Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

The housekeeper opened the door …

I told her… that I was looking for a priest from Praszka. She immediately ushered me in and asked my name. I told her and her hand flew to her mouth “Zofia Sieradzki!” she exclaimed in alarm and hurried off to get the priest. He came in looking very grim.

“My God, child, you could not have come here at a worse time! We are under surveillance at this very moment. We are being watched by the Gestapo!”

My heart sank. The priest introduced himself as Father Krzeminski and anxiously asked about my parents and what had happened. …

There was a furtive knock on the door and the housekeeper answered it, then came running back to us.

“They are coming,” she stuttered frantically. “Gestapo!”

They both grabbed me by my arms and opened a floor trap door leading into the basement. The housekeeper and I descended down the ladder into the musty interior. …

The housekeeper pulled me toward an empty barrel and made me crawl in. It smelled of pickles. Then she poured cucumbers over me until my head was covered and loosely placed a round wooden top cover over it. We could already hear the pounding at the door upstairs. Then the housekeeper ran up the ladder and I vaguely heard the trap door being shut. …

From above came the sound of boots stamping and loud voices. I heard the trap door being lifted and someone coming down the ladder. I held my very breath. Footsteps again very near to me, noises of movement, banging … Then I heard the trap door again. Were they leaving? Again stomping upstairs reverberated dimly in my ears. Voices I could not make out and after a considerable while silence again.

They came and left! I felt a powerful surge of relief and waited. The cucumbers were lifted from my head and the housekeeper whispered loudly “It’s allright Zosia” I wiggled out of the barrel and wearily followed her upstairs again. Father Krzeminski was sitting at a wooden table by a kerosene lamp.

“This was close …” he said, “very close. You see we were tipped off that they were coming. We knew it.” Now he needed to decide what to do with me and immediately told me that I could not stay the night, it was too dangerous. They could always come back.

… I was to stay with Aunt Hela for two weeks and then I was to return to Father Krzeminski’s.

He had no way of providing me with the proper papers but would make out a false christening and birth certificate which would be better than having nothing at all. But I must not come back sooner because Father Krzeminski was having problems with the Gestapo. They had nothing on him but suspicions thus far but if they found me here it would be the end for all of us. The housekeeper gave me a piece of bread but I could not even stay long enough to eat it. I had to leave immediately regardless of the curfew. The country road should be empty and I should sleep in the fields. …

Today he is not nearly as nervous, and true to his word, he has a typed out certificate of Birth and Christening waiting for me. It is made out on yellowing, aged paper to give it a genuine appearance. He has made me three years older than I really am. People would be less suspicious if I am a little older, especially if I need to find work. … Fortunately I am developed enough to appear older.

… I am given a small prayer book and Father Krzeminski instructs me to learn everything in it by heart. It is well worn but has a lovely mother of pearl binding. He also gives me a silver crucifix on a chain.

I explain that I have attended catechism classes as a child, but he actually knows this part of my history. Father Krzeminski seems to know my family well. I am extremely touched by this and ask him if he would wish to christen me. But even there he surprises me. He remembers my mother’s wishes. It is to be done when I am sixteen, and he will give it due respect. I am under stress now, and this is a very serious decision to make. …

“If you are ever caught,” he tells me, “the Gestapo will trace these papers to me, you know. You will not be able to withhold the information from them … They have a way … They torture people. They will get it out of you. If ever this happens and you should suffer guilt,—do not on account of me. I have done for others what I am doing for you. Those are the chances I have to take. Zosia, I want to give you absolution now in advance and my full forgiveness. Save yourself from torture with my blessing. Nobody can withstand it anyway …”

Priests from Zawiercie also provided false birth and baptismal certificates to Jews. Mariusz Opałko recalls (Internet: ):
Opałko’s parents both grew up in Zawiercie, a small Polish city in the south of the country near Silesia. When the Germans invaded, two local priests took enormous risks by writing their names into the books of official baptisms. “We weren’t actually baptized,” Opałko stresses. One of the priests also doctored Opałko’s mother’s birth certificate to use the more German sounding “Leder” instead of her birth name of “Lederman,” which Opałko says “was recognizably Jewish.” These brave acts allowed Opałko’s parents to pass as non-Jews.

Opałko’s grandfather also had a personal connection with one of the priests—the two had known each other when the grandfather had been imprisoned a number of times for being a communist, Opałko explains. The priest came to visit him and the two became friends.

Although Opałko’s parents knew each other growing up, there was a 7-year difference between them. Near the end of the war, though, when Opałko’s mother had turned 18, they decided to get married. They had a Jewish ceremony but were written down as “Catholic” in the official marriage registry by the priests who had already done so much to save them.
Priwa Grinkraut also obtained false documents from a priest in Zawiercie which helped her pass as a Catholic Pole and survive the war.²⁷¹ Her principal benefactors, Antoni and Leokadia Jastrząb have been recognized by Yad Vashem. (Ceremony of Presenting the Righteous Among the Nations Awards, Warsaw, December 4^th, 2012, Internet: .)
Antoni Jastrzab [Jastrząb] and Joel Grinkraut knew each other well before the war. They both were tailors and lived in Zawiercie. When a ghetto was established in their home town, and all the Jewish population of Zawiercie was resettled into the ghetto, Leokadia and Antoni Jastrzab convinced Priwa Grinkraut, their friend’s wife, to get out to the Aryan side. They were hiding her in their house for six weeks. At that time, they arranged forged documents for her, issued for the name Zofia Jabłońska, whereas Leokadia and Antoni’s children taught Priwa some Catholic prayers. Then, thanks to some contacts in the employment office, Antoni Jastrzab fixed Priwa up with a job for a German farmer in the Sudetes. The whole time he remained in contact with her, and helped to deliver the correspondence between Priwa and Joel.
In her wanderings in the vicinity of her native village of Bolesławiec near Wieluń in the summer of 1942, Mala Brandsdorfer (then Goldrat) encountered many friendly Polish villagers who were prepared to help her. Their help was short term because of their fear of the severe punishment meted out by the Germans, and not because of malice. On occasion, the villagers would turn to their parish priest for guidance. (Mala Brandsdorfer, as told to Louis Brandsdorfer, The Bleeding Sky: My Mothers’s Recollections of the Shoah, Internet: ; also .)
I remember growing up in Boleslawiec [Bolesławiec] very happy. The town had about 500 families, with about 2500 people. Jews made up about a quarter of the population. … We lived and traded together in peace. There were some Poles in our town who were openly anti-Semitic, but very few. …

One of the farmers who dealt with my uncle was a Christian named Pannek. He was a very nice man, and he liked my sister because of how honest she was. … After the war started he said to her that if she or her family ever had to hide from the Germans they should come to him, and he’d hide them at his farm.

Pannek’s farm was about one kilometer from our town. My daughter and I went there to hide. Pannek let us in and made a place for us in the attic of the stall. … Living with him were his wife and his wife’s sister. He also had two children, a son 14 or 15 years old, and a daughter about 20. They were both living at home.

The next day a woman came to Pannek’s and told us that the Germans had surrounded the town. They were ordering all the Jews to assemble in the market square. She had met my sister Eudel in a field outside of town. She told my sister to run and hide, but my sister said her parents were home all alone and that she must go back to them. And so my sister returned to the town.

The following day Pannek’s sister-in-law went into the town to find out what had happened. She returned and told me that all the Jews were being held in the church, and the Germans were ordering all those Jews still in hiding to come out. My parents and one sister were with the other Jews, but one of my sisters was still hiding in the attic of my neighbor’s house. It was my sister Fay. She was sick, and my father took her over to the neighbors. He didn’t want her taken by the Germans while she was ill. There were rumors that the Germans were killing the sick right away.

The neighbor who was hiding my sister was very scared and wanted her to either go to the church with the other Jews or go into hiding with me. The next day I paid Pannek’s sister-in-law 50 marks to smuggle my sister out of the town and bring her to me.

Pannek’s sister-in-law dressed Fay up as a field hand going to work in the fields outside of town. Fay was very sick when she brought her. She was running a fever. When she saw me she started crying and banging her head against the wall. She kept saying that we should go with our parents. That we would not survive anyway. The Germans had put up notices that they would shoot any Jews they found, and they would also shoot any Poles that helped a Jew hide. But I said, “No, we would not walk voluntarily into their hands,” and I dragged her up to the attic.

For the next few days the Germans kept the Jews in the church. A few of the Jews who were still in hiding were caught, some had given themselves up. Then all the Jews were taken to Wielun [Wieluń]. I had a terrible feeling that the three of us were the only Jews left in the entire district. …

Fay’s illness was getting worse. Late at night I took her into town to see the doctor. … He was a very fine man. … He gave her some medicine that made her better. He refused to take any money from us saying we would need it more than he would.