contacts with the clergy. I once transferred twelve infants, some of whom were still in cradles. I was scared that their crying would attract attention to me. The Sisters of Charity accepted the children into their crèche, the older ones entering their kindergarten.”

The Czyżykowski home served as a hiding-place for ghetto escapees. Among those hidden there were the Kaczmarczyk and Neumark families. Maria and Marcin saw their providing help to needy Jews as their obligation, regardless of the problems that this would entail.

In April 1944, Marcin Czyżykowski was arrested by the Gestapo for his activity in the underground and put into prison. He was then moved to the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. Upon his relaease, he returned to Białystok.
The Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived (Siostry Służebniczki Najświętszej Maryi Panny Niepokalanie Poczętej ze Starej Wsi), whose mother house was in Stara Wieś near Brzozów, ran a number of institutions throughout Poland where Jews were sheltered: Brzeżany, Chotomów near Warsaw, Częstochowa, Gorlice, Grodzisko Dolne,¹¹⁶ Łaźniew, Łódź, Lublin, Miechów, Nienadówka near Rzeszów, Piotrków Trybunalski, Rzepińce, Szynwald, Stara Wieś, Tarnów, and Turkowice. At the orphanage in the village of Turkowice near Hrubieszów, 33 Jewish children were saved. The rescue involved all of the convent’s 22 nuns. Although the Jewish children were not baptized, they all had false baptismal certificates and were permitted to receive the sacraments. The nuns were assisted by their chaplain, Rev. Stanisław Bajko, a Jesuit, and by a whole network of people outside the convent, including a district social services inspector. No one was betrayed. The mother superior of the convent, Aniela Polechajłło (Sister Stanisława), and three of the sisters—Antonina Manaszczuk (Sister Irena), Józefa Romansewicz (Sister Hermana), and Bronisława Galus (Sister Róża)—have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, p.629; Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, p.552.)
The Turkowice convent in Hrubieszow [Hrubieszów] county, Lublin district, was one of the largest children’s convents in Poland, known for having provided asylum for Jewish children during the occupation. Some arrived in the convent from the immediate surroundings, but most were sent there from distant Warsaw by Zegota [Żegota]. The efforts to save children were spearheaded by the mother superior of the convent, Aniela Polechajllo [Polechajłło], known as Sister Stanisława. She collaborated with Jan Dobraczynski [Dobraczyński], the head of the department for abandoned children in Warsaw’s City Hall and an active Zegota [Żegota] member. Polechajllo was an educational role model and inspired her students with her own spirit of tolerance. Helped by the nuns Antonina Manaszczuk (Sister Irena) and Jozefa [Józefa] Romansewicz (Sister Hermana), she received the Jewish children warmly and never forced any to accept the Catholic religion. The three nuns worked to save Jewish children in full cognizance of the danger they had taken upon themselves. A number of German soldiers were always stationed in the convent, some of whom knew that Jewish children were hiding there but were willing to turn a blind eye because of their sympathy for the nuns. Zegota chose to send children of particularly Jewish appearance there because of the convent’s remote location in a forest far from any main roads. Whenever Zegota activists came across children difficult to hide because of their appearance, they would inform the Turkowice convent and the nuns Romansewicz and Manaszczuk would set out on the long journey to Warsaw to rescue them. All the boys and girls brought to the Turkowice convent were saved and not a single case of a Jewish child being denounced or handed over to the German authorities is known. Those saved by the three nuns have very fond memories of them and the convent—of how they cared for them with kind devotion and without discrimination, motivated only by their conscious and religious faith.
Sister Bronisława Róża Galus was one of the nuns teaching in the orphanage in the convent of Turkowice (Hrubieszów County, Lublin District) where 30 Jewish children were kept in hiding. Sister Róża taught a group of boys, including several Jewish boys who had taken refuge there under false Christian identities, with Michał Głowiński and Ludwik Brylant among them. She knew that they were Jewish and was aware of their fears that their Christian friends might inform on them and cause their death. Sister Róża displayed warmth towards her Jewish pupils, surrounded them with love, and protected them. … In his biography, Michał Głowiński indicates that of all the nuns who looked after the Jewish children in the Turkowice convent, three of whom have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, Sister Róża exceeded them all in her devotion and sensitivity, because she knew that the Jewish children felt threatened even there and she took them under her personal protection.
Katarzyna Meloch, born in 1932, was one of many Jewish children taken in by the nuns. Her account is recorded in Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, at pages 114–15.

I was a Jewish child, saved in an institution for children operated by nuns, Servant Sisters of the Most Holy Virgin Mary (headquartered in Stara Wieś). I am one of a large group of Jewish children saved in Turkowice in the Zamość area. “Jolanta” (Irena Sendler, the head of Żegota’s department for the care of children) reports that thirty-two Jewish children found shelter in Turkowice. One of the nuns, decorated posthumously, Sister Hermana (secular name Józefa Romansewicz), writes in her yet-unpublished memoirs about nineteen children who were hidden in the institution.

Three nuns from Turkowice (from a religious staff of approximately twenty-two persons) have already been awarded Yad Vashem medals, but rescuing us Jewish children was the joint effort of the entire religious staff. When I write and speak of the collective rescue deeds, I have in mind not just “our” nuns. In the Social Service Department of the municipal administration of Warsaw, operations were conducted, clandestinely, to place Jewish children in homes operated by religious orders. The writer Jan Dobraczyński was the initiator of this activity. He was assisted by coworkers Irena Sendler, Jadwiga Piotrowska and also by my wartime Aryan guardian, Jadwiga Deneka. The “collective enterprise” would have been impossible without the consent of Inspector Saturnin Jarmulski. He knew (Sister Superior had no secrets from him) that Jewish children were located in the Turkowice institution. He demanded just one thing, that we all have our Aryan documents in good order.

I cannot fail to mention Father Stanisław Bajko. He saw to it that our identity was corroborated by church practices. …

For me, the most important of these persons was and is Sister Irena (Antonina Manaszczuk). Two years ago, she received, in person, a medal at Yad Vashem. … Sister Irena took us, girls and boys, by a dangerous route from Warsaw to our place of destination. On a daily basis, she looked after several Jewish girls. In the task of rescuing us, she was the right hand of Mother Superior.
Janusz Sadowski, a Jewish boy from Lwów with flaming red hair, had been wandering around in small villages before presenting himself at the convent in Turkowice and declaring he was Jewish. The nuns accepted him without hesitation. He was well liked by the other boys even though everyone knew about his Jewish origin. He was one of several teenage boys killed by Ukrainian nationalists on May 16, 1944, when they accompanied Sister Longina (Wanda Janina Trudzińska) on a food mission to nearby Werbkowice.¹¹⁷
Rev. Tadeusz Zimiński cared for 8-year-old Ludwik Brylant, born into a family of converts, for several weeks in suburban Annopol, after he escaped from the Warsaw ghetto toward the end of 1941. An unknown Pole protected the young boy when he jumped onto a streetcar as it left the ghetto. He then made his way to family friends by the name of Dąbrowski in the Old Town, and was transferred to Rev. Zimiński, who placed him in an emergency shelter in Warsaw. He was among several children who were taken, just before Christimas 1941, to the convent of the Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived in Turkowice where he survived the war.¹¹⁸
Michał Głowiński (Adam Pruszkowski), born in 1934, came to Turkowice in February 1944. He was part of a group of some fifteen Jewish children who were brought there by Sister Hermana from the Father Boduen Home in Warsaw. He recalled their voyage in the harsh winter conditions: “We travelled a long time. We sat on wooden benches, crowded, frozen, huddled closely together.” He also described the dilemma faced by the Catholic clergy regarding the religious practices of children, like himself, who had not been baptized: “The Sisters knew about it as well. Still, they allowed something that they may have regarded as a sacrilege—my full participation in religious life. I was entitled not only to pray. I participated actively in everything. I went to confession, and I took communion.” Participation in the sacrament of Holy Communion by non-Catholics in the pre-Vatican II era would have been universally regarded as a sacrilegious act. Understandably, as other accounts demonstrate, it caused some priests great concern. Previously, Głowiński had stayed briefly with the Felician Sisters in Otwock and later, for even a shorter time, with the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (of Pleszew) in Czersk.¹¹⁹
Sabina Futersak (Sheindel Futtersack) placed her two infant daughters, Sonia and Dina, with two Polish families in Nienadówka near Rzeszów before joining her husband who was hiding in nearby forests. Fearing for the safety of their charge, the Benedyk family entrusted seven-week old Dina into care of the Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived of Stara Wieś, who had a small convent in the village. Dina was given the name of Maria and survived the war, as did her sister, Sonia. Sabina Futersak located Sonia after the war, but did not manage to find Dina when she left Poland in 1946. Dina was adopted by the Benedyks. In 1963, Dina was reunited with her mother and sister, who had settled in the United States. (“Mother and Daughter, Separated by the Nazis, Reunited Here,” Jewish Post, December 20, 1963.)
A Jewish mother has been reunited with the daughter whom she left in the care of a Catholic woman in their small Polish town when their family was threatened by the Nazis. Mrs. Sabina Futersak, who now lives on New York’s Lower East Side, last saw her daughter when she was seven weeks old. The next time they met was at New York’s Idlewild Airport when they were brought together by the efforts of a small voluntary agency which tries to reunite families who were separated during World War II.

  In 1942, the Futersaks were in fear of their lives in their small village of Sokoloff [Sokołów], Poland. The father finally decided to go into the woods to join a group of partisan fighters. The mother, believing her place was at her husband’s side, joined him; but first she left her two small daughters, Sonia, 1, and Dina, seven weeks, with two families in the town whom they knew well. Dina was left with a Catholic couple, the Benedyks.

  The Benedyks, fearing for the safety of their charge, gave her over to a group of nuns. Meanwhile, Futersak was shot by the Germans, and he died in the woods in 1945. His wife managed to escape to Austria where she gave birth to a son, Samuel.

  After the war, Mrs. Futersak tried to find her two daughters. She managed to locate Sonia, but Dina could not be traced. Mrs. Futersak’s mother and brothers had come to the United States, and she and her two children joined them in 1949.

This did not mean that she had given up looking for her other daughter. However, for 10 years, all inquiries proved fruitless. Finally, in 1959, she learned of Children’s Salvation, Inc., and turned to it for aid in locating the long-missing Dina.

The agency conducted its investigation in secret for four years and finally located Dina. Only now Dina was Maria Benedyk; she had been reclaimed and adopted by Mrs. Wladisainy [Własysława] Benedyk, now a widow, in 1950.

Finding her was one thing; arranging for her to be brought to the United States was quite another story. Children’s Salvation ultimately worked out an agreement with Polish authorities, and Maria, now 21, and her foster mother both were flown to the United States.

Mrs. Benedyk had been frightened when she learned that Mrs. Futersak was still alive and wished to see her daughter, and she was at first reluctant to bring them together. Finally, however, she wrote Mrs. Futersak: “I’ve given her an education. I’ve cared for her. Someday I will present you with your little princess.”

 Someday came sooner than she thought. Maria and her foster mother were flown to New York where they were met by her sister and brother. They then took her and Mrs. Benedyk to the Futersak’s apartment where all will stay for the time being. Maria, although she speaks no English, wishes to stay in the United States; plans for Mrs. Benedyk are not yet certain.
After Jews emerged from hiding when the Red Army entered the area near Czortków around March 1944, they had to go into hiding again when, shortly thereafter, the Germans returned. Cyla Sznajder (née Huss) and several other Jewish girls took shelter with the Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived (of Stara Wieś) in Jagielnica. They were hidden in the attic of their and survived a German search for Jews. “The nuns comforted us that things would not last long, and brought us food,” Cyla recalled.¹²⁰
Maria Feldhorn, who was also sheltered at the latter convent of the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary (of Pleszew) in Czersk from March 1944, after her “bad looks” attracted attention where she was living in Łagiewniki, a suburb of Kraków, recalled the perilous times experienced by the residents of the convent. (Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, p.43.)
I was then nine years old, and I was one of the oldest children in the orphanage where the majority were little ones. The nuns, forced to leave their place because of the approaching front line, in a heroic manner and at great personal sacrifice, tried to provide the assembled group of children with a roof over their heads and something to eat. There were bombardments and continuous flight, fear, hunger, lice, shortages of clothing and shoes. We lasted like this until the end of the war. At the beginning of 1945, the nuns, together with the children, returned to their ruined quarters in Czersk.
Five Jewish boys, among them Włodzimierz Berg (later William Donat), whose rescue is described later on, were sheltered in an orphanage for boys in Otwock near Warsaw run by the Daughters of the Purest Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. One Jew who expressed his thanks to the director “for her Christian and humanitarian care of the children,” noted that the institution was “poverty stricken” and had to rely on outside donations to make ends meet. Additional Jewish children were placed in that home after the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto.¹²¹
The Daughters of the Purest Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary also sheltered several Jewish children at their orphanage in Warsaw, among them Ewa Goldberg (born in 1931), who was a charge there from January 1943. After the Warsaw uprising of August 1944, the orphanage was transferred to the monastery of the Franciscan Fathers in Niepokalanów.¹²² Several young Jewish women, including Jakoba (Kubusia) Blidsztejn (born in 1925), passing as Danuta Dąbrowska, were sheltered at the nuns’ boarding school located at 3 Kilińskiego Street in Warsaw. After the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, the nuns and their charges were deported to Germany to perform forced labour.¹²³
According to the order’s records, the Daughters of the Purest Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Córki Najczystszego Serca Najświętszej Maryi Panny) rescued Jews in the following places: eleven children in Warsaw, at several locations, 16 children in Otwock, four children in Świder near Warsaw, two children in Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, two children in Skórzec near Siedlce, as well as in Sitnik near Biała Podlaska, Janów Podlaski, Kolno, Wilno, and Pińsk.¹²⁴
After escaping from the ghetto in Warsaw, two young sisters—Batya (Barbara) and Esther (Jadwiga) Faktor—wandered in the Siedlce area begging for food and shelter. Villagers cared for the girls but became frightened, as they were widely suspected of being Jewish. Sister Stanisława Jóźwikowska learned of Batya’s plight and asked her superior, Mother Beata (Bronisława Hryniewicz), for permission to admit her into the orphanage run by the Daughters of the Purest Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the village of Skórzec. In her testimony (Yad Vashem file 6166), Batya recalled: “The nuns welcomed me warmly, cleaned off the dirt which clung to me during the many months of wandering, tended my wounds, and fed me.” Batya then fell ill for several months, and was tenderly cared for by Mother Superior Hryniewicz. Batya’s sister Esther moved into the orphanage later, even though she was treated well by the Świątek family with whom she was staying. After the war, the two girls, who were living in the orphanage under the assumed name of Górska, were reunited with their elder sister Regina who searched for them and found them. Two nuns—Bronisława Hryniewicz and Stanisława Jóźwikowska—were eventually recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles, although other nuns at the orphanage—such as Sister Benedykta (Apolonia Kret), who nursed Esther (Jadwiga) back to health after her arrival at the convent covered with scabies, abscesses, and lice¹²⁵—cared for the children as well. (Martin Gilbert, The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust [Toronto: Key Porter, 2003], pp.107–8.)
In the village of Czerniejew, in the Siedlce district east of Warsaw, it was another poor peasant woman, Stanislawa [Stanisława] Cabaj, a widow, who gave shelter to two Jewish girls, Batja and Ester, sisters who had escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and wandered for several months through the Polish countryside. …

Fearing betrayals, Stanislawa Cabaj took Ester, aged eleven, and Batja, a mere five-year-old, for sanctuary to Sister Stanislawa Jozwikowska [Stanisława Jóźwikowska], in the Heart of Jesus convent near the village of Skorzec [Skórzec]. ‘I was dirty, ill, weak, full of lice,’ Batja later recalled. ‘The nuns washed me thoroughly, put me into soft pyjamas, and put me in a clean bed.’ The Mother Superior, Beata Bronislawa [Bronisława] Hryniewicz, nursed her back to health. ‘She fed me, she strengthened me.’ After she recovered, the young girl attended the local school, as did her sister. ‘Once the headmaster checked my file and did not find my baptism confirmation. He asked my sister about it. My sister claimed that the church we had been baptized in, Bielany, a northern suburb of Warsaw, had been bombed, and hoped her answer would be acceptable. But the headmaster was a Polish nationalist, he did not give up,’ He informed the local Polish police chief, and also the Mother Superior, ‘who summoned my sister to the monastery and questioned her. Finally my sister confessed that we are Jewish. Ester knew that Mother Superior Beata Bronislawa Hryniewicz loved me a lot and she also would do everything not to harm us.’

At the time, half the convent was occupied by German soldiers. The Mother Superior, determined to strengthen the young girl’s self-confidence, sent Ester on ‘various tasks in the afternoon—precisely when the Germans were active around—as to deliver something to other nuns, to feed chickens, to watch bees, etc.’

Nobody knew the two girls were Jewish except for the Mother Superior and Sister Stanislawa Jozwikowska, who had brought them in. [This is not true. Sister Benedykta was also aware of their circumstances, and afterwards a priest in the nearby village of Kotuń baptized the girls. Given the children’s state on arrival and their lack of familiarity with Christian prayers and rituals, their true origin would have been suspected by the other nuns and children in the orphanage, as well as by the Poles who helped them.—M.P.] After the war, the Jewish organization which found the girls wanted to pay the convent for having looked after them, but Beata refused to take the money, saying: ‘I did my duty as a Christian, and not for money.’ Sixty years after having been given shelter, Batja reflected: ‘Mother Superior Beata Bronislawa Hryniewicz healed me; she recovered my soul by great love; she pampered me as her own child; she dressed me nice and neat; she combed my hair and tied ribbons in my plaits; she taught me manners (she was from an aristocratic noble family). She was strict, but fair with my duties; to pray, to study, to work on my character, to obey, etc., but every step was with love, love!’ On liberation, Batja refused to leave the Mother Superior Beata, ‘but I was forced to. In autumn when I was nine—in 1945—I left the monastery.’ At that moment, separated from her rescuer, ‘I lost my childhood forever and pure human love.’ From 1946 until the Mother Superior dies in 1969, they were in correspondence. ‘I always longed for Mother Superior and even wanted to go back to her … Years after her death I told my story, and she got the medal of Righteous Among the Nations, in Warsaw. Sister Stanislawa Jozwikowska died on 7 December 1984, she also got the medal. Mother Superior Beata Bronislawa Hryniewicz is always in my heart, and I still miss her very much.’

Another account from the Yad Vashem archives provides somewhat different reasons for taking the children into the convent, as well as an indication of the community’s awareness of their Jewish origin. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, pp.317–18.)
In the summer of 1942, 11-year-old Estera Faktor and her five-year-old sister, Batia, escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and wandered through fields and villages until they arrived at the Kaluszyn [Kałuszyn] ghetto, where they were reunited with their brother, Janek, and their sisters, Halina and Regina. A few days before the liquidation of the ghetto and the deportation of its inhabitants to Treblinka, all five Faktor children escaped from the ghetto. Two of them—Janek and Regina—never made it to the Aryan side of the city. Halina, who did not look Jewish, was employed on a local farm, while Estera and little Batia reached the village of Skorzec [Skórzec]. After introducing themselves as Christian orphans, they were sent by the village mayor to the home of an elderly, childless couple who lived in abject poverty. Despite their willingness to help, the elderly couple was unable to provide for the two girls. Ester and Batia, therefore, turned to the nun Stanislawa Jozwikowska for help. Stanislawa consulted with the Mother Superior, Beata-Bronislawa Hryniewicz, who next day arranged for the sisters to be transferred to the Dom Serca Jezusowego (Sacred Heart) convent in Skorzec, without knowing they were Jewish. When the headmistresss of their school asked them for their birth and baptism certificates, the girls had no choice but to inform the nuns of their true identity. The nuns, far from abandoning them, were more concerned than ever for their well-being, particulrly Mother Beata-Bronislawa and Sister Stanislawa, who perceived helping Jews as a sacred duty. After the war, the convent transferred the Faktor sisters to the care of the Jewish community in the nearby city of Siedlce. When members of the Jewish Committee heard their story, they raised money to buy a present for the two nuns, but Mother Beata refused, saying: “I simply did my Christian duty, without any thought of reward.”
Gitta Rosenzweig, who was born in Biała Podlaska in 1938, was entrusted by her father to a school teacher by the name of Czekański who lived in the countryside. He in turn placed the child, now Marysia Czekańska, in an orphanage in the village of Sitnik, run by the Daughters of the Purest Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The superior was Sister Aniela Szoździńska. The nuns wore ordinary clothes, rather than habits. There were several Jewish children among the approximately 40 children under their care. After the liberation, Gitta joined her uncle’s family in the United States, as her immediate family had all perished at the hands of the Germans. Conditions in the orphanage, as described in the diary of Sister Jadwiga Gozdek, were extremely harsh. This account also underscores the fact that it was generally common knowledge among the nuns that Jews were being sheltered in their convent or institution.¹²⁶
On the 25th of June, 1943 I took my first convent vows and I was immediately directed to orphanage in Sitnik village near Biała Podlaska … I finally reached Siedlce but on the way I lost my luggage. On the wat to Biała Podlaska, every few kilometres there were derailed and burned trains and twisted railway lines. This was the result of the activity of the local partisans, who were exploding the German trains. We were all constantly unsure if we would get there as those were the last months of the occupation and the fighting was getting more and more severe. ....

In Sitnik the sisters welcomed me warmly, but they were also full of anxiety as the night before there had been a Ukrainian raid on the orphanage. They were looking for young nuns to have fun with. The head sister was threatened that she would be shot. She was saved by the children, who refused to leave her side and were begging for her life. ….

The orphanage was located in two old houses without electricity or hygiene facilities. The sisters and girls lived in the larger house with a veranda. The larger room was changed into canteen and day room for children. The place was very packed; several sisters had to share one room. …

Our head sister was Sister Aniela Szoździńska. There were seven sisters in total and around 40 children aged from 3 to 19, both boys and girls. …

There were 15 hectares [37 acres] of land, with a garden, orchard and bee hives. We had a few cows, horses, pigs, sheep and chickens. The work was extremely hard, as there were no tools and we did all the work manually with the help of the older children. …

The children were mostly orphans and half-orphans due to the war. They were coming to us terribly dirty and insect-ridden. Often we had to burn all of the child’s belongings on arrival. They were often brought to us naked and barefoot. Thank God we had enough food. … The worst situation we had was with clothing and shoes. We were stitching new patches onto the old ones. … It was the worst with shoes. Father Edward Kowalik, an incredibly good man, devoted priest and a former teacher, a man with golden hands and heart, spent all of his spare time with the children. He was able to resolve any problem. He acquired some military tarpaulin, arranged for a shoemaker, and was personally producing wooden soles. … In this way we made shoes for all the children. ….

The winters of 1944/45/46 were the hardest. Then we started to get some donations. Often we had to match two shoes which were different in order for every child to get a pair of shoes. Among our Polish children there were also Jewish children. Some of them had very characteristic Jewish features. We had a lot of anxiety and troubles related to that, especially since right after my arrival part of our house was occupied by the German police commando station. We had to constantly hide the children and do our best not to be betrayed, because we were all aware that in such a case we would all be killed on the spot. One girl in particular was very beautiful and she stood out from all the rest of our children. She had a very pale and delicate complexion, blond, curly hair, and blue eyes, and for a long time it was difficult for her to learn to speak Polish clearly. The Germans were constantly asking who this child was and why she was she so different from the others. All the time we said that this is the child of Polish nobility and, for this reason, she is so different and delicate. After the war, a Jewish organization traced her and, in spite of her resistance and great despair, because she had gotten very attached to the sisters, she was taken away with force and taken abroad where she probably had some rich family. All of those children had Polish papers. That girl was named Marysia Czekańska. The boys were Henryk Gołubiak, Andrzej Sitnicki, who was deaf and dumb, and there were others whose names I don’t remember.

In summer 1944, after the Germans retreated, we were located in the middle of the front line. We spent a few difficult days with the children in bomb shelters dug in the garden, as the Germans and the Soviets took turns starting their offensive. An incendiary bomb exploded next to our house, but the trees sheltered the house from fire and sparks. … The nearby village was completely bombed and devastated. … God saved us and our children, and after the war, as a thanksgiving, we placed a statue of Our Lady in front of the house.
The Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary (Siostry Franciszkanki Rodziny Maryi) rescued more than 500 Jewish children and at least 150 Jewish adults, and also provided temporary assistance to many other Jews, in their homes and orphanages throughout Poland: Anin (near Warsaw)—two orphanages housed 40 children each, half of whom were Jewish, Białołęka Dworska (near Warsaw), Brwinów (near Warsaw), Brzezinki (near Warsaw), Grodzisk Mazowiecki (near Warsaw), Izabelin (near Warsaw)—some 15 Jews were sheltered by three nuns in the small home in Izabelin, Kołomyja, Kostowiec (near Warsaw), Krasnystaw, Łomna (near Turka)—there about 25 Jewish girls among the 120 Polish children, Lwów, Międzylesie (near Warsaw), Mirzec, Mszana Dolna, Nieborów, Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, Ostrówek, Płudy (near Warsaw)—there were some 40 Jewish girls among the 150 children as well as more than ten adult Jews, Podhajce (near Brzeżany), Pustelnik (near Warsaw), Sambor, Soplicowo (near Warsaw), Tłuste (near Zaleszczyki), Turka, Warsaw (Chełmska 19—about a dozen Jewish children were sheltered at this institution, Hoża 53, Wolność 12, Żelazna 97—15 Jewish girls were sheltered at this home), and Wola Gołkowska (near Warsaw). Among the sisters who stand out for their role in this vast rescue mission are: Mother Matylda Getter, the provincial superior in Warsaw, who oversaw the reception of several hundred Jews at the order’s convent on Hoża Street in Warsaw and their transfer to other institutions; Mother Ludwika Lis (Lisówna), the superior general of the order, and Mother Janina Wirball, the vicar general, both in Lwów; Sister Apolonia Sawicka, the superior in Anin; Sister Bernarda Lemańska of Izabelin; Sister Tekla (Anna) Budnowska of Łomna; Sister Aniela Stawowiak of Płudy; Sister Helena Dobiecka of Pustelnik; Sister Celina Kędzierska of Sambor; Sister Olga Schwarc, the superior of the Divine Mercy home on Chełmska Street in Warsaw; and Sister Teresa Stępówna, the superior of the home on Żelazna Street in Warsaw. Various nuns such as Sisters Janina Kruszewska, Apolonia Lorenc, and Stefania Miaśkiewicz were charged with transporting Jewish children from one institution to another. Baptismal certificates for the Jewish charges were obtained from various Warsaw parishes: St. Barbara, St. Florian, Holy Cross, St. Adalbert, St. James, All Saints, and Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, as well as from parishes outside Warsaw, such as St. Anthony and St. Mary Magdalene in Lwów. Monsignor Marceli Godlewski and Rev. Zygmunt Kaczyński were particularly helpful in this endeavour. Monsignor Godlewski brought about twenty Jewish boys out of the Warsaw ghetto and placed them in the orphanage in Anin. (Teresa Antonietta Frącek, “Ratowały, choć za to groziła śmierć,” 6 Parts, Nasz Dziennik, March 8–9, March 12, March 15–16, March 19, March 26, April 4, 2008.) Despite the fact that at least several hundred Sisters of the Family of Mary risked their lives to rescue Jews, only three of them, Mother Matylda Getter of Warsaw, Sister Helena Chmielewska of Podhajce, and Sister Celina Kędzierska of Sambor have been decorated by Yad Vashem. This is indicative of the sorry state of recognition of Polish rescuers by that institution. The following accounts are found in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, at page 234; Part 2, at pages 663–64, 702, 728, and 935–36.
[1] Matylda Getter (Mother Matylda) was head of the Franciscan order “Mary’s Family” … in the Warsaw district. In her capacity as Mother Superior, Matylda ran a number of children’s homes and orphanages in the locality, where she hid many Jewish children during the occupation. In 1942–1943, Mother Matylda contacted the workers of Centos, an organization which arranged care for orphans and abandoned Jewish children in the Warsaw ghetto. Many of these children, after being smuggled out of the ghetto, were sent directly to Matylda’s institutions. Although we do not know exactly how many Jewish children were saved by the institutions of “Mary’s Family,” we do know that about 40 Jewish girls—including Wanda Rozenbaum, Margareta Frydman [later Marguerite Acher], and Chana Zajtman [Hanna Zajdman, later Fajgenbaum]—found refuge in the Pludy [Płudy] branch alone. All 40 survived. [Chana Zajtman first stayed for a few months in the nuns’ small rest home in Izabelin before being moved to Płudy—see below.] Mother Matylda was fond of saying that it was her duty to save those in trouble. Spurred by her religious faith, she never demanded payment for her services, although some parents, and a few relatives, paid for their children’s upkeep. Despite the fact that most of the Jewish children were baptized while in the institutions, they all returned to Judaism after the liberation.
[2] Professor Stanislaw [Stanisław] Popowski, a physician, was a well-known expert in children’s diseases. During the occupation, he was the head of the children’s municipal hospital in Warsaw and active in an underground organization of democratic and socialist doctors who helped save Jews who fled from the ghetto to the Aryan side of the city. In saving Jewish children, Popowski collaborated with Matylda Getter, the mother superior of a Franciscan convent in the area. … Bianka Perlmutter, the daughter of a family of physicians [Arnold and Stefania Perlmutter] who had been friendly with the Popowski family, … was smuggled out of the ghetto during the large-scale deportation in the summer of 1942 and the Popowskis hid her in their home, where she was treated with warm devotion as if she were a member of the family. After a few months, Aryan papers were arranged for her and she was taken to the orphanage [on Hoża Street] run by the Franciscan sisters, where she remained until the liberation.
[3] After the establishment of Zegota [Żegota], Irena Sendler, who lived in Warsaw, became one of its main activists. Her job in the Warsaw Municipality’s social affairs department made it easier for her to carry out her clandestine assignments. In September 1943, Sendler was appointed director of Zegota’s Department for the Care of Jewish Children. Sendler, whose underground name was Jolanta, exploited her contacts with orphanages and institutes for abandoned children, to send Jewish children there. Many of the children were sent to the Rodzina Marii [Rodzina Maryi] (Family of Mary) Orphanage [on Hoża Street] in Warsaw and to religious institutions run by nuns [Sisters Servants of the Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculately Conceived of Stara Wieś] in nearby Chotomow [Chotomów outside Warsaw] and in Turkowice near Lublin. In late 1943, Sendler was arrested and sentenced to death, but underground activists managed to bribe officials to release her. After her release, even though she knew that the authorities were keeping an eye on her, Sendler continued her underground activities. The exact number of children saved by Sendler is unknown.
[4] The occupation did not curtail the friendship between Wladyslaw Smolski [Władysław Smólski], a Polish author and playwright, and his many Jewish writer friends. On the contrary, he maintained contact with them and tried to help them to the best of his ability. As a member of Zegota [Żegota] in Warsaw, he provided a number of Jews with forged documents, found them hiding places on the Aryan side of the city, and offered them financial assistance. Among the Jews he helped were Bronislaw [Bronisław] Elkana Anlen, Tadeusz Reinberg, Wanda Hac, Janina Reicher, Janina Wierzbicka, and Natalia Zwierzowa. Smolski’s youngest charge was Jolanta Zabarnik (later Nowakowska), the daughter of friends of his, who was five when she first arrived. At first, Smolski hid her in his home and with relatives, until he found her a safer place in a convent in Chotomow [Chotomów—actually, with the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Płudy¹²⁷], near Warsaw.
[5] When the war broke out, Aleksander Zelwerowicz, a well-known Polish actor, was living in Warsaw with his daughter, Helena (later Orchon [Orchoń]). At the end of August 1942, one of Helena’s prewar friends, Helena Caspari, came to her with her 11-year-old daughter, Hania. They had managed to flee the ghetto and were looking for shelter. The Zelwerowiczes’ apartment was already serving as a hiding place for Miriam Nudel (later Caspari). Nevertheless, Helena and her daughter were invited to stay with them for a few weeks and then after that with some friends of the Zelwerowiczes. All the while, Helena was looking for a permanent hiding place for the Jews. In the end, it was possible to hide them in a convent located in Izabelin, near Warsaw, where they were able to wait out the rest of the war. Miriam stayed with Helena—who provided for all her needs—until Warsaw was evacuated after the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in October 1944. She moved in with Helena’s father, Aleksander, who was a delegate of the Central Relief Council [RGO] in Sochaczew at that time. … After the war, Helena and Hania Caspari, as well as Miriam Nudel, left for Israel.
Helena Zelwerowicz contacted her priest and confessor with the aim of finding a permanent refuge for Helena Caspari (then Helena Zajdman) and her daughter Hanna. The two were directed to the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary on Hoża Street in Warsaw, and then to a convent in Izabelin, where Helena remained dressed as a nun until the end of the war. After several months, Hanna was transferred to the institution for girls in Płudy.¹²⁸
Pola Hajt and her daughter, Lusia-Halinka (later Zipi Kamon), were rescued at the Divine Mercy institution on Chełmska Street in Warsaw, which was run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary. After the death of Sister Olga Schwarc, the superior of this home during the war, the two Jewish survivors wrote a letter in 1978 expressing their gratitude to Sister Olga. A photograph of some of the children who resided at this institution during that time, showing Lusia-Halinka Hajt standing next to the chaplain, Rev. Zygmunt Strzałkowski, has been preserved. At least a dozen Jewish children were sheltered in this home.¹²⁹
Among the many Jewish children sheltered at the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary on Hoża Street in Warsaw were the aforementioned Bianka Perlmutter (now Bianca Lerner), who spent a year and a half there, and the daughter of a lawyer from Poznań named Hofnung, who was brought there by the son of Hofnung’s friend Pesakh Bergman, with whom he had left his child in Warsaw.¹³⁰ The sisters Lila and Mary Goldschmidt were also sheltered at that convent. Lili Goldschmidt recalled her first meeting with Mother Matylda Getter as follows (Teresa Frącek, “Zgromadzenie Sióstr Rodziny Maryi w latach 1939–1945,” in Kościól katolicki na ziemiach polskich w czasie II wojny światowej: Materiały i studia, volume 1 [Warsaw: Akademia Teologii Katolickiej, 1973], pp.9–131):
I will not forget that moment as long as I live. Mother Getter was in the small garden on Hoża Street. I approached her and told her that I had nowhere to go, that I am a Jew, and therefore outlawed. Mother Getter replied with these words: “My child, whoever enters our courtyard and asks for help, in the name of Christ, cannot be turned away.”
Whenever a Gestapo raid on one of the orphanages was believed imminent, Mother Matylda arranged to have children who looked too obviously Jewish taken to temporary shelter elsewhere. When there was not enough time to do this, those particularly Jewish-looking children would have their heads or faces bandaged as if they had been injured. The author Władysław Smólski, who took part in the rescue activities, described the Sisters’ zeal and dedication. (Bartoszewski, The Blood Shed Unites Us, pp.190–91.)
It was only after the Germans had left that I learned the real number of Jewish children concealed in the orphanage at Płudy. It was revealed that of the 160 girls, about 40 were Jewish. The same Franciscan Sisters also maintained another home at Płudy, with 120 boys. The percentage of Jewish children harboured there was somewhat lower but this was more than offset by the incomparably greater risk involved in hiding boys. [Jewish boys were circumcised, Christian boys were not.]…

The Congregation of Sisters of the Family of Mary in Poland was divided administratively into three provinces. Since Warsaw province was running more than 20 orphanages, and an identical attitude towards Jews prevailed in all of them due to the influence of Matylda Getter, active in the provincial authorities, it may be safely stated that this province alone kept several hundred Jewish children through the war.

The moral attitude of the nuns was all the more admirable as their aim was not to win new converts but to save human lives. Baptism was seldom administered and then solely at the request of a few of the older children, after long catechetic preparation. I remember Sister Stefania’s attitude towards these matters: how avid she was in rescue work, how eagerly she accepted every little Jew into the institution.

Some of the children had a very markedly Jewish appearance; those were not taken out for walks and, in case of an inspection by German authorities—of which the head of the village warned the sisters —those children were put in some hiding places or hidden in private homes, or else taken to the nearby home of Father [Marceli] Godlewski, former rector of the Roman Catholic parish in the ghetto who displayed truly incredible energy in aiding the Jews. The transport of children from one place to another was the worst problem—and such situations also occurred. In such cases, the sisters would bandage their heads to conceal a part of the face and make Semitic features less conspicuous. To protect their wards, the brave sisters resorted to all kinds of ruses and most hazardous undertakings!
Mother Matylda Getter was instrumental in finding safe hiding places for Jews outside the convent, as illustrated by the following documented cases. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, pp.562, 660.)
[1] In early 1943, the commandant of the forced labor camp near Lwow [Lwów] informed the Jewish prisoners that they would soon be liquidated. Irena and Lazar Engelberg, prisoners in the camp, managed to escape, going to Warsaw in the hope of finding refuge there. Matylda Getter, a nun, found them a place to hide on the Szeligi estate, located near Warsaw. Ignoring the Engelbergs’ obvious Jewish appearance and the danger to his life, the manager of the estate, Count Wladyslaw [Władysław] Olizar, and his wife, Jadwiga, and Stanislaw [Stanisław] and Aleksandra Zaryn [Żaryn] agreed to give Irena a job working on the farm and to find shelter for her husband, Lazar, on one of the neighboring farms. The Olizars and Zaryns soon realized that the work in the fields was too difficult for Irena and they hired her to care for Zaryns’ children instead. … Throughout the entire time that Irena remained under the care of the Olizars and Zaryns, they treated her warmly, guarding her personal safety and caring for her every need. … The Engelbergs remained in hiding until the liberation of the area in January 1945 …
[2] The Radziwills [Radziwiłł], scions of an aristocratic family in Poland, had Jewish friends, grew up in an atmosphere of tolerance toward Jews. During the occupation, their daughter, Izabella, was active in the RGO [Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, a social welfare agency], and in the Red Cross and helped the poor and Polish prisoners of war who had been wounded in battle. One day in 1942, Matylda Getter, head of the Franciscan order in the Warsaw area, approached her with a request to look after 12 girls, including three Jews. Radziwill agreed and accommodated the girls, together with the nuns who looked after them, in a community center on a family estate in Nieborow [Nieborów] in the county of Lowicz [Łowicz], Lodz [Łódź] district, where she kept them at her own expense. One day, when Radziwill was warned that the identity of one of the girls had been discovered, she herself accompanied the girl to Getter in Warsaw, who hid her from her pursuers. After the Warsaw Uprising, Radziwill also hid Jerzy Einhorn and Nusbaum-Hilarowicz and his wife and daughter in her mansion. Even when German soldiers were billeted in Radziwill’s mansion in Nieborow, Radziwill did all she could to help those who reached it, including Jewish refugees.
The Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary had a small farm in Grójec near Warsaw, where the Warsaw Social Services agency would send Jewish children. After her escape from the Warsaw ghetto in September 1942, Jadwiga Skrzydłowska stayed in Brwinów with Czesława and Jan Ordynowski, an elderly couple, who were sheltering several other Jews. Mrs. Ordynowska approached Mother Matylda Getter, who agreed to help Ewa Skrzydłowska. In the spring of 1943, she went to stay at the Sisters’ farm in Grójec where she remained for the duration of the occupation. She worked on the farm with the nuns, who treated her well and with kindness.¹³¹
Two of the many Jewish children sheltered by the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Płudy outside Warsaw were Marguerite Acher (then Małgorzata or Margareta Frydman) and her sister, Irena. On September 9, 1942, the two young girls were taken from the Warsaw ghetto by a friend of their mother to see Mother Matylda Getter, who admitted them despite their pronounced Semitic looks. The following day, Sister Aniela Stawowiak took them to Płudy where she was the superior of a home which sheltered at least forty Jewish girls and ten adults. A small amount of money was paid for the upkeep of the two girls; first by friends, then by their mother, who fled from the ghetto in February 1943. The payments stopped when the mother was taken to Ravensbrück concentration camp in August 1944, but the two girls stayed on in the convent until May 1945, when their father returned to Poland from Hungary and their mother from Germany. Marguerite Acher wrote a memoir which was published in Polish.¹³² (Halter, Stories of Deliverance, pp.16–17, 25–27.)
But little Margaret, only ten years old, posed a problem: it is difficult for a Polish family to shelter her temporarily, let alone hide her permanently. It is that she has, to use the correct words, a bad face. … a Semitic face, immediately recognizable. …

“To go out of the ghetto without risk of immediately being identified as a Jew, I would have to cover up with a hat along with a huge fur collar to disguise my hair and my nose. I could hide for a time at the house of the niece of the attorney general [Wacław Szyszkowski], my parents’ friend. … I stayed there two or three weeks. … Then my sister and I were taken into a convent near Warsaw, at Plody [Płudy]: the Convent of the Sisters of the Family of The Virgin Mary. … At Plody, about forty Jewish children were already hidden. They were brought by different channels, through Irena Sendler’s network. But certain families came with their children. Sister Ludovica [Ludwika] told you: parents never showed themselves as such; they preferred to say they were the child’s aunt or uncle, and that they were here to give them to the convent. They gave the name of the child, then left quickly, taking cover along the way. The Sisters had to change the names and keep absolute secrecy. Every Jewish child knew that they were Jewish but did not know which others were Jews, in the community of several hundred ‘orphans,’ Jews and non-Jews. …

“One day, a blue [i.e., a Polish policeman] came to the convent. He spoke to the Mother Superior and said to her: ‘I know you are hiding Jewish children and demand that you denounce them.’ The Mother Superior answered him: ‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’ Replied the blue: ‘No, I can’t. I am a Catholic, I was baptized here. I don’t want to go to Hell…’ And the Mother Superior retorted: ‘Why would you want me to go to Hell in your place?’ Ah well, that policeman never dared to denounce the convent to the Germans!” …