Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Fifteen Jewish children from Sandomierz were saved … One of the children, a girl, was hidden in a monastery and saved. …

One day, I met the priest Babsky [Ludwik Barski, the pastor of Ciepielów] who had been my classmate in the Government high-school in Sandomierz. After a few words of greeting, the priest told me that a farmer of his parish was in possession of a Torah Scroll which he had found and taken away the day the Jews were deported. … He had hidden the Torah Scroll in his home. … The Torah Scroll remained with the Dean [Rev. Adam Szymański] who asked us to return to him with a “Minyan” of Jews (this was his expression), one of us at least with a Talith, since he desired to read a portion of the law out of this Torah. Scroll.

We complied with the request of this honourable old man who was well known for his kindness and friendly attitude towards Jews. He was said to have supplied birth certificates to Jews who wished to leave town before the “Aktsia” holding Aryan papers.

We, a group of Sandomierz Jews, reached the reception hall of the Seminary and brought a Talith as promised. Jukel Schweitzman wrapped himself in the Talith and prayed. Then, Dr. Szymansky read out the Genesis portion of the Law in the pleasant voice of an experienced reader. Listening to his reading, we all shed tears. …

A second Torah Scroll was also brought to the Wasser House where we lived at the time and given to us free of charge by the priest, Dr. Lagec [Rev. Michał Łagocki], a teacher at the Priests’ Seminary. He had received the Torah Scroll from a farmer who had hidden it in order to return it after the war to a grain dealer of Sandomierz … My cousin, Shia Soberman, identified the Torah Scroll we received from the farmer as belonging to the synagogue in our town.
The activities of Rev. Adam Szymański, the rector of the diocesan seminary, who gathered sacred books to prevent them from being profaned by the Germans, issued false baptismal certificates to Jews, provided them with material assistance and agreed hide their property, are confirmed by other Jews from Sandomierz, such as Anna Dembowa.¹⁹⁶
Before her involvement in Żegota, the Council for Aid to Jews, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka co-founded the conservative underground organization of lay Catholics known as Front Odrodzenia Polski (FOP—The Front for the Rebirth of Poland) in 1941, and became editor of its newspaper, Prawda (the Truth).¹⁹⁷ In August 1942, as the Germans embarked on their first large-scale Aktion or deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto, the FOP published an appeal authored by Kossak-Szczucka in an underground leaflet titled “The Protest,” which called the destruction of the Jews then in progress “the most terrible crime history has ever witnessed.” The leaflet continued (Kunert, Polacy–Żydzi, Polen–Juden, Poles–Jews, 1939–1941, pp.212–16.):
In the face of crime, it is wrong to remain passive. Whoever is silent witnessing murder becomes a partner to the murder. Whoever does not condemn, condones.

… We have no means to actively counteract the German murders; we cannot help, nor can we rescue anybody. But we protest from the depths of our hearts filled with pity, indignation, and horror. This protest is demanded of us by God, who does not allow us to kill. It is demanded by our Christian conscience. Every being calling itself human has the right to the love of his fellow man. The blood of the defenceless victims is calling to the heavens for vengeance. Who does not support the protest with us, is not a Catholic.

We protest also as Poles. We do not believe that Poland could benefit from the horrible deeds of the Germans. … The forced participation of the Polish nation as observers of the bloody spectacle taking place on Polish soil may breed indifference to injustice, sadism, and, above all, to the dangerous conviction that those close to us can be murdered with impunity.

Whoever does not understand this, and whoever dares to connect the future of the proud, free Poland, with the vile enjoyment of your fellow man’s misfortune—is, therefore, not a Catholic and not a Pole.
While the decimated and beleaguered Catholic hierarchy in Poland had no possibility to protest the persecution of Jews, or of Polish Catholics—even the clergy—for that matter, representatives of the Catholic Church hierarchy in exile spoke out. Rev. Karol Mieczysław Radoński, the bishop of Włocławek, who fled Poland and took up residence in London, England, actively joined the efforts of the Polish government to inform the world of the crimes committed in occupied Poland. In a BBC radio address delivered on December 14, 1942, echoing the words of “The Protest,” Bishop Radoński stated (“Przemówienie biskupa Radońskiego,” Dziennik Polski, December 17, 1942, reproduced in Andrzej Krzysztof Kunert, ed., Polacy–Żydzi, Polen–Juden, Poles–Jews, 1939–1941: Wybór źródeł, Quellenauswahl, Selection of Documents [Warsaw: Rada Ochrony Pamięci Walki i Męczeństwa, Instytut Dziedzictwa Narodowego, and Rytm, 2001], pp.108–10):
As concerns the Jewish populace, its suffering has exceeded everything that hatred and the bestiality of the oppressor is capable of inventing. The murders committed openly on Jews in Poland midst the blustering and jibes of the executioners and their vassals must evoke horror and disgust in the entire civilized world. …

As a Polish bishop I condemn with all certainty [most categorically] the crime committed in Poland on the Jewish population. The words of the Front Odrodzenia Polski FOP (Front for the Rebirth of Poland) which have reached us from the Homeland, beating with a truly Christian spirit of brotherly love and human compassion are an expression of that which every Pole and Christian feels.
August Cardinal Hlond, the Primate of Poland, who was exiled in France, was similarly well informed. His report to the Vatican on the situation in occupied Poland, issued in Lyons at the beginning of 1943, contained information about the confinement of Jews in ghettos and the horrible conditions there, the deportation to Poland of Jews from other occupied countries, and the mass executions and gassings of Jews. These accounts came to him from the Polish government in London. Cardinal Hlond’s report was published in the foremost French Christian journal of resistance, Cahiers du témoignage chrétien, nos. 13–14 (1943), and played an important role in spreading the news of the fate of Polish Jewry in the West.¹⁹⁸
Finally, it should be mentioned that German-occupied Poland constitutes a ghetto to which all the Jews from Poland and Germany have been brought and Jews from other occupied countries are presently being transported. They are interned in ghettos which are found in all the larger towns. They are shot to death for escaping from the ghetto. They are exhausted and in many cases are worked or starved to death, or freeze to death. Sometimes Gestapo forces enter the ghettos and carry out massacres. Every day the Jews are shot in mass executions and killed in gas chambers. Thousands of them were killed in Przemyśl, Stanisławów and Rzeszów; some 55,000 Jews were killed in Lwów alone. In total, about 700,000 Jews were cruelly murdered on Polish territory. There can be no doubt about Hitler’s plan of total and unequivocal annihilation of the Jews on the European continent.
Jewish sources confirm that, while in exile in Lourdes, France, Cardinal Hlond had provided Catholic documents to many Jews and placed Jewish children in monasteries.¹⁹⁹
Remarkably, British historian Richard J. Evans claims that the Polish Catholic Church not only did not take a clear stance against the Germans’ murderous policies towards Polish Jews, “if anything, the opposite was the case.”²⁰⁰ The decimated Polish hierarchy, it must be remembered, did not issue public pronouncements even on fate of its own clergy or Catholic Poles. Unfortunately, such baseless charges are rather typical of Western literature on wartime Poland. Columbia Univerity historian István Deák, an authority on the subject, remarked: “No issue in Holocaust literature is more burdened by misunderstanding, mendacity, and sheer racial prejudice than that of Polish-Jewish relations during World War II.”²⁰¹
Members of the Jewish underground would often meet at Catholic institutions on the “Aryan” side of Warsaw, as these were considered the safest meeting places. A popular venue was a kitchen run by the Sisters of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Resurrectionist Sisters) on Sewerynów Street. This quiet, secluded spot was a regular meeting place not only for Żegota, but for the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB). Vladka Meed (Feigele Peltel, later Miedzyrzecki), a member of the Jewish underground who had been brought out of the ghetto in December 1942 by Michał Klepfisz, provides the following description in her book On Both Sides of the Wall: Memoirs from the Warsaw Ghetto (New York: Holocaust Library, 1979), at pages 84–85.
Michal [Michał Klepfisz] informed me that Mikolai [Mikołaj] Berezowski (his original name was Dr. Leon Feiner) wanted to see me. He was the Bund representative of the coordinating committee on the “Aryan side,” and the central figure in the Jewish underground, and our liaison with the Polish underground. …

I was to meet him at Sewerynow [Sewerynów] 6, between two and three in the afternoon, in a convent, which had a restaurant open to the public. It served as a rendezvous for our small circle of underground activists. Since our group had no steady meeting place, we had to use quiet public sites, and could not meet too often in the same locale.

Michal accompanied me to the convent, which was on a quiet lane where people rarely passed. Next to the kitchen were a small waiting room where one could smoke, a cloakroom, and two spacious halls. Our group usually lunched in one of these halls, which was screened by old green palms set near the window. A rare serenity prevailed here. The diners were predominantly office clerks and impoverished middle class people. Compared to other public kitchens, the prices here were very moderate.

Michal guided me to a vacant table, whispering instructions. Two men were dining at a table to the right. One of them was forty years old, with a crop of black hair, a somber face and unassuming black clothes. He looked like a minor Polish government official. (Dr. Adolf Berman, representative on the Aryan side of the Jewish National Committee, and leader of the Left Poale Zion). Beside him sat a blonde gentleman with a well-groomed moustache, calm and confident in bearing. This was Henryk (Salo Fishgrund), who had been a Bund activist in Cracow [Kraków] prior to the war. Our own Celek [Jankel Celemenski] was sitting by himself at a table opposite.

Shortly, a tall, elegant elderly man with silvery hair and an upturned moustache, bright eyes, and rosy cheeks—the image of a Polish country gentleman—entered. Like Henryk, he had an air of self-confidence. This was Mikolai. He took in the scene at a glance and, catching sight of Michal, joined us.