Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

For sister Ludovica, who speaks with simplicity, everything came, she said, from the interior:

“I was very happy that these children were able to survive, that they were able to get away. It gives me great satisfaction, yes … But, what I did was from the heart. The adults, in principle, could shift for themselves—children, no. So, all the children who came here were accepted. We never knew how it would all finish. We did all we could so that they could survive, everything it was possible to do … It was a heart’s demand, a cry from inside.”

She explained how these things had been handled in the convent during the war: each Sister was responsible for a small group of children; she herself was in charge of thirty-five little Jewish girls. She told me: “today, some of them are in America, others in Israel, and others still in France. Regularly, one or another comes to see me. Besides that, I have many of their visiting cards. … they were saved from death, and now they have children, and some of them are grandmothers!” …

“All of them were collected [after the war] by their relatives, or friends, who knew they were here, hidden in the convent. Only one, whom nobody reclaimed, remained. Then someone came to take her to Palestine. …

I ask Sister Ludovica: “I have been told that the Nazis came three times to inspect the convent?”

“They only saw Christian children,” she chuckled. “You see the little chapel in the grounds? We took the children there to pray. We put the little Jewish girls furthest from the door, right up by the crucifix, close to Jesus: like that when the Germans came, they could only see blond heads.”

Sister Ludwika described to Władysław Smólski in more detail the menacing visits paid to the orphanage by the Germans, and the help rendered by local Poles to protect the nuns and their charges. Although there were 120–140 children in the institution, lay staff and visitors from outside, no one betrayed the Jews. (Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, pp.349–51.)
‘And the Germans also came?’

‘Oh, lots of times! It was simply a divine miracle that they did not find anything. People of good will helped a lot, of course. The head of the village always warned us. We then placed the children with a more telling appearance at private homes or with Father [Marceli] Godlewski [of All Saints parish in Warsaw], who lived nearby. As we were taking them along, we would bandage the heads or faces of some to cover up their Semitic features.’

‘So in that way had you to conceal their suspicious appearances?’

‘Of course. Those above all sought refuge in the convent. And surely, we could not drive them away, could we? In my group of twenty girls at least one in two attracted attention by her appearance. …

When the front drew nearer in the concluding months, already after the [Warsaw] uprising, Germans began bursting into the orphanage. One Gestapo officer was an especially frequent visitor. He roared like mad, stamped his boots and threatened us with death if he ever found a Jew in the institution. My Lord, if he only knew the actual facts, he would have to have us shot fifty times.’

‘But he did not find any one?’

‘Somehow the Lord had mercy upon us. But were those days terrible! Artillery shells kept exploding around the orphanage.’

‘I do not fear bombs myself too much. And since there was indescribable filth and odour in the cellar where many people from Płudy took shelter with us, I kept my group of girls, about twenty Jews and a few Christians among them, in the corridor next to our dormitory. That was on the ground floor. The rabid Gestapo man burst in there many a time. Luckily enough, the Germans could never tell Semitic features from others. And then, too, the corridor was in semi-darkness.’

‘But still, … how often did he come?’

‘In the concluding weeks he came nearly every day. Only he seemed to be in constant hurry then. One Sister, who had been resettled from the Poznań province and had a perfect command of German, always tried to outtalk him while we were hurriedly hiding those children whose appearance seemed most telling away. We were frightened. Our Mother Superior was most frightened of all because she was responsible above all others. Being an elderly person, critically ill with cancer, she seemed nearing a collapse. With adults we had even more trouble than with the children. During searches we hid one Jewish family inside an old dry well which stood in our garden. They descended a ladder and we put a heavy lid on the top. Somehow or other, it all went on without a single bad break. But no, there was one, caused by nervousness. But let me relate that story from the beginning.’

‘Even at the beginning of 1943 Mother Getter brought a young woman with a ten-year-old daughter to Płudy. She gave them to me for safekeeping. Both looked all right and when the mother peroxided her hair you could not tell she was Jewish. But she had one weakness: she took fright easily. And small wonder it was, after all—just try to live so many years in constant danger! She was good-looking and bright, and knew a few languages. She taught English to our girls. She spent nights in the pavilion set aside for teachers but in daytime she came to me, to my group. She would say she felt safest with us. Well, we had a very narrow escape with Rena (that was her first name) in the last month of the occupation when once that rabid Gestapoman burst into the orphanage. He came just as we were sitting with the girls in the corridor. In all likelihood, he would not have done her any harm as a teacher. But her nerves let her down. She fled to the girls’ dormitory where my bed stood behind a screen. All of a sudden I heard the officer roar. I jumped into the dorm and what did I see? The Gestapoman had glanced behind the screen and saw Rena there. She was there all right, covered with my quilt, a bonnet on her head. He turned to me and asked—I know some German—is she was a nun. Naturally I answered yes. Then he pulled the quilt and saw Rena’s lay dress.

‘That was a moment in my life! I thought both of us were already done for. He called me a liar, pulled poor Rena by the hair and out into the yard where he had already rounded up several persons caught in Płudy and environs. When I ceased trembling I felt enormous pity for Rena even though she had let us down in such a foolish manner. I did not know one thing, though: did he take her on the assumption that she was Jewish or because she seemed to him politically suspected? But anyway, what could I do? I only prayed. … A few minutes went by and … I could not believe my eyes. Rena, safe and sound, reappeared in the corridor. Just imagine, there was such chaos that she actually slipped off and came back into the building. I do not now realize how it could all come off: it seemed part of a nightmare. And then, artillery shells started coming down again, too. It was a miracle that she escaped death. Forthwith I gave her a frock which, from that moment on, she never failed to put on whenever the rabid Gestapo man put his foot in the orphanage.’

Henryk Ryszard Gantz was born in Warsaw in 1932 into a family of professionals. He left the Warsaw ghetto with his parents in June 1942 and was hidden in religious institutions in the vicinity of Warsaw. He was reunited with his parents in September 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising. Afterwards, the family passed as Poles and his father worked for a German construction company. (Sliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, p.54.)
In June 1942, I went, together with them [i.e., his parents], in a column of workers (in the middle of the column) past the guard post to work. When we got to the place, I was told to hide somewhere. I was picked up from there by Mrs. Stefania Wortman, and she took me to my mother’s cousin, Zofia Hertz, at Plac Inwalidów in the Żolibórz district, where I spent about a month.

   Then, under the name of Ryszard Klemens Szymański, I was taken to the orphanage of the Sisters of the Family of Mary in Białołęka Dworska in the district of Płudy. I was there several months, after which my mother (posing as my aunt) picked me up from there because of the excessive care the sisters were giving me (attracting attention). She placed me in the institution of the Michaelite Fathers in Struga [Marki–Struga] near Warsaw, where I stayed until the summer of 1944. There, I finished the fifth and sixth grades of elementary school.

   All of July through September of 1944 I spent in Milanówek with Mr. and Mrs. Dobrzański, where my parents also wound up after leaving Warsaw and escaping from Pruszków (Mother as Ewa Ziemska, my aunt, Father as Władysław Jan Matusiak, her fiancé).
The young daughter of Dov Berish First was spirited out of the Warsaw ghetto into the welcoming hands of Zygmunt and Maria Rumiński, who sheltered her for several months. Hadassah First then stayed with members of the Rumiński family before being placed with the Sisters of the Family of Mary in Brwinów, where she survived the war. (Dov Berish F., “The Righteous Gentiles,” in Aie Shamri and Dov Berish First, eds., Memorial Book of Nowy-Dwor, Internet: , translaton of Pinkas Nowy Dwor [Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Nowy-Dwor in Israel, USA, Argentina, Uruguay, and France, 1965], pp.417–18.)
They were a wonderful couple: Zigmund Ruminski [Zygmunt Rumiński] and his wife “Pani [Pol., respectful term of address] Maria,” both ardent Catholics. They had no children. He was an exceptionally handsome man, a lawyer by profession. For many years he was a devoted admirer of Jozef Pisuldski. In the army he held the high rank of colonel and for some time he was the deputy–prosecutor of the highest military court. …

He then opened a law office in his lovely five-room residence in Warsaw, at #17 on quiet, aristocratic Poznanska [Poznańska] Street. The building belonged to the well–known, wealthy Samuel Habergrits, who was a partner in the Jewish–owned chocolate factory “Pluto’s.” I was the building manager and for many years was very friendly with the quiet, small Ruminski family. These two later demonstrated their noble character by rescuing a Jewish child from the clutches of the horrendous Nazis. This actually involved my only child, my daughter Halinka–Hadassah, and here is the story of how it happened.

On August 22, 1939, a week before Hitler attacked Poland, I, a military reservist, was called up into the Polish Army and assigned to the Warsaw intendatur [military administrative offices], which was located in Praga [district of Warsaw]. After the war broke out three days later I didn't see my family anymore.

On Saturday, September 9, 1939, I left Warsaw with my military division under heavy bombardment, leaving behind my wife Brokhe–Bronia, the daughter of the well–known and prosperous Reb [respectful form of address] Shimen Orzhef, and my only child Halinka.

My division “fought” until September 21 when we reached the Hungarian border, where we were disarmed and interned in camps. We remained interned for five years, but not as prisoners of war, because Hungary and Poland were not on opposing sides in the war. For that reason, we were treated much more leniently and could correspond freely with our families in Poland.

In 1941, when I began to receive the terrible letters about suffering from my wife and began to ponder how to help, I delved into my memory to remember all my Christian friends from the past and hit upon the Ruminskis, certain that they would help if it was at all possible. I was sure about the Ruminskis because I had continued to maintain contact with them after they fled from burning Warsaw to Rumania in 1939. I continued to exchange letters with them especially with “Good Maria” until they wrote me that I shouldn't write anymore, because they were returning to Warsaw. Our correspondence broke off. When I began to send them my alarming letters, I did not receive an answer.

I found a way to the Ruminskis through the only son of my brother, Rabbi Avraham Simkhe First. His son, Marek (Meyer Noekh), was very active, energetic man with many connections with the non-Jewish side [of the ghetto]. I wrote to him to get in touch with the Ruminskis. He located them and set a time when he would take my daughter out of the ghetto. (My wife had already been sent to Treblinka [Concentration Camp], where she died.) A pure Aryan was waiting outside the ghetto and brought my daughter to the Ruminskis at 17 Poznanska Street.

My daughter stayed with the Ruminskis for several months, and when the pressure grew for Aryans hiding Jewish children, the Ruminskis took her to a safer place with their family. But there, too, things became uncomfortable, and Pani Maria, who was a well–known social activist in Catholic circles, with great care and devotion found a place for her in a Catholic convent outside Warsaw, the institution “Sisters of Mary” in Brwinow. There they converted the little Jewish girl with her Jewish ways and she was given her new, although not terribly Aryan–sounding name, Janina Shteymer.

After the liberation, I retrieved my daughter from the convent with the help of Pani Maria and installed her in the children’s home in Otvotsk [Otwock] run by the extraordinary pedagogue Frau Bielitski-Blum. There my daughter was soon cured of the Catholic nonsense that had been drilled into her young head.

We didn’t stay long in Poland. The brother of my dead wife, Mordkhe Orzhef, was then in the Jewish Brigade, which was headquartered in Holland. When he learned that we had survived, he came in a jeep to see us, provided us with well-prepared papers, and took us to Germany. I sent my daughter to Israel with the first children’s Aliyah, Passover time 1946. There she forgot her former names Halina and Janina, and remained Hadassah, a name given her in honor of her noble, pious maternal grandmother. …

And what happened to the Ruminskis, my child’s saviors? The Germans tracked them down. He managed to hide, but Pani Maria was taken to Ravensbruck [Ravensbrück] Concentration Camp and wasn’t reunited with her husband until after liberation.

Their home at 17 Poznanska Street no longer existed. When I went to Warsaw after the war, I found them in a very modest apartment in one of the houses that chanced to survive on Yerozalimsker Boulevard [Aleje Jerozolimskie], across from the railroad station. They were aged and enfeebled. All that remained of their old selves was the fine kindly look in their dimmed eyes. He died a few years after the war, and she a little later.
Another Jewish child who was spirited out of the Warsaw ghetto and sheltered by the Sisters of the Family of Mary in Brwinów was Lea Balint, then Halinka Herla. (Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, pp.177–79.)
Before the war my parents lived in Ostrow Swietokrzyski [Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski] and owned a furniture factory. We had an accountant named Gluchowski [Głuchowski], and my father, when the Germans were taking him to Oswiecim [Oświęcim or Auschwitz], gave him the key to the factory and asked him to hide me. He sent my mother to Russia. I’m sure it was this Gluchowski who took me to the convent in Brwinow [Brwinów], but I really don’t remember much from that time. … My mother died in Warsaw in 1944; I think she used to come to the convent on occasion, and once she brought me some white bread. I was at the convent until 1945.

   I remember that I was very sick. I had some type of growth and an infection. There was heavy bombing going on, and a nun took me by the hand and ran with me one night to the hospital, in which there were [German] soldiers. The nun sat with me and told me through the entire time that if I behaved she would buy me a doll larger than the one in the convent. They operated on me, and I returned to the convent.

   I also remember that during the bombing we would go to the cellar, whose ceiling was made not of concrete but of earth. We laid there with the nuns; I remember the smell of potatoes. I remember the type of life we led, and Christmas, and a Christmas tree in some room to the left, with candles on the tree. Candies during wartime! St. Nicholas would come on Christmas [December 6^th]; he would come though that big gate and go up the steps. This was during the war! We did not have potatoes to eat; we ate offals—and the nuns ate offals! Just like the children. And yet we would get candies at Christmas. The Christmas tree was enormous, and covered with balls and candles. There was much joy at the time. Now I have come back to my childhood, and it was not a bad one at that!

   All in all, my war experiences were not that tragic. I think that if during the war it was possible for me to be on a bed of roses, then the bed was prepared for me here. And that is why the war is not so terrible for me.

   But I never really understood why they were hiding me. They did not explain it to me; they only said that there was danger. I remember one more thing. The Germans used to come to the convent and take eggs, or sometimes pigs. There was a garden there, fruit and vegetables were growing—and the Germans came and took them. One day, there was a large basket full of eggs and straw. Perhaps there were hens in the convent? I do not remember.

   The Germans came in so suddenly that I was left inside the room and could not be taken out through any door. Sister Helena—she was tall and slim, her face was like that of the Madonna; she was beautiful—took those eggs out so quickly! She put me inside the basket and covered me with the eggs and straw.

   A German came in, kicked the basket and asked what was in it. She calmly answered that there were eggs in the basket. The German said he was taking the eggs. The sister started begging him, saying there was a seriously ill nun in the convent who had to have those eggs. The German persisted, but then started paying her compliments, for she was very beautiful. Finally he left the basket where it was and went away.

   There was a lot of straw lying on the floor. I could not stay in that basket, for the straw prevented me from breathing properly. I had to hold my nose shut the entire time. Nowadays I think I must have been co-operating with the nun. A five-year-old girl, that’s all I could have been at the time. Not more than five. To be aware of the terrible danger we were in! Both she and I, and the entire convent!

   When the Germans left, the sister took me out of the basket and began to clean my nose. She kissed and hugged me. I was well-liked in the convent; I always felt that somebody loved me, and this was very important.

  I remember one more thing. When we went to church, I always went with a blanket over my shoulder. A nun had explained to me that if a German came up from one side, I was to place the blanket on that side so that it would hide my face. I always listened to what she said, for I was a good, obedient child. If there had not been this attention to every detail, I don’t know if I could have survived the war.

The Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary also sheltered adult Jews. Michael Zylberberg’s wife, Henrietta, was sheltered at the convent on Hoża Street in Warsaw. When the Germans became aware that Jewish children were hidden there, one of the nuns by the name of Stefania (Krzosek) transferred Mrs. Zylberberg to her mother’s home in the town of Piastów near Warsaw.¹³³ Zuzanna Rabska, a convert to Catholicism, was sheltered for a year and a half in the institution for the elderly and handicapped on Belwederska Street in Warsaw, which was under the care of the Sisters of the Family of Mary. She wrote: “For the first time since I went into hiding I had an awareness of complete safety. Above all, I was treated like a human being. The mother superior gave me the keys to the library collection, which was full of good books, and tasked me with the duty of distributing them among the sick.”¹³⁴ After escaping from the Warsaw ghetto, Romana Koplewicz (née Margitte), born in Warsaw in 1919, held various jobs. When her position as a chambermaid in a hospital in Otwock became endangered in the summer of 1944, a nun there gave her the name of the Mother Superior of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Warsaw. She, in turn, directed Romana to a convent in Grodzisk Mazowiecki where she worked in the garden. After some three months, the priest there asked Romana to leave, apologetically, because her presence was arousing suspicion and endangered the lives of the Jewish children sheltered in that convent. He provided her with a reference, which was vital for future employment.¹³⁵
Esther Bas-Melcer’s story of rescue came about after her she was apprehended by the Germans. An unknown priest came to vouch for her and brought her to the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Izabelin near Warsaw. Occasionally, the Germans forced Catholic priests to question persons suspected of being Jewish about their knowledge of the Catholic faith. However, priests were not needed for this task as basic testing of knowledge of prayers and rituals was usually carried out by German officials who knew Polish or used interpreters. The latter were far more effective interrogators than priests, who were not known to cooperate in exposing Jews.¹³⁶ Esther Bas-Melcer’s story is related in her memoirs, In the Claws of Destruction (Montreal: Aron Horowitz, 1986), at pages 40–46.
I was summoned to the chancellery [in Izabelin]. … Afterwards, [the German officer] read the letters. I adhered to my original lies. He asked me to wait while he went outside.

A short time passed by. A priest and two nuns then entered. I was certain at that point that I was to be questioned. The priest, who was about thirty-five years of age, of medium height and who had mild, kind eyes, took my hand and asked me whether I was a Roman Catholic, while winking to me that I should say yes. I answered calmly, “Yes.”

“In that case, come with us,” he told me. “You will rest and recover at our place.”

Could it be true? Was it possible? I thought to myself. A wagon could not be found, so two Poles were called. They crossed their hands and I was seated on them. This way, there [sic] were able to carry me. The priest, both nuns and children walked behind me. And so, in this way, I was led into the church in the procession.