Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

A few Jews escaped when the Polish physician, Dr. Zeno Hoffman, hid them in the hospital where he was working.

In 1942 the Gestapo arrested Dr. Hoffman and the Canon [Edward] Tabaczkowski, who risked his life by issuing baptism certificates to Jews so that they could escape to the Aryan side. We were given eight such certificates by Tabaczkowski, even though we had nothing to give him in return. The Polish pharmacist Shankowski [Szankowski] also helped the Jews as much as he could. Much of the valuables which Jews placed in his keeping were returned to them, although this was dangerous to do.
Aniela Barylak of Nadwórna, in Stanisławów voivodship, sheltered an 8-year-old girl named Szejndl Einhorn, later Jafa Kurz. For safety reasons, she had her baptized and given the name Stefania, taught her Polish (which she did not speak before), Catholic prayers, and obtained false identity documents for her.³²⁷
Dr. Salomon Altman of Złoczów obtained false birth and baptismal certificates for himself and his wife from a local priest.³²⁸ Dr. Altman recalls (I.M. Lask, ed., The City of Zloczow [Tel Aviv: Zloczower Relief Verband of America, 1967], columns 113, 115–16):
There were many priests who provided Jews they knew with original birth certificates in the names of persons long dead. …

I also know of a man, Kruth, who found refuge in the house of Rev. Dzieduszycki and embraced the Catholic faith together with his whole family. [The priest in question appears to be Rev. Paweł Dzieduszycki, a Jesuit from Lwów.—M.P.]
Dr. Altman was one of at least forty-two Jews from Złoczów and Jelechowice rescued by a number of Polish families in the nearby village of Jelechowice.³²⁹ Fourteen of them, including Samuel Tennenbaum, his wife, and their two children, were sheltered in various places on the property of Helena Skrzeszewska, a member of the Polish underground. The house was also occupied by a Polish teacher, Maria Koreniuk, and a Ukrainian handyman, Hryc Tyz, who later converted to Latin-rite Roman Catholicism and became known as Grzegorz. At one point Hryc became alarmed at the fact that Skrzeszewska had taken in yet another Jewish family, and out of fear and stress, rather than malice, voiced his displeasure.³³⁰ A priest counselled him to continue to support the Jewish charges. The priest’s intervention resulted in a dramatic change in Hryc’s attitude. (Samuel Lipa Tennenbaum, Zloczow Memoir [New York: Shengold, 1986], pp.252–53.)
Over several days, my wife began to notice that food was disappearing at twice the anticipated rate. Hela [Helena Skrzeszewka] at first denied any knowledge of it, but finally confessed to us that she had taken in another Jewish family, four people, who were sheltered in our former hiding place, the cellar under the barn. Their name as Parille; they had lived in Jelechowice before the war, had escaped the Germans and had been living in a hole in the ground in a nearby forest. Winter had made it impossible for them to try to survive there so one night, Mr. Parille came to Hela for help and she took them in.

They had nothing, so from then on we shared whatever we had with them. We never saw them. …

A huge row ensued over this. Hryc, in broad daylight, ran into the yard and started to yell at the top of his lungs, … “She gathered a bunch of Jews and then disappeared for days at a time.” I grabbed a rusty revolver, which Hela had hidden under the bed in our room, and ran after Hryc. I managed to get him back into the house, he calmed down quickly. Next day he went to confession. When he came back, he kissed my wife’s hand and apologized for his behavior of the previous day. We were both happy and worried. Now the priest, too, knew about our presence. … People often ask what was the main factor that motivated our hosts. I believe that it was their deep faith.
Another account from Złoczów tells of a priest who agreed to act an an intermediary for the receipt of mail from the relatives of Mariusz Jerzy Heszeles, then a young boy of 9 years living outside the ghetto.³³¹ In the spring of 1944, Rev. Jan Walter sheltered Yehoshua Shleyen (Schleyen), engaging him as the church warden in Wicyń, a village near Złoczów. Previously, Schleyen had lived in nearby villages passing himself off as an escaped prisoner of war from Soviet Ukraine.³³²
After escaping from the Janowska camp in Lwów, Dr. Samuel Drix and Icchak (Icek) Hoch made their way to the village of Biały Kamień near Złoczów, where they were sheltered by the Zawer family, who were strangers. They survived in hiding with the Zawers’ help for over year. When the Soviet-German front moved back and forth in the spring and summer of 1944, and the Polish population came under attack from Ukrainian nationalist partisans, the Polish population took shelter at the Polish priest’s farm until the area was liberated in July of that year. Dr. Drix and Hoch Jewish origin became apparent but did not lead to their eviction or betrayal. (Samuel Drix, Witness to Annihilation: Surviving the Holocaust, a Memoir (Washington: Brassey’s, 1994), pp.209–10.)
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians went after the Poles in the surrounding villages and were killing as many as they could. One day several Poles, who had escaped from the Ukrainians, arrived in our stable. The parish priest’s farm had become the place of hiding for Poles. Among them was a Pole named Czesnykowski, whom Icek knew from before the war. He was a very honest and rich peasant whose wife was a Ukrainian. One day a Ukrainian squad stormed the house in which he and his brother lived with their families, in the village of Kawareczyzna [Gawareczyna] Górna, and murdered his brother and his brother’s wife. He managed to escape. His wife said she was a Ukrainian and, to save her life and her children’s, renounced her husband. In this manner she survived, while Czesnykowski was now at the parish priest’s farm with us. When he happened to come into the stable attic alone one time, Icek contacted him. He kept our presence secret, visited us in the stable when he could, and even brought us the leftovers from the parish lunches. He also brought us news of what was happening in the area. He said that the front was still quiet, but that a new Russian offensive was expected any time.

A day after Czesnykowski first came up to our attic another of the Poles who had sought refuge with the parish priest came upstairs and saw us there. We said we were also Polish refugees like him, but he suspected that we were Jews. Icek spoke Polish with a strong Jewish accent, which it made it harder to keep up the pretence. The Pole strongly advised us to leave and not endanger the priest like this. We said we would, but in fact we stayed, and luckily nothing ever came of it.
St. Michael’s parish, located on Kopernika Street in Kraków, gained a reputation for helping Jews. Rev. Brunon Boguszewski, who served as vicar there from 1939 to 1942, provided Jews with false identity documents, as did his another priest, and also sought out hiding places for endangered Jewish children. His rescue efforts brought him recognition from Yad Vashem. The account mentions St. Lazarus church, which was part of St. Lazarus hospital; the official name of this church, affiliated with St. Michael’s parish, was the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, p.105.)
Bruno [Brunon] Boguszewski, a priest, used his official position as birth registrar at Swietego Lazarza [Świętego Łazarza] (Saint Lazarus) Church, Cracow [Kraków], to save Jewish children by issuing them Aryan birth certificates. Boguszewski’s reputation as a savior of Jewish children spread far and wide. One woman whose child was saved thanks to Boguszewski was Anna Carter who, after escaping from the Cracow ghetto, obtained a birth certificate for her daughter, Alina, aged eight. A little while later, Boguszewski also provided four-year-old Zygmunt, Alina’s brother, with an Aryan birth certificate. He gave Carter another five birth certificates issued in the names of Catholic children for distribution to those in need. The priest found a hiding place for little Alina in the home of acquaintances in Chrzanow [Chrzanów], where she stayed until the area was liberated in January 1945. Her brother, Zygmunt, was not so lucky—he was shot dead by the Germans after they were alerted by an informer. After the war, Alina was reunited with her mother, who had survived Auschwitz. Mother and daughter emigrated to the United States, where they kept up contact with Boguszewski. Boguszewski knew full well the fate that awaited him if caught, since his predecessor, who had also supplied Jews with false certificates, had been imprisoned by the Gestapo and sent to Auschwitz. His actions were dictated by purely selfless, humanitarian and religious principles.
Rev. Edmund Nowak, of the Missionaries of St. Vincent de Paul, chaplain at St. Lazarus Hospital (Szpital św. Łazarza), also provided false baptismal certificates to Jews.³³³
Contrary to what some Holocaust historians maintain,³³⁴ documents obtained from Catholic Church sources were plentiful, with virtually every parish in Warsaw participating in this rescue activity, assisted by the Polish underground. Simha Rotem, a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization, describes how he obtained his false identity documents. (“Kazik” Simcha Rotem, Memoirs of a Warsaw Ghetto Fighter [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994], pp.60–61.)
You couldn’t be on the Aryan side without identity documents. … the Polish underground had helped me get a Kennkarte (the identity card issued by the Germans in the Generalgouvernement which replaced the Polish identity documents). I was sent to the office of a church in one of the Warsaw suburbs. I went to the clerk and requested a birth certificate (which was required in order to receive the Kennkarte). They had coached me in what to say. This was a document whose real owner, someone my age, was no longer alive. The clerk looked at me sharply and spat out: “Funny world—one person dies and aother walks around and impersonates him.” I didn’t say anything. He asked my address, the names of my parents, and the other details of questionnnaires everywhere in the world. I answered briefly and finally got the birth certificate.

From there I went to the registration office where Poles worked with Germans and Poles, and submitted a proper request for a Kennkarte. My fingerprints were taken like any other Polish citizen’s. At the end of this process I had a Kennkarte in the name of Antoni Julian Ksiezopolski [Księżopolski]—a common name among the Polish aristocracy. At the same time I got a forged Kennkarte from the Polish Underground in another name. I kept the document with the name Ksiezopolski with me, while the other one was kept at “home” in case of trouble. They also gave me an Arbeitskarte (proof of employment). [The final sentence is found in the Polish translation of this book, but omitted in the English version.—Ed.³³⁵]

Vladka Meed, a member of the Jewish underground living in “Aryan” Warsaw, was able to obtain a German identity document with the help of a Polish friend and the complicity of a priest who facilitated the “cover-up.” (Meed, On Both Sides of the Wall, p.213.)