Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

At another place I came upon a girl of Jewish background who had been saved by a priest, the son of a farmer.
Anita Lanner, another resident of Lwów, was six years old when the war broke out. Her parents were divorced. She survived with the help of a number of Poles, including a priest and nuns. (Pat Launer, “The Girl With the Pink Glasses: Survivor Anita Lanner Found Healing Through Hatha,” San Diego Jewish Journal, August 2007.)
During the German Occupation, they were relocated to the Ghetto, along with tens of thousands of others. “I’d sneak in from where I was hiding to visit my father, who was in another area. I knew if they would catch me, it would be the end.” When she was 8 years old, her father decided to move. He ended up in the Warsaw Ghetto and participated in the famous Uprising, where he lost his life.

Meanwhile, back in Lvov [Lwów], a friend of her father’s, an unmarried Polish physician, smuggled Anita out of the Ghetto and took her in as his out-of-wedlock daughter.

“He was a very nice, good man. His mother took care of me. There were others hiding there, and one day, the Gestapo came and led us all out into the street, under guns. Suddenly, I heard this voice, I don’t know where it came from, and it said, ‘Run, now!’ I hesitated, because I didn’t know where to go. Then I felt a push on my shoulder and I ran. It was some kind of miracle. Maybe it was the survival voice. Maybe it was the ‘pink glasses.’ I always believed I would live.

“I didn’t know where to run. So I went back to the apartment they took me from. The doctor’s mother took me to my mother, who was hiding with a Polish woman. I was placed with another family. Every time they had visitors, they’d hide me in a little hope-chest, with holes to breathe.

“With them, I had to go to church. The priest baptized me and prepared me for my first communion. He took care of me; maybe he knew I was Jewish. He found a place for me in a Polish orphanage. …

“I was at the orphanage for about a year. Then, in 1944, when the Russians started moving west, the Germans told the orphanage to repatriate. So we went to Krakow [Kraków], where we were dumped in a nun’s cloister. The nuns didn’t have enough money to support us, so they gave us up for adoption. A wealthy couple adopted me. They had a lot of land, stables and orchards. I loved the country life. Then the Germans and Russians came and took everything. So I was given back—this time to a communist/government orphanage.
Rev. Jan Bałys, the pastor of Siemianówka, a large Polish village located approximately 20 kilometres south of Lwów, sheltered Jews in the parish rectory and extended protection to those who took refuge in the village, among them a couple from Kraków by the name of Mogilnicki, Józef Gabel from Radwań, a Jewish woman named Bronia, and a girl around 17–18. He also provided false identity documents to 5–6 Jewish children who were taken in by Polish villagers. The children had escaped from a group of Jewish children being driven through Siemianówka on the way to Lwów. A number of other Jews were also hidden in this Polish village. Józef and Aniela Spaliński sheltered Shimon (Szymon) Kahane and his young daughter, Shifra (later Ben Nun), born in 1935. Shifra was passed off as the Spalińskis’ adopted child, while Shimon hid in the hayloft of their barn. The couple were childless and treated Shifra like a daughter. Aniela Spalińska taught her prayers so that the girl could attend church services and she started to go to school. When Shifra’s presence came to the attention of the Ukrainian militia, they interrogated Mrs. Spalińska. Rev. Bałys assured the police that the child was the daughter of his washerwoman and was not Jewish. Rev. Bałys also found employment for Józef Gabel, a converted Jew, with villagers and provided him with a false baptismal and birth certificate in the name of Józef Gablewski. He had his nephew take Gabel-Gablewski to Zaleszczyki, where he was employed in a distillery managed by the priest’s friend. Threatened with arrest by the Gestapo, Rev. Bałys left for Limanowa, where he died soon after the war.³¹⁸
Sonia (Yudenberg) Rzeczinski of Uhnów, near Rawa Ruska, was able to pass as a Pole with the assistance of several Poles thanks to birth certificates issued to her by a priest on two occasions. The certificates were obtained through the intermediary of a Polish woman.³¹⁹
Assistance of various kinds was provided by many other priests and nuns throughout Poland. The following testimonies are recorded in Tomaszewski and Werbowski, Żegota, at pages 116, 120, 127, 137–38; Code Name: Żegota, at pages 125, 129, 137, 148–49.
Pesa Achtman Cimerman: Cimerman’s sister, who was also hidden by the Kopers [in the Warsaw suburb of Praga], had once been rescued by a priest, Oskar Wiśniewski, when she was discovered in a hiding place, dirty and ragged. It was obvious she was Jewish, but Wiśniewski was called upon to identify her. He insisted she was a parishioner and took her home until another place could be found.
Zofia Berczyńska: Ilonka Freedman, [then a five-year-old girl with very Semitic features who was entrusted to Wacław Berczyński by a Jewish co-worker at the German factory in Częstochowa where they worked], soon became [a niece by the name of] Irena Gawrońska, after a local priest gave her an authentic birth certificate of a deceased child.
Zdzisław Przygoda: In the interim, Przygoda’s sister-in-law, who was living as a Polish Catholic and caring for his child [Joanna], was arrested. During her interrogation, she gave her mother’s ring to the German interrogating officer, begging him to take the child to a nearby Ursuline convent. He took the ring, promising to do so. He kept his word. [Actually, this was an orphanage in Suchedniów near Skarżysko-Kamienna run by the Sisters of the Name of Jesus, described earlier.—M.P.]
Richard Kalinowicz, [a captain in the Polish army when the war began, Kalinowicz—of Jewish origin—became a Home Army unit commander in the Sambor region]: He recalled that there was a prisoner in the Sambor jail who worked as a pośmieciuch, a cleaning man. He was a priest who had been arrested for helping Jews. On a whim, the Gestapo officer in charge did not have him shot but kept him there as a janitor. It seems he was amused by his praying, his “conversations with God” as he called them. This priest/janitor used to conceal food in his cleaning equipment and give it to the Jewish prisoners. …

Procuring documents was a steady part of the [Home Army] unit’s work. Birth certificates were obtained regularly from a Father [Antoni] Żołnierczyk in Sambor, though Kalinowicz did not hesitate to forge some himself. He still had the official rubber stamp from St. Elizabeth Parish in Lwów. …

The Dipel family of Sambor ran one of the largest shelters [for Jews]. The mother and her brother, Father Stojakowski, were famous for their help. The three sons, Tadeusz, Julian and Juliusz, all belonged to Kalinowicz’s unit and to Żegota.
Stanisław Karliński (nom de guerre “Burza”), a Home Army unit commander in the Piotrków Trybunalski region, oversaw the preparation of hundreds of false identity documents by a special cell in his underground organization. Involved in this operation were trusted workers in the county office as well as Catholic parishes that issued false birth certificates which were required to obtain or produce Kennkarte (German identity documents). Some of those priests, identified fifty years later, were: Rev. Marian Skoczewski (“Ksawery”), Rev. Patora from Kamieńsk, Rev. Jan Golonka and Rev. Stanisław Musiał from Ręczno, Monsignor Secomski from Bąkowa Góra, Rev. E. Gązka from Lubień, priests from the parishes of Sulejów, Paradyż, Żarnów, Kazimierzów, Przedbórz, and Piotrków, and the Bernardine Fathers.³²⁰
The risks involved in such exploits were substantial. Rev. Jan Widłak, the pastor of Miechów and a Home Army chaplain, worked closely with an underground cell of the Home Army that “legalized” documents for endangered persons. With his permission, Franciszek Grzebieluch, the church organist, issued hundreds of baptismal and birth certificates which were then used to obtain false German identity documents (Kennkarte), with the assistance of Marian Urbański, a county clerk, who fabricated the documents, and Bronisław Falencki, who distributed them. More than a dozen Jews were provided with such documents. One of them, Maria Bochner from Miechów, was arrested in Przemyśl on March 12, 1943, and interrogated about the source of her false documents. As a result, Falencki was promptly arrested and sent to Auschwitz. He was tortured cruelly (his genitals were crushed with pliers) in order to extract from him the names of his accomplices. Some of them were apprehended by the Germans and executed. The church organist went into hiding for the duration of the war. Rev. Jan Widłak also placed Jewish children in the county orphanage run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul and in private homes of his parishioners. In 1942, Rev. Widłak received a Jewish couple from Wieluń by the name of Walter, who had converted to Catholicism, and cared for them together with his vicar, Rev. Stefan Podsiedlik, who was also involved in the local rescue activities. Previously, the Walters had been sheltered by Rev. Szczepan Sobalkowski, vice-rector of the Higher Seminary in Kielce, who served as chaplain of the Kielce District of the National Armed Forces. Rev. Sobalkowski took the Walters under his roof even though he resided next door to the German gendarmerie. He continued to provide assistance to them (food and the like) when they moved to Miechów where they survived the war passing as Poles. Rev. Sobalkowski’s exploits came to light after he was arrested by the Communist security police in 1948. The Walters came forward in his defence during his show trial, and Rev. Sobalkowski drew a relatively lenient sentence of seven years. After his release from prison, he was appointed the auxiliary bishop of Kielce.³²¹
Rev. Mieczysław Połoska, the pastor of Kielce-Białogonie, provided false baptismal and birth certificates to Jews and assisted them materially. After the war, the Communist authorities arrested Rev. Połoska, together with Bishop Czesław Kaczmarek and several other priests from Kielce, on trumped up politically motivated charges. A Jewish woman named Rachela Klasztorna came forward in his defence during his show trial, testifying to the assistance he provided to Jews and righteous character.³²²
Despite his reputation of being an anti-Semite, Rev. Marian Pirożyński was active in rescuing Jews—a fact confirmed by Jewish witnesses who came forward in his defence at an anti-clerical show trial in the mid-1950s. While residing in Mościska from November 1942 to May 1943, Rev. Pirożyński assisted in the escape of Jews from the ghetto, among them Zofia Katz, the daughter of a dentist, whom he provided with false documents. The Redemptorist monastery in Mościska sheltered a number of Jews. Rev. Pirożyński cared for a two-year-old girl who was thrown out of a tram by her mother in Warsaw and placed her with Leokadia and Maria Wochelski. He found safe houses for Jewish children in Skierniewice. Rev. Pirożyński fell under suspicion and had to hide from the Germans, changing his place of residence several times.³²³
Alicja Kleinberg, the wife of a dentist from Rabka, and her young daughters, Ewa and Hanka (Anna), took refuge in the countryside near Biecz where they passed as Poles. In August 1942, a few days before the liquidation of the local ghetto, Mrs. Kleinberg turned to her friend Marian Sikorski, headmaster of the elementary school in the village of Szerzyny, who helped the Kleinbergs escape from the ghetto. After sheltering them for a few months and obtaining Aryan papers for them in the name of Janowski, the Kleinbergs moved to a house in a nearby village which Sikorski had rented for them. He continued to look after the Kleinbergs until their liberation in January 1945. Their cover depended on the support of various persons including a village priest, Rev. Józef Wilk, a vicar in Świecany near Jasło. (Accounts of Ewa Janowska-Boisse, née Kleinberg and Anna Janowska-Ciońćka, née Kleinberg, “Father Never Returned from Exile,” in Gutenbaum and Latała, The Last Eyewitnesses, volume 2, pp.100–102.)
Not wanting to endanger the Sikorskis, Mother decided to move to the nearby village of Święcany. We moved in with a family of farmers named Szynal. Mama told the farmers that she was an officer’s wife and that this was the reason why it was safer for her to live with the children in the countryside. We had instructions from Mama to bite our lips, because their natural fullness could give away our origins. Nonetheless, our black hair, which stayed curly despite constant brushing, still betrayed us. …

The winters were cold and harsh back then. Toward the end of the war we didn’t go out of the house, because we had no warm clothes or shoes. Luckily, there were various people who helped Mama in all this misery. In order to create the appearance that we did have a family, that we were not in hiding, Lola, who herself was hiding on Aryan papers, would come to visit us. Endangering her own life, she brought us money from Aunt Zosia, who by then was already in the Kraków ghetto. A priest from a nearby parish also visited us, bringing us food from time to time. I remember that his name was Józef Wilk. Maria Wnęk, a relative of Mr. Sikorski’s, who was a teacher, would come through heavy snow to visit us. She walked on foot more than a dozen kilometres to instruct us in catechism and how to behave in church. …

There were days when Mama would tell us to hide in the nearby woods, because she would get a tip that German gendarmes were coming into he village. At such times we were dying of fear, wondering whether we would still find Mama alive when we returned.

In this village, Mama met a man from Sieradz who had escaped from a train that was taking him to forced labor in Germany. His name was Władysław Nogala, an exceptionally good-hearted and noble man. He helped us, bringing us onions so that “the children wouldn’t get scurvy.” He also gave us chickens and whatever else he could obtain. Władysław Nogala was respected in the village and was involved with the partisans who were active in our area.

One day the village administrator, knowing that Władysław was friendly with Mama, told him that “people are talking that Mrs. Janowska is a Jew, and I will have to report this to the police.” [Village administrators were required to report the presence of Jews under penalty of death.—M.P.] Władysław Nogala replied, “If you do, your head will lie in this dunghill.” After this encounter the administrator was silent.
A priest from Gorzkowice near Radomsko who was involved in the underground, probably Rev. Jan Łabęda, the local pastor, came to the assistance of two Jews, Vovtche Raichbard and Shmuel Friedman, and provided them with false identity documents. The following testimony is that of a Jewish survivor from Łask. (Z. Ben-Moshe, “Respect for Jew-Savers,” in Z. Tzurnamal, ed., Lask: Sefer zikaron (Lask: Izcor-Book) [Tel Aviv: Association of Former Residents of Lask in Israel, 1968], pp.124–26.)
We must remined [i.e., be mindful of] all those people, not Jews, who gave their hand to save many of our town when they escaped from the Nazi murderers. Also in Lask [Łask] there were good christians [sic] who suffered seeing how the Jews of their town suffered. In the hard days of distress and banishment, they endangered themselves by hiding Jews and giving them from their bread. Gabrionchik and his wife from Lask; he gave documents and food [to] two escapers: Vovtche Raichbard and Shmuel Friedman. A Christian woman emerged as a saver-angel, when they had to pass the boundary of the German protectorate [i.e., into the Generalgouvernement]. Heinzel, Skibinski [Skibiński]’s son-in-law, guided the two to the Polish secret organization in order to receive German documents, and hid them in his home some days. He gave them the address of Zvi Michalovitz in Grushkovitza [Gorzkowice], and did so that they would be accepted by a priest, who was the chief of the secret organization in this place. This priest, whose name is unknown, accepted them with bright face, and immediately gave them the necessary documents. The young Christian, who knew they were Jews, hid them in her parents’ house, telling them these two are Polish officers from Varsha [Warsaw], who escaped from the Gestapo.

The Polish policeman Krakovski, who saved Zvi Michalovitz from the death-waggon [sic], just in the last minute, and brought him to a refuge place. The family Banashchiek, who hid him in the threshing-floor, and gave him all he needed for lessons he gave their children in the nights. … The villagers who disperse pieces of bread and turnip on the ways, for the caravans of hungry people, who went under the watching of the S.S. The villagers who gave their shoes to [the] barefooted and weak. How can we forget the villagers who refused to give food [to] the watchers of the women-caravans who were transported from work-camp. Shraga Noiman tells about a Polish boy who worked as an electrician in Kolomna [?]. He offered to save the whole group of Jews that worked there, and to transfer them to a secure place near Varsha. This electrician and his fellows, who acted a period of time to save Jews, were caught at last by the Nazis.

We must remined a little of those sparks in order that our sons and daughters will know, that even in the darkness of extermination and killing, there were also cases of deeds of kindness. I cannot tell everything, only a little.
After escaping from the Lwów ghetto in June 1943, Jakub Lang (born in 1928) moved from place to place before turning to Rev. Kazimierz Masłowski. Rev. Masłowski was a parish priest at the church of Our Lady of Ostra Brama (Matki Boskiej Ostrobramskiej) in Lwów, which was under the care of the Salesian Society. He found a temporary job for Jakub as a farm worker. Afterwards Rev. Masłowski took Jakub to the Polish Welfare Council and vouched for him. After spending a few days in a hostel, where he came across several Jewish girls, Jakub was directed to Zimna Woda. Passing as a Catholic, Jakub was employed as a farmhand by several farmers. After the entry of the Soviet army, Jakub was reunited with his mother, younger brother and cousin. They too had survived in hiding in the forest near Hołosko with the help of a number of Poles, among them Józef Dziedzic.³²⁴
Zofia Reichman (now Sophia Richman) was born in Lwów in January 1941. Her mother Dorota Reichman was able to obtain, with the assistance of her friend, Stanisława Drabicka, a birth, baptismal and marriage certificates for herself from Drabicka’s uncle, a priest at the church of Our Lady of the Snows (Maryi Panny Śnieżnej) in Lwów. (The pastor of this parish at the time was Rev. Jan Piwiński). She also had her young daughter baptized to obtain a birth and baptismal certificate for her. These documents were instrumental in their ability to survive under false identities as Catholic Poles in the nearby village of Zimna Woda. (Sophia Richman, A Wolf in the Attic: The Legacy of a Hidden Child of the Holocaust [New York, London and Oxford: The Haworth Press, 2002], pp.15–16. The birth and baptismal certificate used by Dorota Reichman is reproduced in the book between pages 106 and 107.)
I was a blond, blue-eyed baby with fair skin and could easily pass for a Polish toddler, a perfect cover for my mother. With such a baby in her arms, my mother’s authenticity as a Christian was not likely to be questioned. Her flawless Polish would help with the deception. So going into hiding as a gentile was a likely possibility. The problem was to find documents to substantiate our new identity.

My mother had a number of close gentile friends, among them Stasia [Stanisława] Drabicka. The two were linked by music. Stasia played the cello, and, before the war, they frequently enjoyed playing duets. Stasia was a Catholic, and she was related to a priest. As a member of the clergy, Stasia’s uncle was in a position to provide papers that could help my mother with her escape plan. Asking gentiles for this kind of help was a very risky business. There were severe reprisals for those helping Jews. Gentiles helping Jews risked death or deportation for themselves and their families as well. Furthermore, for Jews seeking help, the question of trust was of paramount importance. … My mother was confident that Stasia could be trusted. Mother was generally a good judge of character, but what about Stasia’s uncle, a man she had never met? …

The plan for going into hiding had to be carefully implemented. Stasia’s uncle provided the birth, baptismal, and marriage certificates of a deceased Catholic parishioner, Maria Oleszkiewicz, born in 1908. My mother’s 1903 date of birth was close enough. It was arranged that I would be baptized as Zofia Oleszkiewicz. We had our new identities. Now we had to find a place to live where no one knew us. It was generally believed that hiding in a small town was safer than remaining in the city, where police searches were a constant fact of life in early 1942 and where it was possible to run into an acquaintance who could betray you. The outskirts of Lwów seemed a good choice as a hiding place because it would allow us to remain relatively close to my father. There was always a distant hope that he might be freed or find a way out of Janowska [camp].
The Dominican monastery in Lwów manufactured documents for Jews on a large scale. (Zygmunt Mazur, “Dominikanie lwowscy w podwójnej niewoli,” Gazeta, Toronto, no. 144, 1991.)
Priests from the monastery were moved by the tragedy of the Jews, especially Father Sylwester Paluch and Father Anzelm Jezierski. Not heeding the danger that faced them they provided material assistance to Jewish families. Father Sylwester, with the assistance of a painter by the name of Rzepecki, fabricated some 500 certificates of baptism and distributed them to Jews. The Gestapo became aware of these activities and it was only by sheer luck that the priests escaped repercussions. Many Jews survived on these certificates and some of them attained high positions in postwar Poland. None of them, however, remembered about the humble priest from Lwów. Father Sylwester died in Warsaw on November 3, 1983. None of those rescued through his assistance attended his funeral. He was buried in the order’s graveplot in Powązki Cemetery in Warsaw.
After escaping from the ghetto in Lwów during the Aktion in April 1942, Leokadja Bachner hid in a garden belonging to Poles for two weeks before moving to a village near Sokołówka, where she worked as a laundress using a false identity. Polish women who worked with her helped her hide her identity. After moving to another village, she obtained a false birth and baptismal certificate from a priest who lived near Busk, possibly in Adamy. While working as a cook in the Polish village of Adamy, she witnessed the help villagers extended to Jews who were hiding in the nearby forest.³²⁵
Rev. Stanisław Cichocki, the pastor of Zimna Woda near Lwów, provided false baptismal and birth certificates to several Jews. One of them was his neighbour Goldman, who had done metal work on the rectory. Goldman was apprehended in Lwów and informed the criminal police of the source of his identity document. Rev. Cichocki was summoned to the police and denied any knowledge of the document. The police did not believe Goldman’s story that he obtained the document without any payment, which was true, so they let the priest go.³²⁶
Rev. Edward Tabaczkowski, pastor of Tłumacz, provided many Jews with false documents, among others to Berta Opoczyńska and Mina Bikels Rotenstreich. He also sheltered a Jewish student in his rectory and provided and other forms of assistance to Jews such as smuggling food into the ghetto and encouraging his parishioners to shelter Jews. Rev. Tabaczkowski did not heed the warning of his imminent arrest by the Gestapo. He was taken to the jail in Stanisławów where was tortured before being put to death on October 20, 1942. (Shlomo Blond, et al., eds., Memorial Book of Tlumacz: The Life and Destruction of a Jewish Community [Tel Aviv: Tlumacz Societies in Israel and the U.S.A., 1976], pp.cxxviii–cxxix.) According to Mina Bikels Rotenstreich,