Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

I thus delivered weapons for several months. … Our last delivery of weapons to Ciężkowice was two weeks before the liberation [in January 1945].
Gusta Rueck, a young girl from Jodłowa, was sheltered for a time in the rectory of a village priest near Brzostek, north of Jasło. The priest’s housekeeper was fearful for their safety so Gusta’s mother, Cyla, placed her with a peasant woman. Gusta was then passed on to other Polish farmers, as was her older sister, Regina (born in 1935), who lived nearby. The girls’ mother reclaimed her daughters after the war.²³²
Eugenia Jare, who was born in Frysztak near Jasło in 1915, was assisted by several priests. Rev. Gabriel Marszałek of Rudna Wielka, provided her with a false baptismal certificate and identity card and, for about two months, employed her as his housekeeper in his new parish of Borownica; Rev. Jan Keller, the pastor of Sławęcin, provided her with temporary shelter; and Rev. Tadeusz Świrad of Barycz, provided her with references when she moved to Lwów.²³³
Rev. Jan Lewiarz, an ethnic Pole, was an Orthodox priest. From 1941, he served in the village of Ciechania near Krempna, south of Jasło, and from 1943, in the nearby village of Bartne near Gorlice. He sheltered Lila Flachs (later Zofia Trembska), a native of Lwów, who assumed a false identity as Zofia Lewiar (sic) and pretented to be the priest’s sister. Lila’s father, Jan Flachs, also stayed there for a period of time before relocating to Warsaw. Afterwards, Lila went to live with her fiancé, a Ukrainian. A local Jew was also rescued in the village of Ciechania, which was inhabited by a Lemko population, by moving from one farmer to another.²³⁴
Accounts gathered at Yad Vashem, which recognized Bronisława Jaroszyńska (Sister Klara) as a Righteous Gentile, attest to the following assistance by the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross in Laski near Warsaw. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, pp.304–305; “Jadwiga Luśniak,” The Polish Righteous, Internet: .)
[1] In August 1942, during the liquidation of the Radom ghetto in the Kielce district, Jakub Lautenberg, his wife, Karola, and their eight-year-old daughter, Anita, fled to Warsaw. With the help of an acquaintance, Anita was taken in by Jozef Jaroszynski [Józef Jaroszyński], a teacher, and his wife, Helena, a former senior lecturer at the technical college. When Anita’s parents subsequently turned up … The Jaroszynskis agreed to shelter Karola in their apartment and found a hiding place for Jakub in a rented cellar in the Bielany suburb of Warsaw. … In due course, Anita was sent to a home for the blind run by the [Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross, misidentified in this account as the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth] in Laski Warszawskie, where the Jaroszynskis’ daughter, Klara, worked as a nun. Klara introduced Anita as a relative of hers [Halina] whose father worked as a pilot for the Polish Army-in-Exile. Before leaving for the convent, Maria Furmanik, a close friend of the Jaroszynskis who lived with them, drilled Anita in the Christian prayers. Later, Maria visited Anita in the convent and took her out for walks in the local parks. The Jaroszynskis, meanwhile, continued to supply Anita with clothes, textbooks, and stationery, without expecting anything in return. [This so-called ruse was not really necessary because, as we know from other accounts, a number of Jews were sheltered at Laski.—M.P.]
[2] During the Second World War the Scout instructor Jadwiga Luśniak used to hide Jews in the boarding house she was running in the Warsaw district of Żoliborz. The staff of the institution was involved in underground activity – due to this fact the place was often controlled by the Nazis. Among the people Jadwiga Luśniak helped were Tomasz Prot [born in 1930] and his mother [Zofia Prot née Deiches]. Before the war the Prots—an assimilated Jewish family—lived in the Warsaw district of Bielany. Towards the end of December 1939 they moved to the Center for the Blind in Laski. They stayed there until 1942, when their presence became too dangerous for the institution. …

In June 1942 the mother of Prot took him to Nowinki near Warsaw, to the boarding school of the Central Welfare Council (Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, RGO) for orphans and children of Polish soldiers who were killed or captured. The boarding school was ran [sic] by Jadwiga Luśniak and Jadwiga Żak. In July 1942 Prot was accepted to the Stefan Czarniecki Boarding School for Boys, which had its seat in Warsaw. He had a so-called “Semitic appearance” and his full name, which appeared in his documents, was Prot-Berlinerblau—Jadwiga Luśniak and her collaborators certainly guessed his descent. Other Jews were also hiding under false names in the boarding school. Prot stayed in the institution until the end of 1943, when due to security reasons he was transferred to boarding schools in Józefów, and then Konstancin. He later returned under the care of Jadwiga Luśniak and stayed there until June 1944. …

After the defeat of the Warsaw Uprising, the Prots were sent to a camp in Pruszków, and later to Kraków and Bochnia. They remained there until the Soviet Army entered in January 1945. 
Sister Klara (Bronisława Jaroszyńska) was also instrumental in rescuing other Jewish children. She helped Ewa Kupferblum (born in 1940, later Eva Kuper), who managed to escape from the Warsaw ghetto with her father after miraculously avoiding deportation to Treblinka with her mother in the summer of 1942. Ewa was taken in by Hanna Rembowska, a school teacher and illustrator of children’s books. Rembowska had tuberculosis, and when she became too sick to care for Ewa, she entrusted her to Sister Klara. When the little girl first saw Sister Klara, she grabbed the nun’s leg and yelled, “Pick me up!” Sister Klara took little Ewa in her arms and continued to care for her for the duration of the war at the convent in Bukowina Tatrzańska. Whenever the Germans came to the village, Ewa was removed to a shed, where she was hidden in a hole in the ground, covered with floorboards. After the war, Ewa was located in the convent by her aunt and was brought back to her father, who had also survived in hiding. In 2005, after 60 years of separation, Ewa was reunited with her rescuer. Accompanied by her entire family, she travelled from Canada to Poland to thank Sister Klara for saving her life. Ewa wrote the following words to Sister Klara: “I did not know that Sister Klara loved me so much! As a young woman, she had to take care of so many children and to take such responsibility in those difficult times. Her kindness, her warmth, love and beautiful smile, which I remember from my childhood, were something special for me.”²³⁵
Between 1942 and 1945, Sister Klara took under her care Sister Miriam or Maria (Bronisława Wajngold), a nun of Jewish origin who assumed the identity of Agnieszka Gołębiowska during the German occupation. The two nuns found shelter briefly with the Ursuline Sisters of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus in Zakopane, and then with the Sisters of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Resurrectionist Sisters) in Bukowina Tatrzańska near Zakopane. Three other nuns of Jewish origin—Sister Katarzyna (Zofia Steinberg), Sister Teresa (Zofia Landy), and Sister Bonifacja (Halina Goldman)—also survived the war. Because the presence of these nuns in Laski was well known, they took refuge in other convents. Sister Teresa (Zofia Landy) stayed at the institution for the blind in Żułów near Krasnystaw run by the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross. For a period of time, she also stayed on the estate of the Zamoyski family in Kozłówka near Lubartów, where part of that institution was housed until 1941, when the owner of the estate was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Sister Katarzyna (Zofia Steinberg), a pediatric ophthalmologist who worked with blind children, was sheltered by the Discaled Carmelite Sisters in Lwów.²³⁶ Nuns of Jewish origin also survived in other convents. Róża Margulies, the daughter of a Warsaw rabbi, survived as Sister Rozariana in the Dominican Sisters’s cloister in Św. Anna outside Przyrów near Częstochowa, notwithstang the fact that her presence there was common knowledge in the area.²³⁷
The institution for the blind in Żułów near Krasnystaw, operated by the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross, was also a place of refuge for the future Primate of Poland, Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński. It was there that he encountered a Jewish family, whom he assisted. When the war broke out in September 1939, Rev. Wyszyński taught at a seminary in Włocławek. He had to leave Włocławek because he was wanted by the Germans for the pastoral duties he had performed for the working class. More of his story is recorded by Rev. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik (“The Unknown Side of Cardinal Wyszyński: Documents Reveal Polish Prelate Helped Jewish People During Holocaust,” Zenit, January 20, 2015):
During World War II, Fr. Stefan Wyszynski [Wyszyński] had to hide from the German occupants. Between October 1941 and June 1942, he was staying in Żułów (District of Krasnystaw) at the center for aid to the blind, which was run by the Franciscan Sisters convent from Laski. At that time he was already involved in his pastoral care for the people staying at the Center, and for inhabitants of the surrounding villages, teaching children in secrecy and supporting the Home Army (AK) soldiers. In his free time, he helped on the farm. Jadwiga Karwowska (née Zalewska), whose parents worked at the aid Center, was a witness to the help Father Wyszyński gave to the Jewish family of three: a father [Józef] and two of his children, named Gołda (born 1928) and Szmulek (born 1930).

Years later Karwowska recalls: “Fr. Wyszynski came to us constantly, literally each night, and we hid them [the Jewish family] at our attic. He helped my dad put a ladder and take it back to the garden so that there were no traces of anybody’s presence at the attic.” Franciscan Sisters, priests, and some workers at the aid center in Żułów knew that Gołda and Szmulek were Jewish, yet despite the danger they decided to help them.

Esther Grinberg (Morgenstern) reveals other, previously unknown, facts about Fr. Stefan Wyszyński. The interview with her has been kept at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem (ref. O.3/V.T/862).

In her testimony she mentions the tragic history of her family. Born in 1918 in Międzyrzec Podlaski, she lost her parents, brother, and sister in the Holocaust. She survived thanks to the help of many people in various places, including some from the capital city, where she arrived during the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. She was concealed by Grażyna Winiarska, among others. In her memoirs she refers twice to the fact that Father Stefan Wyszyński, who at that time moved from Żułów to Laski (near Warsaw), was well known as he encouraged the faithful at his church to help all those who were escaping from the fire of war.

As Esther Grinberg mentioned, he did not specify exactly whom to help, mainly for safety reasons, but everyone knew he meant Jews who were at that time massively fleeing the ghetto and seeking refuge on the “Aryan” side.
Apparently, the three member family mentioned above was denounced by a Ukrainian and executed by the Germans in Kraśniczyn on October 31, 1942. According to Sister Joanna Lossow, who headed the institution in Żułów, they also sheltered Mrs. Braunstein, then passing as Burzanowska, and her three sons, who survived the war with the assistance of the future Cardinal Wyszyński.²³⁸
The two daughters of Bronisława (Bracha) Kozak, Dobra (Debora) Jenta (born in 1932, who assumed the name of Maria Kruszewska) and Hadassa (born in 1937, who became Jadwiga Kruszewska), were sheltered in convents in or near Warsaw, one of which was that of the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross in Laski. After escaping from the Częstochowa ghetto around September 1942, Bronisława Kozak and her daughters assumed new identities (Kruszewska). They lived a few months with a family of farmers before making their way to Warsaw. The two girls were placed in a convent, as sisters, by their aunt, Cesia (Cecylia) Kozak. After working as a maid with a Polish family, Bronisława was taken in by Helena Sitkowska, a widow with two teenaged children. The claim that the convent refused to keep the girls when it was discovered they were Jewish is not quite accurate. Apparently, Hadassa (Jadwiga or Wisia) left the convent, in unclear circumstances, after a stay of about six months. At some point, Dobra (Maria) was transferred to another convent where she remained until shortly before the Warsaw uprising of 1944, when she was removed by her aunt so that both sisters could be together with their mother when the fighting in Warsaw began. All three were sheltered by the Sitkowski family. Dobra (Debora) Kozak settled in England where she became Marion Miliband, the mother of British Labour Party politicians David and Edward Miliband.²³⁹
When the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, the lives of the civilian population, including Jews passing as Poles and those in hiding, were in state of turmoil as the city was being shelled relentlessly by the Germans. After their hiding place was destroyed, Franciszka Grünberg her husband Stefan took refuge on the grounds of St. Casimir church and residence of the Resurrectionist Fathers on Chełmska Street. In her memoir, Franciszka describes how attentively the priests, in particular a priest she identified as Fr. Romańczyk, but most likely Fr. Julian Kalbarczyk, cared for the needs of the hundreds of people who took shelter there. The priests showed great compassion toward the Jewish refugees. After the failed uprising the Germans expelled all of the inhabitants of Warsaw, and then systematically destroyed what was left of the city. The Grünbergs survived in the countryside near Warsaw moving from village to village.²⁴⁰
Milton Kestenberg, an attorney in New York City, related the experiences of his father, a Warsaw industrialist, who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and was hidden with the help of several Poles. After the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, the Germans rounded up the populace in the ruins of the city. They were sent to the transit camp in Pruszków and then transported to various places. After jumping out of a train and spraining his leg, Kestenberg was found by a guard who took him to a parish rectory. The priest took Kestenberg in and cared for him until the liberation. They remained friends after the war, until their deaths.²⁴¹
Zofia Haas Roze, born in Przemyśl in 1906, was evacuated from Warsaw after the Warsaw uprising of August 1944. She arrived in the village of Gidle, northeast of Częstochowa, with her Polish protectors. She obtained a position as a housekeeper at a parish rectory, pretending to be a Catholic. When she asked the vicar, Rev. Maciej Lewiński, to visit her friends in Kraków to inquire about her mother and daughter who were hiding there, he learned that Zofia was Jewish. The vicar brought Zofia’s mother, Regina Roze, to Gidle and housed her with the church warden. Eventually, Rev. Zygmunt Lipa, the pastor, also learned that Zofia was Jewish. Zofia decided to move with her mother to another town when someone recognized her in Gidle. Zofia, her mother, and her daughter, Maria Alina, all survived the war.²⁴²
Helena Diamand, a native of Lwów (born there in 1899), moved to Warsaw in 1942 with her mother and sister. She assumed the name of Dobek. After the failed uprising of August 1944, they were evacuated from Warsaw. Posing as Christians, Helena, her mother and her sister were settled temporarily in the village of Rzędowice, in Niegardów parish, near Proszowice, where the villagers suspected them of being Jewish. They received help from Rev. Edward (?) Zemełka, a local priest.²⁴³
Assistance for Jews was widespread in Wilno. In 1941, Rev. Romuald Jałbrzykowski, the archbishop of Wilno, issued an appeal urging monasteries, convents and priests to hide fugitives from the ghettos.²⁴⁴ One of the many religious orders who responded to his plea were the Dominican Sisters, a contemplative order. During the round-ups of Jews in July 1941, about seventeen members of the Hashomer Hatzair, Abba Kovner and Arieh Wilner (who had arrived from Warsaw) among them, took shelter in their convent located in Kolonia Wileńska, just outside the city of Wilno. Contact with the superior of the convent, Mother Bertranda (born Janina Siestrzewitowska, later Anna Borkowska), was made by Jadwiga Dudziec and Irena Adamowicz, members of the Polish scouting organization, who had ties to the Hashomer Hatzair and had already hidden other Jews in various convents and monasteries and had obtained documents for them. Dressed as nuns, the young Jews worked side by side with the nuns cultivating the fields near the convent. After nearly six months, they decided to return to the Wilno ghetto where they formed the nucleus of the armed underground. The Germans arrested Anna Borkowska in September 1943, closed the convent, and dispersed the nuns. Yad Vashem awarded Anna Borkowska (Sister Bertranda) and six other Dominican Sisters—Maria Ostreyko (Sister Jordana), Maria Janina Roszak (Sister Cecylia), Maria Neugebauer (Sister Imelda), Stanisława Bednarska (Sister Stefania), Irena Adamek (Sister Małgorzata), and Helena Frąckiewicz (Sister Diana)—for their part in the rescue mission. For some unkown reason, Julia Michrowska (Sister Bernadetta) was overlooked by Yad Vashem. The story was first told by Philip Friedman in his book Their Brothers’ Keepers, at pages 16–17. The account below is based on the testimony of the ghetto fighter and poet Abraham Suckewer (Sutzkever), one of those rescued by the nuns.
The small nunnery was located not far from the Vilna Colony [Kolonia Wileńska] railroad station. During the German occupation there were only seven sisters in this Benedictine [actually, Dominican] convent, all from Cracow [Kraków]. The Mother Superior, a graduate of Cracow University, was a comparatively young woman of thirty-five at the time when the Jews were driven from their homes. Although the convent was too far removed from the ghetto for her to hear the cries of a tortured people, the Mother Superior seemed always to be gazing in that direction, as though she were waiting for a summons. She found it hard to keep her mind on the work which had previously claimed all her time and love, the ministering to the poor and the miserable.

One day she decided that the time had come to act. She summoned the other nuns and, after prayer, they discussed the subject of the ghetto. Not long afterward, as a result of this conversation, a few of the sisters appeared before the gate of the ghetto. The guards did not suspect the nuns of any conspiratorial designs. Eventually contact was established between the convent and the Vilna [Wilno] ghetto, and an underground railroad was formed. The seven nuns became experts in getting Jews out of the ghetto and hiding them at the convent and in other places. At one period it seemed as if the small nunnery were bulging with nuns, some with features unmistakably masculine.

Among those hidden in the convent were several Jewish writers and leaders of the ghetto Underground: Abraham Sutzkever, Abba Kovner, Edek Boraks, and Arie Wilner. Some stayed a long time, others returned to the ghetto to fight and die. When, in the winter of 1941, the Jewish Fighters’ Organization [ŻOB] was formed, the Mother Superior became an indispensable ally. The Fighters needed arms, and the Mother Superior undertook to supply them. Assisted by the other nuns, she roamed the countryside in search of knives, daggers, bayonets, pistols, guns, grenades. The hands accustomed to the touch of rosary beads became expert with explosives. The first four grenades received gratefully by the Fighters were the gift of the Mother Superior, who instructed Abba Kovner in their proper use, as they were of a special brand unfamiliar to him. She later supplied other weapons. Although she worked selflessly, tirelessly, she felt not enough was being done. “I wish to come to the ghetto,” she said to Abba Kovner, “to fight by your side, to die, if necessary. Your fight is a holy one. You are a noble people. Despite the fact that you are a Marxist [Kovner was a member of the Hashomer Hatsair, a leftist Zionist faction with pro-Communist leanings] and have no religion, you are closer to God than I.”

Her ardent wish to enter the ghetto to fight and, in the end, to die the martyred death of the Jews was not realized. She was too valuable an ally, and was prevailed upon to remain on the Aryan side. In addition to supplying arms, she also acted as a liaison between the Jewish Fighters’ Organization inside the ghetto and the Polish Underground …
Mordecai Paldiel, a historian at the Yad Vashem Institute, records the rescue activities in The Path of the Righteous, at pages 216–17, and in his Saving The Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the “Final Solution” (Rockville, Maryland: Schreiber Publishing, 2000), at pages 208–10.
The story unfolds in Kolonia Wilenska [Wileńska], near Vilnius (or Vilna [Wilno], its former name under Polish rule, presently the capital of Lithuania), where Sister Anna Borkowska served as Mother Superior in a small group of Dominican nuns. Shocked by the horrible massacres of thousands of Jews [and Poles] in the Ponar [Ponary] forest, not far from her convent, in the summer months of 1941, she invited a group of 17 members of an illegal Jewish [Zionist] pioneering group to hide in the convent for brief spells of time. Soon thereafter, the convent of nine nuns was bustling with activity, for the youthful Jewish men and women were plotting, behind the secure walls of the Dominican convent, an eventual uprising in the Vilna Ghetto [which did not, however, take place].

“They called me Ima [mother],” Anna Borkowska fondly remembered. “I felt as if I were indeed their mother. I was pleased with the arrival of each new member, and was sorry that I could not shelter more of them.” Recalling those who passed through the convent walls, Anna mentioned Arieh Wilner: “I gave him the name ‘Jurek’”—the code-name under which he was to be known for his exploits in Warsaw, where he eventually perished during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of April 1943. … “In spirit ‘Jurek’ was the closest to me.” Then, there was Abba Kovner, the moving spirit of the Vilna underground—“my right hand.”

Kovner presided over the conclaves in the convent where plans were hatched for an uprising in the Vilna Ghetto. Until these plans could mature, Kovner and his 16 colleagues worked side by side with the convent nuns in the fields. There was also Tauba … Margalit … Mrs. K. … Michas …

To conceal the group’s activities … all protégés were given nun habits and thus they cultivated the nearby fields. In this departure from monastic rules, it is reported that Mother Anna had the support of her superior in the Vilna archdiocese. …

In the convent cells, Kovner issued his famous clarion call of rebellion, the first of its kind in Nazi-occupied Europe, which opened with the ringing words: “Let us not be led like sheep to the slaughter!” This manifesto, secretly printed in the convent and distributed inside the ghetto on January 1, 1942, served as inspiration to many ghetto and partisan fighters.

When the time came for Abba Kovner and his comrades to return to the ghetto (they told her, “If we are to die, let us die the death of free people, with arms in our hands”), Anna Borkowska rushed to join them. “I want to go with you to the ghetto,” she pleaded with Abba; “to fight and fall with you.” … Kovner told her she could be of greater help by smuggling in weapons. The noted Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever relates: “the first four grenades … were the gift of the Mother Superior, who instructed Abba Kovner in their proper use … She later supplied other weapons.” [According to the Path of the Righteous: Concealing the weapons inside her habit, she brought them to the ghetto gates and stealthily transferred them to Kovner’s waiting and trembling hands. “I have come to join you,” she repeated on this occasion, “for God is with you.” With great difficulty, Kovner succeeded in dissuading her from that course. She returned to her convent and continued to aid those inside the ghetto from the outside.]

As suspicions mounted, the Germans eventually had Anna Borkowska arrested in September 1943, the convent closed, and the Sisters dispersed. One nun was dispatched to a labor camp. …

During the [1984] ceremony in her honor … [Kovner] turned to the audience gathered in her honor, and said: “In the days when the angels hid their faces from us, this woman was to us Anna of the Angels—not the angels that we invent for ourselves, but angels which help us build our lives for an eternity.” He had dedicated a poem to her, which begins with the words: “My Little Sister! Nine Sisters look at you with anxiety, as one looks at the sands in the desert.” A year later, Abba Kovner planted a tree in her honor at Yad Vashem.
In her account, Israeli historian Dina Porat mentions a chaplain, Rev. Józef Zawadzki,²⁴⁵ who assisted the Dominican Sisters in Kolonia Wileńska. (Dina Porat, The Fall of a Sparrow: The Life and Times of Abba Kovner [Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2010], pp.46–50, 62.)
… the mother superior and her nine nuns warmly accepted Kovner, Arieh Wilner (who had arrived from Warsaw), and others. In all, between fifteen and twenty individuals hid in wooden structures on the convent grounds. … On occasion the nuns managed to find hiding places on neighboring farms and estates and took in other Jews, so that sometimes their number reached thirty. The convent grounds were surrounded by a high wall with but one iron gate, which was opened from the inside when the bell was rung. … a priest named Zawecki [Rev. Józef Zawadzki], whose vows enabled him to come and go at will, aided the mother superior in running the convent and served as father confessor to the nuns.