Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

When the train slowly arrived at the railway station in Lwow [Lwów] I was 130 kilometres from home …

By midnight I found myself in the caring arms of Aunt Lucja [Łucja]. … At the sight of me she started to cry, and before long I too burst into tears. I was not aware at the time that Jews were also being killed in Lwow. …

The Jews of Lwow were prepared for the worst. They knew their days were numbered and that those who could still save themselves had no time to lose. The following day Aunt Lucja took me to St Anthony’s Church in the suburb of Lyczakow [Łyczaków], where the local vicar, Father Czapran, issued me with a birth certificate from the parish registry of births, marriages and deaths for the year 1930. thus disappeared Irena Wilder, born in Stanislawow [Stanisławów], daughter of Oscar and Janina, of Jewish denomination, her place taken by Maria Wilska, female, aged 11, daughter of Katarzyna (father unknown), of Roman Catholic faith.

The same day Aunt Lucja placed me in the care of Uncle Ludwik and his wife Aunt Stefa who both lived in Grandmother Amalia’s hose in Mala [Mała] Street. Every morning now I would go to church, where the good Sister Benedykta taught me the words of the Catholic prayers. In the quiet, semi-dark atmosphere of the church permeated with the smell of incense, I felt safe there and I could cry uninterrupted.

Several days later, at the beginning of January 1942, I fled from Lwow together with Uncle Ludwik, Aunt Stefa and cousin Zbyszek, leaving Stanislawow even farther behind …
Polish accounts confirm the assistance provided by Franciscans from St. Anthony’s Church in Lwów in rescuing Jewish children.³¹¹ Andrzej Tarasek, a blind organist at St. Anthony’s, was recognized by Yad Vashem for rescuing five Jews.³¹²
Other priests from Lwów and its environs also provided false documents to Jews. Andrzej Meller, who later moved to Warsaw for the duration of the war, received the birth certificate of a deceased parishioner from a priest he was acquainted with.³¹³ The father of Tadeusz Jaworski (then going by the name of Vogel), who was the director of the electrical works in Lwów, obtained birth and baptismal certificates for his family from a parish priest outside the city, without any compensation. These documents helped the Vogels, who then became the Jaworskis, survive the war passing as Christian Poles.³¹⁴
The Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration (Mniszki Klaryski od Wieczystej Adoracji), a cloistered order of nuns, had a history of helping the poor. The need for help increased during the war. From October 1941 several Jewish adults were hidden in their convent in Lwów with the approval of the Church authorities. All of the Jewish charges m survived, among them Dr. and Mrs. Rapacki, who moved to London in 1945. There was also a young woman, an orphan, who asked to be baptized of her own free will. Afterwards she entered a convent. She died as a nun at a young age. After the war, the nuns received messages of gratitude from their charges.³¹⁵
The Sacré-Coeur Sisters sheltered a number of Jews in their convent in Lwów. Among them were the two sisters and brother-in-law of Herman Flajszer (passing as Henryk Repa). (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, p.838.)
During the war, Janina Urbaniak-Nowicka lived in Warsaw. In February 1943, she married Henryk Repa. In May 1943, the Germans arrested Henryk in the street [after he was betrayed by a Jew he knew from Lwów who worked with the Gestapo in Warsaw] and brought him home. It was only then that Janina realized that her husband was Jewish and that his real name was actually Herman Flajszer. However, using her knowledge of German, and by paying a hefty ransom, she was able to convince the Gestapo agent to leave Henryk at home. The following day she brought her husband over to her family; however, she did not reveal Henryk’s true origin. Then she rented an apartment in Radosc [Radość], near Warsaw, and told the owners of the building that her husband was suffering from tuberculosis and that the local climate was not good for him. She had to commute to her office in Warsaw. In September 1943, at her husband’s request, she went to Lwow to fetch Henryk’s mother, Salomea Flajszer-Jablonska [she passed as Maria Jabłońska], as well as Henryk’s niece, Anna Fil-Wroblewska [she went as Wróblewska] (then aged four), whose parents had been murdered in the Lwow ghetto. All these fugitives were sheltered in Janina’s Warsaw apartment. [At the beginning of 1944 Janina again went to Lwów to bring the remainder of Henryk’s family to Warsaw, namely two sisters and a brother-in-law. However, they refused to leave their hiding place in the convent of the Sacré-Coeur Sisters.³¹⁶] In June 1944, she brought them over for “summer vacation” to Golkowo [Gołków], near Piaseczna [Piaseczno]. There, her mother-in-law was represented as her mother while Anna was passed off as Janina’s daughter. A few days prior to the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, Janina took Henryk to Warsaw, since in Radosc the Germans were recruiting men to dig trenches. During the uprising, their house was bombed and both of them found themselves in Pruszkow [Pruszków] camp. Henryk escaped from a transport to Germany and went to his mother in Golkowo; he then found Janina in Mogielnica. After the liberation of Mogielnica in January 1945, Henryk and Janina separated …
Felicja Kohn, a native of Lwów, recalled the assistance provided to Jews, among them her own mother, by Sister Maria Homme of the Sacré-Coeur order in Lwów, by the Ursulines in Kraków, and by priests. (Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, pp.259, 260, 262.)
My mathematics teacher, godmother and great friend of mine, a Sacré-Coeur nun, Maria Homme, meeting my mother wearing an arm band in the street, took her by the arm and walked by her side down the street—a very dangerous thing to do. A friend of mine had been staying with the same Sister Homme for some time. Also in Cracow [Kraków] I was very warmly received by Myszka P., who got hold of a Kennkarte for me, from the Reverend [Edward] Lubowiecki. …

In Cracow I was put up for the night by the mother superior of a convent (Mother Superior Łubieńska³¹⁷ of the Ursuline Sisters [of the Roman Union]), despite continuous visitations by the Gestapo. Another sister from the same convent recommended me for suitable jobs, thus making it possible for me to survive. …