Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Alina left the ghetto on the first day of the Aktion, July 22, 1942, she simply walked through the checkpoint with slightly falsified papers, in which the Jewish name Brodzka was modified to the more “Aryan” spelling Brocka. But nobody asked her for papers. She explains it as a combination of luck, youth, and her “Slavic” looks. …

Alina’s first protectors was Jadwiga Bielecka, the wife of a well-known “Endek” who was at that time a prisoner of war in Germany. [Tadeusz Bielecki, a National Democrat leader, actually escaped to France, and then to England. M.P.] Alina spent the rest of the German occupation with the Sisters of the Family of Mary [on Hoża Street], and then with the Sisters of the Resurrection [at their boarding school on Mokotowska Street] in Warsaw. After the Polish uprising, during which this fourteen-year-old girl worked in a hospital, Alina was sent with the Sisters to Częstochowa in the western part of Poland. Both Alina’s parents survived on the “Other Side.” Her older brother, who left the ghetto well before her, was an active AK [Home Army] member and took part in the Polish uprising. …

“I have received nothing but kindness from people. Who am I to speak about the Shoah? I do, of course, speak about the Shoah—I do not hide my past experiences. But I have received the grace and the good fortune to be always with good people. No blackmailer [szmalcownik] was ever on my trail.

A day-care was organized at Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Leszno Street in February 1941for the children of parishioners. It was soon transformed into a clandestine school which accepted non-Catholics and engaged Jewish teachers. Approximately seventy percent of the students were non-Catholics. Because of the increasing number of students, the school was moved to 4 Wolność Street. The enclosed outdoor recreation yard in both buildings welcomed children regardless of their faith.²⁰⁸ After being forced to relocate to the Warsaw ghetto in the summer of 1940, Antoni Oppenheim, a lawyer, continued his underground activities for the Socialist Party. His wife, Franciszka Anna, continued working in her profession as a teacher. They lived near the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Leszno Street and benefitted from the generosity of that parish. According to the testimony of their son, Ludwik Oppenheim (Sliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, pp.126–27),
My father began his secret underground activities even before moving to the ghetto. In the ghetto, he formed a cell of the Organization of Polish Socialists, which reported to the governmental authorities of the Republic of Poland in London. …

Our next apartment was in the gardener’s house of the Church of Our Most Holy Lady Mary on Leszno Street (Catholic). It was thought to be safe from the conspiraorial point of view, and the organization acted as an intermediary in making the arrangements. … Clandestine meetings were also held there. …

   Mama and her colleagues conducted a kindergarten on the grounds of the church garden from spring to fall of 1941, through the kindness of priests.

Rev. Karol Niemira, the auxiliary bishop of Pińsk, was forced to evacuate his home diocese in September 1939 after the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland. He returned to Warsaw where he had earlier been a parish priest at St. Augustine’s church, now within the confines of the walled ghetto. Bishop Niemira worked closely with the Security Corps (Korpus Bezpieczeństwa), an underground military organization of the Home Army which maintained numerous contacts with the Jewish Military Union. Some of his activities were described in Andrzej Chciuk, ed., Saving Jews in War-Torn Poland, 1939–1945 (Clayton, Victoria: Wilke and Company, 1969), at page 50. (This is one of several accounts about Bishop Niemira.)
Henryk Szladkowski (Slade) … was assisted by the Catholic Bishop Niemira of Warsaw. When the Jews were being ordered into the Ghetto he rang the diocesan offices and asked for “Mr. Bishop Niemira”. The Bishop supplied him with a Certificate of Baptism and other falsified documents and before parting asked Mr. Szladkowski to refer to him any Jew who may need financial or other assistance.
Halina Gorcewicz was thirteen years old when the war broke out. Her mother was a Polish Catholic and her father a Jew, who had nominally converted to Catholicism to marry her mother, but retained a strong identification with his Jewish tradition. Forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, they were parishioners of St. Augustine’s church on Nowoliki Street. Although the parish was formally closed, some priests remained, including Bishop Karol Niemira, the nominal pastor, and Rev. Franciszek Garncarek, the acting head of the parish. The priests of this parish were active in smuggling Jews, especially converts, out of the ghetto. Their work was continued later at the church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also within the ghetto, which remained open longer. It is there that Halina Gorcewicz went for help after the revolt in the ghetto was finally crushed by the Germans in early May of 1943. (Halina Gorcewicz, Why, Oh God, Why?, Internet: . See the chapters titled: “Ghetto, end of September 1940,” “Ghetto, the last days of April & May, 1943,” and “Warsaw, end of May, 1943.”)