Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

They had prepared a sofa for me in the older nun’s room. My eyes were transfixed by the ideal cleanliness and warmth of the room.

I would write much more about these people, but I did not know whether I would succeed. One thing, however, that I can say is that I never saw anywhere such extraordinary genuine, good and friendly people.

I shall refer to it as paradise, because I really thought that I was truly in paradise. Although a complete stranger, I felt good and free amongst them. I knew that these people would not disappoint me. Every one of them looked to me like an angel. …

The oldest nun, who was about sixty-eight years old, was a true embodiment of righteousness and goodness. She immediately gave me a bowl of cream of wheat soup. When I ate, she prepared for me a clean bed, her own clean and fresh underwear, a pan with warm water and a towl [sic].

“Do not cry, my child,” she said to me. “You will wash up, have a good sleep in a clean bed and you will surely recover in a short time.”

My gratitude was boundless. I immediately took out my last fifty dollars and wanted to give it to the nun for the church or for another cause that she would find necessary.

“No, my child,” she said. “You are young and sick. This money will surely come in handy for you at some time in the future.”

Her kindness moved me to tears. I kissed her hand tenderly. She wanted to help me wash myself, but I declined. I was ashamed to show her my extremely lean body. … I had no strength to wash my head. The nun did this the next morning. …

There I lay, washed and clean in a spotless bed. I thought about all that had happened to me and what was now taking place. Every few minutes, another nun would come in to ask whether I was all right and whether I needed anything. …

At seven o’clock the next morning, the priest came in and asked me my name.

“I have to inform the Polish Philanthropic Association about you in order to obtain medicine and better nutrition for you, because we, unfortunately lack it here,” he explained. I naturally gave him my Aryan name.

He walked over eleven kilometers to obtain the necessary items for me. The directress of the institution came with him and brought along injections, milk and other products.

As I have already described, this priest embodied a type of complete gentleness and goodness. His mild look, warm and hearty words affected me like warm sunshine.

Several times a day, he would come into the room, move over a chair to my bed, sit down and make an effort to engage me into conversation on various abstract themes, in order that I should forget my sorrows. Under the influence of these saintly people, the beastly faces of the brutal Germans began to fade slowly from before my eyes. It seemed to me that I was being re-born.

… [After the entry of the Russian troops in mid January 1945], [a]n old woman from a nearby room came in, fell toward me in tears, and revealed that she was Jewish believing that I, too, was Jewish. Before that time, she would also often come in to where I was, conduct long conversations and inquire about the Jews of Warsaw. I therefore had a basis to believe that she was Jewish, but because I was not completely certain, I used to respond evasively.

Some time later, I learned that almost all of the women who were there were Jewish. The only one from among these who often came in to console me was the above-mentioned woman, who was named Wanda Rogatska [Rogacka] from Warsaw. All of the others kept away from my bed, in order not to become suspect. …

Now we had to leave this place [i.e., after the liberation], first because we could not be a burden on these good people and second because we had to regain our identity. …

Regrettably, I had to remain there another six whole weeks. I simply could not walk around. My sister finally located a room in Otwozk [Otwock].

The kindhearted priest rented a carriage for us. The nun wrapped me in a blanket with true motherly concern and seated me in the carriage. With tears of gratitude and heartfelt blessings from the priest and the nun, we left that blessed house and all of its wonderful inhabitants.
Felicja Seifert (later Ela Manor) was smuggled out of the ghetto in Kraków. She was sent to a farm in the village of Wawrzeńczyce, in the county of Miechów, near Kraków, where she stayed for about a year, together with another Jewish couple, the Rozmaryns, at the home of Zygmunt and Elżbieta Wojnarowicz. One day, the Germans raided the farm and arrested the farm owners (Zygmunt Wojnarowicz perished in the Dora concentration camp) and executed the Jewish couple. Felicja managed to escape and ran to the private tutor the farm owners had hired for her, who sent her to Dr. Aleksandra Mianowska in Kraków, a Żegota activist. Mianowska turned to Rev. Ferdynand Machay, who provided Ela Seifert with a baptismal and birth certificate in the name of Elżbieta Smoleń. Dr. Mianowska arranged for Stefan Kamiński, an underground activist and member of Żegota, to take her to a children’s institution in Kostowiec near Warsaw run by the Sisters of the Family of Mary. She remained there until the area was liberated.¹³⁷

Sister Stanisława Kaniewska described the conditions at the “Zosinek” orphanage, also operated by the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, in Międzylesie near Warsaw. (“Getter, Matylda, Mother,” Internet: , based on Władysław Smólski, Za to groziła śmierć: Polacy z pomocą w czasie okupacji [Warsaw: Pax, 1981], pp.300–308.)

The orphanage counted ca. 70 children, of which 10 were Jewish. One of them was a nine-year-old girl who was so terrified. One of them was a nine-year-old girl who was so terrified by the sight of Germans that her fright immediately attracted their attention when some of them appeared at the orphanage and caused them to ask if the Sisters do not keep Jewish children. Stanisława Kaniewska, fluent in German, assured them that only Polish Catholic children are in the orphanage and another Sister, Maria Czechowicz, distracted them from that dangerous questioning by talking to them in French, which one of them knew. In the last days of July 1944, when Russians reached the River Vistula, they bombarded the city by artillery and from the air. Several people were killed, the chapel was destroyed, but nobody from the orphanage was harmed. On August 1^st, 1944 (first day of the Warsaw Uprising), during lunch, for which there were only broad beans, the Germans suddenly stormed into the orphanage and ordered everybody to leave and to march toward Warsaw. Soon the other orphanage from Międzylesie, “Ulanówek”, with the youngest children, joined them. Those children remained at Grochów, while “Zosinek” went on to Saska Kępa, both in Warsaw. As the children had nothing to eat, Sister Stanisława asked the parish priest to announce their predicament in church and parishioners flocked with food. Sister Stanisława, realizing that this was not sufficient, returned with the older girls to Międzylesie for food. The Germans forbade them to go there but allowed them to go to Anin, where the Sisters had another orphanage. There they were bombarded again by artillery fire by both the Germans and Russians at the same time. On August 13, the Germans ordered the evacuation also of this second orphanage. Sister Stanisława explained the situation to the German command. At the beginning, the commanding officer refused any help, but finally agreed to give them horse carts for the children and food. After another bombing from the air by the Soviets, Sister Stanisława ordered the drivers to go not to Modlin, as indicated the Germans, but to Płudy, another of their orphanages, this time with 80 children and with the food. Having arrived there, she got some food for the children left at Saska Kępa. When she returned there, the children received her with tears. She fed them and they all went to Płudy. The conditions there were very difficult, as several orphanages were reunited there: altogether 500 children, of which a hundred (100) were Jewish. The Germans came continuously to search the house, especially one, particularly obnoxious fellow, returned every day for three weeks looking for Jewish children and for a Jewish priest, Father [Tadeusz] Puder, but as much as he searched he could not find them. He announced that if he discovers even one Jew, all would be shot. Despite continuous threats Sister Stanisława refused three times to leave the orphanage. The soldiers put her against the wall and under guard when they were expelling again all the children to Modlin. The superior, Sister Romualda, entreated the Germans to leave the two and three year olds as too young to walk so far, famished as they were. They acquiesced and allowed seven Sisters, among them Stanisława, to stay with them. On the third night there arrived a German doctor who was furious that not all the children had left; he demanded to see the German-speaking Sister. But when he saw the miserable state of children in the cellars, he was appalled. He promised her to reward her after the war for her heroism. She thanked him but told him that she does it not for German rewards but to save the Polish children and that they need food, as they have only rye grain to eat. He promised to send them all kinds of food and delicacies. At that moment a shell fell in the place where both of them were standing and killed some people. The German doctor and the Polish Sister were both knocked out. But the food never arrived: the Germans fled. The next day Polish soldiers from the Kościuszko Division (formed in Soviet Russia out of Poles deported to Siberia at the beginning of the war who did not manage to join the 2nd Polish Corps of General Anders) liberated them. One of the priests celebrated Mass in the cellar; everybody wept.
The aforementioned Rev. Tadeusz Puder was a Jew by birth who, together with his widowed mother, Jadwiga, and two brothers, had converted to Catholicism as a teenager. In order to protect Rev. Puder, a well-known convert with a distinctive Semitic appearance, Archbishop Stanisław Gall, the administrator of the Warsaw archdiocese, removed him from his Warsaw parish church of St. Hyancinth (św. Jacka). In November 1939, he was appointed chaplain of a children’s home in Białołęka Dworska near Warsaw run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, where a number of Jewish children were sheltered. Rev. Puder was arrested by the Gestapo in April 1941. Through the intervention of nuns and friends he was placed in St. Sophia’s hospital in Warsaw, near the convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, under the watch of the Gestapo. A daring escape was staged in November 1942. Rev. Puder slid down a rope made of bed sheets into a horse-drawn wagon awaiting him and was hidden under some coal. Dressed as a nun and his head heavily bandaged, he was taken to stay with his mother in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. Soon after, Sister Janina Kruszewska brought Rev. Puder, dressed as a nun, to Białołeka Dworska, where he again took up his position as chaplain. In September 1944, the residents of that institution were expelled by the Germans and made their way to Płudy, where the sisters maintained another institution for girls. Rev. Puder arrived at Płudy dressed as a nun, in the company of Sisters Romualda Stępak, Domicela Golik, and Janina Kruszewska. Rev. Puder remained there until the liberation of Płudy on October 24, 1944. After the liberation of left-bank Warsaw on January 17, 1945, Rev. Puder was able to visit his mother, who survived in hiding in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. On January 23, 1945, walking down a sreet in the ruins of Warsaw, Rev. Puder and Sister Irena Waśniewska were hit by a truck driven by a Red Army soldier. Rev. Puder was struck unconscious and died from head injuries four days later.¹³⁸
Priests were often instrumental in placing Jews in convents and worked hand in glove with nuns to rescue Jews. According to historian Ewa Kurek (Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, p.52):
Priests also fulfilled the role of intermediaries between Jews and convents, and they extricated children from the ghettos. Children were led out of the Warsaw ghetto by, among others, Rev. Prelate Marceli Godlewski, the pastor of the Church of All Saints, and by Rev. Piotr Tomaszewski, the chaplain of the Father Boduen Home, who, for example, brought three-year-old Monika to the Sisters of Charity [of St. Vincent de Paul] during playtime. Monsignor Antoni Godziszewski had contacts with the Czestochowa [Częstochowa] ghetto, from which he smuggled children to suitable institutions in that town. A similar role was played in Kielce by Rev. Jan Jaroszewicz, the future bishop of the Kielce diocese.
Rescue often entailed moving charges across the country to convents, homes and institutions ready to receive them. Often, this was done by train. Noemi Szac-Wajnkranc, a native of Warsaw, noted in her wartime diary how, in the autumn of 1942 when she was leaving Warsaw by train from Dworzec Wschodni (Eastern Terminal), a nun entered the wagon with a two-year-old girl. The child looked sad and started to cry. The passengers, who immediately recognized the child to be Jewish, tried to comfort her.¹³⁹
Moving children from one convent to another was also a fairly frequent occurrence. After leaving the Warsaw ghetto in the early part of 1943, Janina Dawidowicz (later David), then 13 years old, assumed the identity of Danuta Teresa Markowska. She was cared for by the Sisters of the Family of Mary in Płudy outside of Warsaw, from July 1943 to January 1944, stayed briefly in their orphanage in Łomna, and afterwards moved to an orphanage on Wolność Street, near the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. After the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, the children were evacuated to Kostowiec, outside Warsaw, where the sisters had another convent. Janina describes her experiences in those convents in her memoir A Touch of Earth. She was treated well and even lovingly by the nuns, among them Sister Zofia Olszewska, with whom Janina Dawidowicz corresponded until the nun’s death. She also remembered fondly the priests who visited the convent, among them a Franciscan identified as Father Cezary.¹⁴⁰
Some 25 Jewish children were sheltered at the orphanage in Łomna near Turka, located southwest of Lwów, run by the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary. Many of the children were brought there from Warsaw by Sister Blanka (Zofia) Pigłowska, who maintained contact with trusted persons in Warsaw’s Social Services Department. The superior of the Łomna convent, Mother Tekla (Anna) Budnowska, stated that all of the nuns were aware of the identity of their Jewish charges. One of the Jewish children was Halina (Chana) Złotnik, a native of Głowno, whose family had been deported to the Warsaw ghetto. While working at a warehouse outside the ghetto sorting old clothes, her mother learned of the assistance provided by its Polish director, identified as Władysław, in finding shelters for Jewish children through the Social Services Department network. Halina, already a teenager, was assisted and sheltered by several Polish women who were part of this network—a woman known as Wanda, Zofia Papuzińska (whose home served as a drop-off point for many Jewish children), Mrs. Kluczkowska of Gocławek, Jadwiga Piotrowska and her daughter, Hanka, and another relative of hers—before being taken by a nun to the convent in Łomna by train. Although everyone experienced hunger, the food was shared equally among the children and staff, and the nuns treated all of their charges devotedly and with compassion, regardless of their origin. In her testimony Halina wrote of her “boundless respect and admiration” for the nuns who cared for her during the occupation. When the convent in Łomna came under attack by Ukrainian nationalist partisans in the fall of 1943, the children were transferred to Warsaw. During the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, the children were evacuated to the Franciscan Sisters’ convent in Kostowiec, outside the city. One of the instructors there was Father Czesław Baran, a Franciscan who is fondly remembered by the children.¹⁴¹
The story of the rescue efforts of the Papuziński family, who assisted Halina Złotnik and a number of other Jews, is so remarkable that it deserves further mention. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, p.580.)
The modest apartment of Zofia and Stanislaw Papuzinski [Stanisław Papuziński], who lived in the Ochota neighborhood of Warsaw, served as an “address” and temporary hiding place for Jewish children hiding on the Aryan side of the city. From December 1942, after the establishment of Zegota [Żegota], Zofia and Stanislaw Papuzinski worked untiringly, risking their own lives to save Jewish children. Motivated by national duty, and although they themselves were the parents of two young children, they placed themselves at the disposal of Zegota, disregarding the very real danger to their lives. Dozens of Jewish children brought to their apartment were treated with warm devotion until they were taken to other places to hide. In her book about Zegota, Teresa Prekerowa writes that the Papuzinskis were among the most active members of the organization. Among the children helped by the Papuzinskis were Ester Sztajn, Stefania Wortman, Krzysztof Groslik, Halina Zlotnik [Złotnik], and Basia Markow, who was the eight-year-old daughter of a stage actor. Following information provided by informers, the Gestapo raided the Papuzinski apartment in February 1944. Those hiding in the apartment at the time were shot and Zofia was incarcerated in the Pawiak prison, where she was executed. Her husband Stanislaw survived and passed away after the war.
Lidia Kleinman (later Siciarz), who was born in Kraków in 1930, was entrusted by her father, Dr. Mendel Kleinman, to the head nurse, Sister Jadwiga, at the hospital in Turka where he worked as a physician. Lidia had been brought to the hospital by her mother on the eve of the deportation of the Jews. Sister Jadwiga hid Lidia in the hospital for several weeks until she was able to smuggle her out. She arranged to place her in a convent of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary on Korkowa Street in Lwów, where she remained under the care of Sister Blanka (Zofia) Pigłowska under the assumed name of Maria Borowska. Mother Janina Wirball was the superior of the Lwów convent. When suspicions arose as to her identity, Lidia was transferred to the Franciscan Sisters’ orphanage in Łomna. She obtained a new set of false papers under the name of Maria Wołoszyńska. Lidia became particularly fond of Sister Zofia Olszewska, who was in charge of the school. She describes her as a “wonderful person.” Lidia met a Jewish girl named Urszula Peiper, whom she describes as “very, very Semitic” looking, with “very dark, olive skin and very, very dark hair.” (Urszula Peiper’s story follows.) Towards the end of 1943, the nuns and children were transferred to Warsaw because of attacks on the convent by Ukrainian nationalists. The orphanage was evacuated to Kostowiec in August 1944, during the Warsaw Uprising. Lidia’s father also survived (her mother perished) and Lidia was reunited with him after the war.¹⁴² (Gilbert, The Righteous, pp.56–57.)
In Turka, on the eve of the deportation of the Jews in August 1942, Sister Jadwiga, a nun who was also the head nurse at the local hospital, hid twelve-year-old Lidia Kleiman [sic] in one of the cubicles of the men’s washroom, which was used as a broom closet. Lidia stayed hidden in the hospital for several weeks. Sister Jadwiga then took her to her own home and taught her Christian prayers in preparation for placing her in a Catholic orphanage in Lvov [Lwów] under the assumed name of Marysia Borowska. There she was put in the care of Sister Blanka Piglowska [Pigłowska], who knew that she was Jewish. When a suspicion arose in the orphanage that Lidia might be Jewish, it was Sister Blanka who obtained new false papers for her, with a new name, Maria Woloszynska [Wołoszyńska]. She then transferred the girl to another orphanage, at the convent in the village of Lomna [Łomna near Turka], where the Mother Superior, Sister Tekla Budnowska, was hiding many Jewish girls.

In the early autumn of 1943, after an attack by Ukrainian nationalists, Sister Budnowska received permission to transfer her girls to Warsaw, and to establish an orphanage in an abandoned building in the former ghetto. In Warsaw, she accepted yet more Jewish children. After the suppression of the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944 [which lasted until October], the orphanage relocated to Kostowiec, fifteen miles south-west of Warsaw.

Lidia’s mother had been denounced to the Gestapo while travelling on false papers, arrested and killed; but her father had been hidden by a Russian [Eastern] Orthodox priest, and survived. Father and daughter were reunited after liberation.
Lidia Kleinman (Siciarz) wrote the following testimonial about her stay in Łomna (Teresa Antonietta Frącek, “Ratowały, choć za to groziła śmierć,” Parts 2 and 4, Nasz Dziennik, March 12, 2008 and March 19, 2008):
When Sister Blanka [Pigłowska] brought me to Łomna in 1942 I was 10 years old and had a package of experiences that I cannot recollect calmly to this day. Thanks to a group of generous persons who extended a helping hand to me and many others, I survived the war. I feel a deep love and gratefulness for Mother Tekla [Budnowska], Sister Zofia and Sister Blanka [Pigłowska] for their assistance, goodness and understanding and for my companions from Łomna, since they were then my family.
Sister Tekla Budnowska recalled those times in an interview conducted in June 1984 (Kurek, My Life Is Worth Yours, pp.139–41):
During the war I was mother superior of a home in Lomna [Łomna]. I had 115 children in the orphanage, of which twenty-three were Jewish—one boy, the rest girls, for the orphanage was for girls. Only later did I get [more] boys.

Sometimes there was a note with the child saying that it was Jewish, but most of the time the children came to us with birth certificates. Some of the girls said openly: I am a Jew. Others did not admit to their Jewish background, and that’s the way it stayed. For instance, Teresa B. She did not look Jewish; nothing betrayed her. One day an older [Jewish] girl came to me, her name was Glancman, and she said:

“Mother Superior, Teresa B. is a Jew.”

“She is no Jew,” I replied. “Blue eyes, the nose and everything; she does not look like a Jew.”

“I tell you, Mother Superior, she is! I can feel it!” Literally: I can feel it.

The fact is these children could somehow tell. For example, if some older Jewish girl was cleaning up, then the younger Jewish girls were immediately drawn to her. They didn’t help anyone but the Jewish girl.

Returning to Teresa B.: Teresa came to us when she was eleven. Certainly, she had a [baptismal] certificate. As it turned out later, she had not been baptized. However, she was receiving the sacraments all the time. She was a rather pious, practicing Catholic. Only after the Warsaw Uprising in 1944—she had probably taken some oath—did she turn to an old nun and ask to be baptized. We baptized her in secret, so that nobody knew.

When the Germans would come, the Jewish children would be the first to go to the chapel, for they were afraid of them. They had a certain feeling, an instinct of self-preservation. They did not exhibit exceptional piety. They probably just felt safe, and that was the reason for their normality, as far as matters of faith were concerned. We took great pains so that the children would not lack for anything. When the children in Lomna went out, I always reminded the sisters to make sure that no Germans or strangers were standing by the chapel.