Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

And that is the way I began my contact with Jews and how it came to be that I wound up helping both Jewish adults and children.

The decision to help Jews belonged solely to the mother superior of our house, Sister Gertruda Marciniak, while I was the person who carried out her instructions, with the stipulation that in case of immediate danger the decision rested with me.

Jewish children were brought in through the requests of hiding parents or Mr. Adamowicz, who worked for the Welfare Department of Warsaw at 72 Zlota [Złota] St.

The director of the department was Antoni Chacinski [Chaciński].

In our home there were several Jewish children. They came with fictitious names, some of which I don’t remember. I will only tell you about those I do remember:

1) Alfred Karol (Leopold Blitzylberg, phonetically spelled), born in Baden-Baden. His mother was German, his father was a Jew. When the father was killed in the Warsaw ghetto, the mother escaped with Alfred to the Polish side, taking nothing with her. She begged for bread from some German soldiers but did not present herself to the German authorities in fear that they would take her child away to the ghetto. An Austrian woman, Marta Harf (likewise phonetically spelled) saw her on the street. Seeing a sick and teary-eyed woman in front of her, she decided to help. The mother was taken to a hospital, and Marta Harf took the child to her place. The mother died in the hospital, but before she died she asked Marta Harf to send the child to its family in Baden-Baden. The German authorities didn’t allow this, and the child was to return to the ghetto.

Marta, a decent human being, looked around everywhere to save the child’s life. Finally, Sister Gertruda sent me to Marta. Once there, after examining the situation, I was to decide whether to take the child back with me or not.

There was a fear, which Director Chacinski expressed, that this was a ruse on the part of the Germans, since Marta had assured the Welfare Department that the child was of pure German blood, in the face of which the question became why send the child to a Polish home for children? If I didn’t take the child, it would have to go to the ghetto. So I took this seven-year-old boy to our home in Swidrze [Świder]. This was in 1941. The boy remained with us to the end of the war.

2) Daniel Lancberg (phonetically spelled). In 1941 his parents begged us to take him. At their request the child was baptized and received the baptismal name of Wojciech. The child was barely three. The boy’s father died in the Otwock ghetto; the mother survived the war and became baptized.

Daniel was a very thin child; he looked half-starved. He constantly had to eat, so he would go by himself to the kitchen to get a bite there. One day he got on top of a table to take a look out the window. Two German soldiers who were passing by saw him and rushed to the kitchen very angry and accusing us of hiding Jews. I ran to Mother Superior Getruda Marciniak, who knew German quite well. (In those days the populace in the General Government did not know German.) The mother superior entered the kitchen, and with a smile on her face, said:

“How can you possibly think that we have Jews here?”

Daniel, who was called Wojciech at out convent, did not understand what was being said, and at the sight of these faces looking at him with such anger, he went into a panic, crying and cuddling to the mother superior, who took him by the hand and said to him in Polish and to the soldiers in German:

“So you are the one who is supposed to be a Jew? What a joke! Don’t cry, Wojciech; see how nicely these gentlemen are dressed and how good they are. They like children a lot—won’t you like them?”

The boy, though he was still crying, extended his hands out to one of the Germans so that he could hug him. The soldiers were speechless. The mother superior, ignoring their confusion, asked them if they wanted tea and something to eat, all the while acting very calmly and smiling. The Germans were so dumbfounded that all they wanted to do was to leave our convent as quickly as possible. And yet it would have been very easy for them to see if Daniel was circumcised. Apparently they thought our mother superior was German.

3) Ruth Noy, the daughter of Max and Roza [Róża] Noy. She was accepted to our home on Swiderski [Świderska] St. in Otwock in November 1942, at the request of her parents, who were hiding after the liquidation of the ghetto there. With the agreement of the convent I made out a fictitious birth certificate for her under the name Teresa Wysocka.

We arranged the “abandonment” of the child: Without being seen, the mother left the child in the courtyard in the evening. The little girl began to cry, at the sound of which the nuns, and the personnel of the convent, came rushing up, and everyone saw the abandoned child. The girl had a small pouch about her neck, and inside was her fictitious certificate and a letter requesting us to keep the girl for a short time. The mother wrote in the letter that her husband had been taken to Germany to work and that she herself was spending a lot of time trying to make a living and didn’t have a place to keep Teresa. In her difficult situation she counted on the mercy of the nuns. Of course, the mother signed her name as Wysocka.

The child was in our home for almost two years. Her parents saved themselves, hiding in Warsaw on Pelpinski [Pelpińska] St. After the war they wanted to give whatever money they had left to the convent for saving their child. The mother superior refused to take the money, so they offered it to me, and I likewise refused to take it.

4) Salome Rybak. In 1941 or 1942, I don’t remember exactly, thirteen-year-old Salome (I don’t know if that was her real name) was hiding under the stairs in the empty Jewish boarding school in Swidrze [Świder]. At night she used to come to our children’s home on 1 Mickiewicz St. and take from a barrel before our building the remnants of food left over left as fodder for pigs. Caught in the act, Salome was placed by us in our farm building and given a place to sleep and something to eat. When winter came, we took her in with the group of children in the children’s home where, unfortunately, she could only remain for a few months. One of the wards, the son of an [sic] Ukrainian, wanted to tell the Germans about her. Here, once again, Mr. Adamowicz helped out and found another children’s home for her, this one run by the nuns in Starowce [Starówka, Warsaw’s Old Town]. I took her there myself, though I’ve forgotten the name of the street.

Her Semitic features gave her away. To take her to Warsaw, I bandaged her entire head, leaving just an opening for one eye. I don’t know what happened to her afterward.

All the children that were hiding with us were of the Hebraic religion. The only one who was baptized was, as I have already mentioned, Lancberg, and this was done at the request of his parents.

My attitude toward baptizing Jewish children was based on canonical law, which states that in regard to the baptism of children, one should get the approval of both or one of their parents. Furthermore, the baptized child should have a Catholic upbringing. There was no such certainty with the Jewish children we had because their parents could survive the war and bring them up in the Jewish religion.
Jurek Adin, who was born in Warsaw in 1933, was cared for by his prewar governess, Maria Pyjek, after he was spirited out of the Warsaw ghetto in February 1941. Unable to secure accommodation for Jurek, she turned to a Capuchin priest who assisted her in placing the boy at a home for children in Otwock run by the Sisters of St. Elizabeth.³⁵⁸ Jurek Adin’s testimony was recorded soon after the war ended. (Testimony of Jurek Adin, Central Committee of Jews in Poland, Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Record Group 301, number 3695.)
I sometimes went to the Aryan side and many times wanted to remain there but no opportunities arose. … I asked one boy to take me to my private tutor. I could not stay there because she worked as a nurse for the Germans and lived in a Krankenstube. She placed me with her friend who was already hiding one Jewish boy named Borenstein. … My tutor arranged for me to be taken to the home of Mrs. Adela. She told me to go to a particular shop at Belwederska Street from where I would be taken by Mrs. Adela. Mrs. Adela arranged a Christian birth certificate for me and registered me as Marian Podbielski. My tutor paid out of her own pocket to buy my false birth certificate. I spent some time at Mrs. Adela’s home. She used to go to work in the morning and I was left on my own. In the summer of 1942, I went to a resort called Zielonka [a small locality in the vicinity of Warsaw] and in August I returned to Warsaw. The priest who baptized me was very good to me and placed me in St. Anthony’s children’s home in Świder [now part of Otwock, a suburb of Warsaw]. … I stayed there until 1945, when my tutor came and took me with her to Rozalin. Again I felt so good. My family was found in the United States. They asked my tutor many times to place me in a Jewish orphanage. I am supposed to leave for the United States, but I would rather stay in Poland.
Halina Lewkowicz, who escaped to Warsaw from a ghetto in Upper Silesia, eventually found employment at a convent of the Sisters of St. Elizabeth, in the suburb of Żoliborz. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, p.531.)
In the summer of 1943, Halina Lewkowicz managed to escape together with her six-year-old son, Richard, during the liquidation of the Zawiercie ghetto in Upper Silesia. Their escape was made possible due to the assistance extended by Poles active in the underground, who moved her and her son to Warsaw, where they sent them to the apartment of Jan and Halina Mrozowski, both of whom were active in the AK [Armia Krajowa–Home Army]. Lewkowicz and her son, who arrived without any money or papers, were warmly received by the Mrozowskis, who provided them with false papers, shelter, and help. Within a short time, Mrozowska found work for Lewkowicz doing housework for her brother, while little Richard remained under the devoted care of the Mrozowskis. In time, Lewkowicz became active in the underground, acting as a courier. In November 1943, she began working as a practical nurse in the Elizbietanek [Elżbietanki] Sisters’ convent in the suburb of Zoliborz [Żoliborz], where she remained during the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944 to care for the wounded brought to the convent, which had been converted into a field hospital. Jan Mrozowski, who was arrested during the uprising, was deported to a concentration camp, where he perished. His wife and young Richard were deported to the Pruszkow [Pruszków] camp, and the child, whom she placed in the orphanage set up in the camp, was liberated in January 1945. Lewkowicz and her son remained in Poland.
The Dańko and Chłond families of Otwock extended help to a number of Jews with the help of the local pastor, Rev. Ludwik Wolski, and nuns, among them Sisters of St. Elizabeth (“The Dańko Family,” The Polish Righteous, Internet: and .)
From 1936, Mieczysław Dańko lived in Otwock, where he was director of the Finance Department of the Municipal Board. During the September military campaign, he was captured by the Russians,but he escaped from the transport and returned to Otwock.

During the war, he was an activist in the peasant movement, also its underground counterpart. In the years 1941–1943 Mieczysław was the commander of the Warsaw-Right-Bank circuit of the Peasant Battalions and used the pseudonym “Odwaga” (“Courage”). In 1943, he was imprisoned by the gestapo in Nowy Sącz for three months.

The Jewish family Wecer (Weczer) was starving in the gheto in Otwock. Only little Maria would sneak out from the ghetto to buy medications, which she then sold to others, thereby earning bread for her brothers Zbyszko and Sasza, and her grandparents. In the fall, the girl’s bare feet got injured. In such a state she met her former neighbor Jadwiga Dańko at a drugstore one evening. “My God, Muszka what happened to you?”, asked Jadwiga, then took the girl to her home on Reymont Street.

After many years, Miriam Thau (Maria Wecer) mentioned in the testimony for Yad Vashem: “That evening was fed and my injured legs were washed and dressed. The Dańko family – Jadwiga and her husband, Mieczysław and sister Nina –listened, horrified, to my account about poverty in the ghetto. It was a time when people were already lying on the streets swollen from hunger. In the morning, when I thanked and I wanted to go back, Jadwiga said to me solemnly: “Do not go back again to the ghetto, Muszka.” Once again, I thanked and explained that I could not stay with her – “Sasza is there waiting for me, he will die without me”. The Dańkos could not take him home. He was circumcised, and they had two children whom they did not want to expose to danger. On the same day, I brought Sasza a cart full of food. From then on, for weeks I would bring him meals every day.”

With the help of a parish priest, Ludwik Wolski, Maria Wecer received a birth certificate forthe name Laskowiecka (it was the name of her mother’s first husband). Little Sasza also received a similar birth certificate. Then, Mieczysław Dańko with a clerk from the municipal council in Otwock, Mr. Grzywacz, took Sasza away from the ghetto and placed him in a convent in Świder (which probably belonged to the St. Elizabeth convent) as a “Christian child, who had been circumcised by his Jewish caregivers.”

One day Tamara Wecer, the children’s mother appeared at the Dańkos’ house. She had previously left Otwock, seeking contact with her husband and ways to escape. And again, Mieczysław Dańko helped her. He managed to get her an ID with the name of her first husband. The Dańkos also helped the whole family to find accommodation. The mother took little Sasza from the monastery. However, he died soon. Years later, Maria Thau says “he was dying before my eyes. He died at night, holding my hand. His last words were: “Musia, give me bread”. On his death certificate issued on October 20, 1942 by Rev. Wolski, Aleksandra Szpakowska, another Righteous of Otwock, signed herself as a witness.

Tamara, Maria and Zbigniew Wecer survived the war. In 1946,the children’s father, Rudolf Wecer, returned to Poland. Zbigniew went to Israel in 1948, Maria and her mother did in 1958.
Krystyna’s (Krysia) father (b. 1917), Karol Chłond, worked as secretary of the municipal council in Otwock for many years. As a widely respected citizen, he had many friends, both Poles and Jews. His four children grew up in a spirit of respect for other human beings regardless of their nationality or religion.