Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

So much is heard about the unsympathetic attitude of the Polish clergy towards the Jews that I want to place special emphasis on two names:

Father Boleslaw Skwarlinski [Bolesław Skwarliński], Prefect from Radom: Whilst I was hiding for six months at the parsonage in Garbatka near Radom, the Prefect was a frequent guest of Father Jozef [Józef] Kuropieski, who provided me with all the care and attention a pregnant woman requires. I had to leave when my baby’s birth was approaching and it was then that I went to live with the Stopinski [Stopiński] family.

Father Jan Podsiadly [Podsiadły], my husband’s school friend: We were guests of his cousin during Easter of 1943 while he was still studying for the priesthood. In 1943 when the Germans evacuated areas on the right bank of the Vistula, we were taken to a camp in Pruszkow [Pruszków], where I was separated from my husband who was sent to the Dachau concentration camp. I was left with my baby in Sochaczew in tragic circumstances. (My striking Jewish features were only partially offset by my faultless Polish accent.) With the help of the local curate (who did not know my origin) I reached Mszczonow [Mszczonów] near Zyrardow [Żyrardów] where Father Podsiadly was a curate. He took care of my child and me, by lodging us with a childless couple and visiting us frequently; although the visits could have led to his arrest and even death, they served to allay suspicion about my Jewish appearance.
After the outbreak of the war, Zofia Pilichowska (née Weiser), born in 1927, moved to Warsaw with her parents and sister from their hometown of Łódź. After their escape from the ghetto in November 1942, the entire family underwent baptism at the church of the Holy Saviour (Najświętszego Zbawiciela). The ceremony was officiated by Monsignor Seweryn Popławski, pastor of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary parish on Leszno Street. The entire family assumed false identities (Testimony of Testimony of Zofia Weiser Pilichowska, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/2826):

All our family members were baptized in the parish of the Saviour in Warsaw. Father [Seweryn] Popławski agreed to baptize us at once without any further questions. Our Polish friend directed us to this priest. Our baptismal certificates became the proof that we were Aryan. My mother got her birth certificate in the name of an already deceased parishioner, Maria Anna Kowalewska. My father became Aleksander Franciszek Będzikowski. I and my sisters kept our original surname.
After residing with the Kosiński family in Łuków, Zofia Pilichowska lived for a time in Henryków. Mrs. Kosiński directed her to Rev. Zygmunt Siedlecki, the pastor of Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą. She stayed in the parish rectory for about three months helping his housekeeper with farm chores. Because her presence attracted too much attention, Rev. Siedlecki introduced her to the Sisters Servants of the Immaculate Blessed Virgin Mary in that same town, as someone who wanted to pursue a religious vocation. Zofia was sent to the order’s mother house in Mariówka near Przysucha, where she lived in the novitiate for the remainder of the war. She left the convent after the war and was reunited with her family.
Gustaw Alef-Bolkowiak, a Jewish partisan who fought in the People’s Guard, recalled the assistance he received from a number of Poles, including members of the Catholic clergy, after he was wounded in partisan warfare near Opoczno. (Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2^nd ed., p.533.)
After I was wounded in a skirmish near Osa [Ossa] in Opoczno county, many people cared for me: Mirosław Krajewski, Elżbieta Krajewska, Mrs. Pieszczyk—the owner of a laundry near Jasna Street in Warsaw, Wacław and Ryszard Strzelecki, the teacher Gromelski, the engineer Bukowski, Rev. [Jan] Gałęza, Sister Stefania [Miaśkiewicz, of the Sisters of the Family of Mary], Irena Ciesielska and doctors whose names have faded in my memory because of the passage of time. Those are the people who, in the fall of 1942, during a period when the occupier heightened their terror, risked their lives and the lives of their families to come to my assistance.
A priest from Kielce, Monsignor Witold Dzięcioł, was sent to a concentration camp for assisting a Jew. (Chciuk, Saving Jews in War-Torn Poland, 1939–1945, p.33.)
Because I extended help to a sick Jew in Kielce, I was arrested by the Gestapo and spent three years in a jail and in concentration camps in Oświęcim (Auschwitz), Mauthausen, Gusen and Dachau.