Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Dr. Anthony Panski [Antoni Pański], the Social Democrat, helped the writer Herman Kruk financially. …

In his book Balberiszki [Balberyszski]⁴⁹² describes a neighbor, Kozlowska [Zofia Kozłowska], who returned golden valuables even after the Balberiszkis had been in the ghetto for quite some time and thus helped them to overcome hunger and need.

Victoria Nazmilewski [Wiktoria Grzmielewska], Maria Fedecki [Fedecka] … Maria Wolski [Maryla Wolska], at one time or other, helped the partisan-poet Szmerke Kaczerginski and other Jews. …

Jadzia [Janina] Dudziec was a practicing Catholic. She was in contact with the Scheinbaum-group and supplied them with small arms. She perished August 13, 1944.

Irena Adamowicz was also a devoted Catholic. She was a very active scout-leader and very friendly with some Chaluz-leaders. Irena volunteered to be a courier for the Hechalutz and travelled many times to various ghettos in Poland and Lithuania. …

In the last days before Vilna [Wilno] was liberated, Esther Geler, wounded by a bullet, Robotnik and Feiga Itkin, the last survivors of the H.K.P., managed to escape. They came to a Polish woman in the Antokol section of Siostry Milosierdzi [Miłosierdzia–Sisters of Charity] Street, where Mrs. Guriono let them sleep in the basement and gave them food, until the liberation of the city. …

It is also worth while commenting those nationals who, although they did not proffer any direct help, yet they made believe they did not see the Jew, disguised as an Aryan, when they met him in the street; they did not run as informers to the authorities …
Herman Kruk, the chronicler of the Wilno ghetto, describes the reaction of the largely Polish population of that city to the ghettoization of the Jews in September 1941 and later events. (Herman Kruk, The Last Days of the Jerusalem of Lithuania: Chronicles from the Vilna Ghetto and the Camps, 1939–1944 (New Haven and London: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Yale University Press, 2002), pp.109–110, 112, 280–81.)
Today [September 8, 1941], at Ostra Brama [in the chapel located above this ancient gate was the holiest Catholic shrine in Wilno which housed the icon of the revered Madonna of Ostra Brama—M.P.], there was a prayer in honor of the martyrdom of the Jews. People say that Jews are now bringing in full bundles, which they got in the city as gifts from Christians in the street.

In the street, at a Maistas [meat cooperative established by the Soviet authorities], masses of Christians brought packages of meat and distributed them to the Jewish workers marching to the ghetto.

The sympathy of the Christian population, more precisely of the Polish population, is extraordinary.
[September 15th] Christians come to the ghetto. People say that Christian friends and acquaintances often come. Today a priest came to me, looking for his Jewish friends.
[May 6, 1942] From Vilna [Wilno] and the whole area, masses of young men are being taken for work in Germany. Yesterday one of those groups was led through Szawelska Street and a lot of Jews saw them. In the street, guarded by Lithuanians, they stormily sang the national battle song [actually, the Polish national anthem—M.P.], “Poland Is Not Yet Lost,” and as they approached the Jewish ghetto, they shouted slogans:

“Long live the Jews!…”

A mood I only want to note here.
Raizel Medlinski (later Nachimowitz), a widowed school teacher, and her daughter Batia (born in 1938), managed to escape from the Wilno ghetto and survived the war in the countryside with the help of a number of Poles including two priest, Rev. Hieronim Olszewski, the vicar of St. Teresa’s Church (the adjoining ancient city gate known as of Ostra Brama housed a revered icon of the Mother of God), and Rev. Aleksander Łukaszewicz, pastor of Konwaliszki. (Testimony of Shoshana Roza Gerszuni Nachimowitz (Medlinski), Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/3956.)
We were in the ghetto on the Gaon Street, near the main gate. Real troubles began. There was no food to eat, but I was always a vigorous woman. I got a connection with Polish people, who sent me packages from the lofts tied to a rope. … I thought all the time about how to escape from the ghetto. … Another day, when I lay with my daughter, a Polish man appeared. This was probably the doorkeeper of the building. They sent him to check and to report if Jews were left in the building. I told him that I was a teacher; and I worked not far from there. He understood our situation and had pity on us. He went away; I didn't even notice when. He came back with some bread and milk. He told me that if I want to survive, I have to come to the same place and he will take us to a wide road. I learned that they used to put a ladder to the loft; and the corridor led to a tailor shop, where Jewish tailors worked for the Germans.

I went back to the ghetto early in the morning. I found my mother-in-law in the ghetto. She was an old woman; I couldn’t escape together with her. I already thought of leaving the ghetto. Sunday, before the action, before the liquidation of the second ghetto, I went to the loft, keeping my daughter by hand, I knocked. The doorkeeper came and took us through the ladder to a wide street. I didn’t have an exact plan but I wanted to go to Lipówka. I knew some people there. It was a suburb of Vilna [Wilno]. I knew a Polish woman there, who worked in my house. They received us in a friendly way. We spent a few weeks there, with my daughter, but the neighbors began to look and understand that Grisha is hiding a Jewish woman with a child. I had a feeling that we had stayed there long enough and had to leave the place. One nice day, early in the morning, I took my girl and went to the town. I knew that our ghetto was already liquidated. Nobody survived. I didn’t know what to do. … My plan was to leave my daughter in an orphanage and escape Vilna. I went to Rase [Rossa Street]. A cloister [of the Sisters of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary] was there, full of priests. A priest was coming toward me. I saw him for the first time in my life. I asked him who was in charge of the orphanage. … I spoke to him Polish and I told him that I am a teacher and he was a teacher too. He pitied us and took us to his room. I cry out there all the bitterness of my heart. He already planned how to save me. He told me to come back in a few days. When I came back, he asked me what I want to be called. He probably kept stamps, so I got a birth certificate for me and my daughter. When I got the documents, I went back to Lipówka, to my Pole. People from the neighborhood used to visit him. One of them took my daughter and me to Wielkie Soleczniki [a town distant 45 km from Wilno]. We came to the governor [reeve?]. He already had the information from my Pole, that I am not entirely “kosher” in spite of speaking not bad the Polish language and having Catholic papers. One must run the risk a little. We learned that the Goy didn’t want to take a risk. He was afraid to lose his head. He often declared that he can’t keep me any more. He told me that not far from him, just a few kilometers away, is a big forest. In the forest lived a forester, a very good man. He would be able to hide me for some time. So I went to meet the forester. For the time being, I left my girl there, in Wielkie Solecznik. When I came to the forester, he told me that he could not take such a risk, but that not far from there, I don’t remember how many kilometers, I could find a property named Umiastów with a very good priest and an orphanage. They would receive me there. I came to Umiastów and found no priest living there. He lived in a town named Konwaliszki and had some influence over the orphanage. So, I went to the priest from Konwaliszki [Rev. Aleksander Łukaszewicz] and told him all the truth about me, who I was and who gave me the papers. He took out a book with the addresses of all priests and saw that I was not lying. He wanted to help me. He went to the orphanage in Umiastów and asked the woman-master of the house to take me with the child into the property. … She didn’t want to accept me in the house in any terms. It was Sunday. The priest [Rev. Łukaszewicz] received me very well with good food on the table. I don’t remember his name, but the other priest, who provided me the papers, was named Olszewski [Rev. Hieronim Olszewski]. He used to pray in Ostrobrama [Ostra Brama]. When the priest from Konwaliszki didn’t obtain anything, I sat with him and asked for advice on what to do next. We decided, both of us, that I had to visit Umiastów once again and beg the orphanage master to let us join the house. I went alone. I left the child behind. Her first question was: “Why did you come again? I already spoke to the priest. I can’t accept you. I don’t have enough maintenance for the children.” I told her: “Listen to me. You are still a religious woman, a Catholic. You go each time to the priest to confess and when you see a woman being drawn down, you don’t want to help.

After a long discussion, after many ups and downs, she finally allowed me to stay the first few weeks in Konwaliszki. I took my daughter with me; and we stayed there three to four weeks. After that, I couldn’t stay any longer in Konwaliszki. I got a connection with one teacher from the area, who advised me go to Dziewieniszki to find a teacher who was now a village head. His name was Kucharski. “Go to him; show him your documents; and ask him to book you in.” One morning, I went to Dziewieniszki. I didn’t tell him the truth. I showed him the certificate of birth and he asked me about the other documents, but he understood everything. He quoted the sentence of the Polish poet Słowacki: “Shall the living not loose hope.” He took my document, went out to his office and told to his secretary Stieszka: “Take her document from the woman and book her on the list of our village.” To Stieszka came many people from the area; and he turned to Kucharski, the head of the village in these words: “I will not do it! How do you know who the woman is?” The head of the village answered nothing, opened the door in silence and stepped in into his office. The secretary booked me in temporarily in Umiastów. During the time, when I was in the property of Umiastów. I worked as a nurse, but most important, I didn’t have to appear as a Jew. When Christmas came, I knew all the Christmas carols, which I learned years ago in the Polish teacher’s seminary. I joined in the Christmas carols with them. I used to sit with all the children, about 40–50 orphans, on my knees, together with my daughter, making the sign of the Cross, praying all the right prayers, and going to the church from time to time. My daughter was exceptionally religious. She used to sit at night near the bed on her knees and pray all the prayers. One day two young and pretty girls came to visit us, Zosia and Wanda. Zosia told Wanda not to say who she is. But when I looked at Wanda. I recognized her as one of my students from school, a Jewish girl, probably a member of Arkin family. They owned a bonbon factory in Vilna. She was a cousin to them.

Wanda, of course couldn’t tell that she doesn’t know me. Silently, they used to say that a Jewish community grows up here. But from where did the girls come? Kucharski knew all my secrets. The girls worked near Vilna, in a place with an aerodrome; and one day a German said to them: “Dear children, run away from here. They are going to get rid of you. At the end of the war, I will know where to find you.” They were young and pretty girls … Kucharski knew my secret; and he let them stay here for a while. Meanwhile this event happened: a Polish woman, whose two sons were with us in Umiastów, informed [the authorities in Lida], that Kucharski employed Jews and she, the former wife of an officer, can’t get a job there. Finally, came a complaint against Kucharski. They sent a German Commission to find the truth. When the Germans came, the girls hid themselves. I walked around with a kerchief on the head. They didn’t even notice that I am Jewish and went away. After this, the girls couldn’t stay with us one minute longer. The Polish woman who informed Lida was shot as a black market dealer. … In 1943, when they changed our master, a Lithuanian came to replace her. This was a time when some Belarus regions became a part of Lithuania. All the benefits went to the Lithuanians. Then, the Lithuanian government came and sent us a Lithuanian master. The old woman master knew all my secrets. She went to meet the priest who said: “Let her still stay here.” It seems that the priest did for others what he did for me, so they caught him and shot him. …

I had a feeling that the earth is burning under my feet; and I wanted to run away from there. But at this time, our master was still a Pole, Wołkowski. He told me: “Everybody knows everything about you here and nobody will hurt you. …” This held me back and thanks to this, I could stand it. Sometimes, we had to hide in the fields and in the woods. I stood it until 1944, before the end of the war. I saw Vilna in flames. I was 65 kilometers from Vilna. It was a terrible fire. We saw a big part of Vilna houses burned out.
Many village priests in the archdiocese of Wilno, in northeastern Poland, extended help to Jews. A Jewish memorial book identifies the following priests from Brasław and surrounding area: the dean and pastor of Brasław, Rev. Mieczysław Akrejć, died of apoplexy, on June 25, 1942, the day the Jews were being shot by the Germans and some Jews had taken refuge in the parish rectory⁴⁹³; some Catholic priests urged the peasants who confessed to harbouring Jews to give them food and clothing; the local Catholic priest supplied David of Bizne and a young boy with crucifixes to wear round their necks; a priest from Krasław (Krāslava in Latvian, a city on the Polish border) and another priest from Plusy (or the older spelling of Plussy) assisted in finding a safe home for the Barkan family; a priest by the name of Bilcher (from Plusy?) provided medicine to Anna Zelikman and others; a priest named Petro from Belmont⁴⁹⁴; a priest from the village of Prozoroki (given as “Prysaroki”); a priest from the village of Ikaźń (given as “Ikaznia”); the local priest near the village of Urban (Urbanowo near Druja?), who cared for Rachel Gurewicz and her two daughters Hanka and Riwetka.⁴⁹⁵ According to Jewish sources, Catholic priests from Brasław—Szlenik, Kowalski, and Wasilewski (their exact names have not been confirmed—M.P.)—“gave some material and spiritual help to the Jewish population” and reprimanded those involved in excesses coomitted against the Jews.”⁴⁹⁶
Additional examples of assistance by village priests in northeastern Poland are described in northeastern Poland is described in Peter Silverman, David Smuschkowitz, and Peter Smuszkowicz, From Victims to Victors (Concord, Ontario: The Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, 1992), at pages 246–47.
We were taken to the main jail [in Głębokie]. In front of the building a police commander motioned to the guard to take us to the basement. In this two storey building the basement held all those who were condemned to death. … As we descended the steps to the basement two Belorussian guards welcomed us with a severe beating. We were told to sing Russian songs and dance. Each time we were struck by their rifle butts until both of us collapsed bleeding and unconscious on the cement floor.

When we regained consciousness we were lying on wooden boards covered with straw. Two Roman Catholic priests had dragged us into the room and lifted our bodies onto the boards. They were sitting by us as we awoke. The priests had been arrested by the Germans and condemned to die. One was from Prozaroki [Prozoroki] and the other was from Ikazno [Ikaźń]. They knew from their training how to speak to people near death and they tried to give us moral support. The other prisoners were escaped Russian prisoners of war. They all knew we had only hours to live.

When my mother heard we had been arrested and we were to be shot she ran directly to the Judenrat (Jewish Council). Her screams and tears caused a great commotion and forced the council to take steps to try and save us. Within hours a large amount of gold coins and jewelry were collected. The Judenrat had a connection with the Gestapo, a Jewish girl named Peske. She was young, extremely good looking and intelligent. She had developed an intimate relationship with the captain of the Gestapo and we found her in his office when we were escorted to see him. The gold had been used to arrange our release. Peske understood that the only way she could save our lives was by claiming she knew us well and that we had worked for the Germans in Glembokie [Głębokie] for a long time. …

Several days later we discovered that all the prisoners in the basement had been taken to Barock [Borek forest near Berezwecz] and shot. The actual executions were performed by the local collaborator police under the supervision of the Żandarmeria (Gendarmarie) and German police. The two priests were in that group. … Later, when we met Jewish survivors from the vicinity of Prozaroke [Prozoroki] in the forest, we discovered more about the priest. He had been personally friendly towards Jews. In his Sunday sermons he had urged his congregation to keep their hands clean of the slaughter of Jews and to aid them where possible.
According to Polish sources, Rev. Władysław Maćkowiak was the pastor of Ikaźń and his vicar was Rev. Stanisław Pyrtek. They were arrested in December 1941 for their ardent preaching and illegally teaching religion to children, and detained in the jail in Brasław. They were transferred to the jail in Głębokie, together with Rev. Mieczysław Bohatkiewicz, who was arrested in the border town of Dryssa in January 1942. All three of these priests were taken by German gendarmes and Belorussian policemen on March 4, 1942 to Borek forest near Berezwecz, outside Głębokie, where they were executed.⁴⁹⁷ The pastor of Prozoroki at the time was Rev. Czesław Matusiewicz, who continued to work in this area for the duration of the war.⁴⁹⁸
The following account refers to assistance provided to Jews by priests in Duniłowicze and Wołkołata, as related by Joseph Riwash in Resistance and Revenge, 1939–1945 (Montreal: n.p., 1981), at page 144.
I know of heroism also among the village priests in White Russia [prewar Eastern Poland] during the years of Nazi occupation. The parish priests of Dunilowicze [Duniłowicze] and Wolkolaty [Wołkołata] were feeding and sheltering Jews along with escaped Russian prisoners of war in their parsonages. When the Gestapo found out that the priest of Wolkolaty [Rev. Romuald Dronicz] was hiding Jews, they sent a local policeman to arrest him. The policeman, however, felt uneasy about arresting a man of God.

“I can’t arrest you, Father”, he said to the priest. “Why don’t you ask your guests to leave your parsonage and then go underground yourself”? The priest, for his part, did not want to endanger the policeman’s life and insisted that the policeman carry out his orders. When this valiant priest arrived at Gestapo head-quarters, he was shot at once.

In fact, Rev. Romuald Dronicz, the pastor of Wołkołata, was arrested by the Gestapo in June 1942, imprisoned in Głębokie, and executed in Berezwecz together with four other Polish priests on July 4, 1942.⁴⁹⁹
During the liquidation of the ghetto in Łyntupy by Lithuanian police, Irene Mauber Skibinski, then a young girl of about six, and her mother escaped and took shelter with Rev. Józef Pakalnis, the local parish priest, who instructed his housekeeper to hide them in the cellar of the rectory. They remained there for about ten days before moving on. They survived the occupation with the help of a number of Polish peasant families.⁵⁰⁰ ( Irene Mauber Skibinski, “Through the Eyes of a Child—My Childhood in Lyntupy,” in Shimon Kanc, ed., Svinzian Region: Memorial Book of 23 Jewish Communities, Internet: , translation of Sefer zikaron le-esrim ve-shalosh kehilot she-nehrevu be-ezor Svitsian [Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Svintzian in Isael and the U.S., 1965], column 1446.)
My mother crawled through the window and fell on the ice. She lost her shoes on the way. She pulled me out and we ran. People were peeking through windows and quickly hiding behind the curtains. My mother ran to the local priest, whose name was Father Pakalnis. We knocked at the door. His housekeeper opened the door and told us to leave immediately, but Father Pakalnis overheard our voices and asked us to come in. He was happy to see us alive. He told my mother he owed his life to her because my mother had protected him from being sent to Siberia by the Russians. He told his housekeeper to take us to the cellar and keep us there until things quieted down.

  We stayed in the cellar for about ten days. …

   It was time for us to leave. Father Pakalnis gave my mother his old boots. We had to find other clothes for me to wear, since it was a small town and people could easily recognize me just from my clothing. My mother always dressed me in the finest clothes she could get. At that time my coat and hat were of a blue color, and my mother wanted me to be less conspicuous.

    And so we left. We walked in the snow, and once in a while villagers gave us rides. Most of the villagers knew my family because they had worked for my father, transporting wood from the forest to the processing place at the railroad station. When we asked for shelter, they refused, saying they could not keep us, but they said they would not report us to the police because my parents had treated them well.

   With no place to hide, my mother decided to go to the Svenciany [Święciany] ghetto. I do not remember much about life there. We had a corner of the floor in a very crowded room. There was no food. Our former housekeeper Amelia, who lived in Svenciany with her sister, found out we were in the ghetto. She started bringing bread whenever she could and passing it to us through barbed wire. …

When we saw the first Red Army unit, we felt free. In Pabradzie [Podbrodzie], we met some Jewish families. We did not stay long, because we were anxious to get to Lyntupy. …

 We went to see Father Pakalinis, the priest who helped us at the moment of extreme danger. My mother did not coach me, she did not have to. I understood quite well I owed my life to him and many other kind people. I buried my face in his kind hands and cried.
Pola Wawer, a young Jewish doctor who escaped from the ghetto in Wilno together with her parents, Don and Dr. Maria Komaj, also recalled a Catholic priest in Łyntupy who worked closely with a local rabbi to provide material assistance to refugees from other towns, including her family.⁵⁰¹ She also mentions the assistance of Rev. Julian Jankowski (a vicar at All Saints church), who obtained a birth and baptismal certificate for her from parish in Podbrodzie in the name of Zofia Januszkiewicz.⁵⁰²
Chana Mirski (later Hana Shachar) was given over for safekeeping by her paternal grandfather, Nathan Mirski, to his acquaintance, Stanisław Świetlikowski, who smuggled her out of the ghetto in Podbrodzie, a town northeast of Wilno, in September 1941. She had been brought to Podbrodzie following her mother’s death in Głębokie, shortly after giving birth to Chana in early 1940. Stanisław and his wife Katarzyna had Chana or Anna baptized as Katarzyna Świetlikowska, as their own child. Given her age at the time, it would have been apparent to the priest, even if he had not been told, that the child was likely Jewish. The birth and baptismal certificate facilitated the cover-up. Their neighbours also suspected that this was a Jewish child, but no one betrayed them. In 1946, the Świetlkowski family resettled within the new Polish state borders. Chana was transferred to a Jewish children’s home in Łódź in 1947. In 1948, she was reunited with her father in Palestine, who had settled there shortly before the war broke out. (Świetlikowski Family, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: .)
Chana Shachar (née Mirski) was born in 1940 in the town of Głębokie. Her father had immigrated to Palestine in 1939. Her pregnant mother was supposed to follow him, but then war broke out, and she could not leave the country. In her despair at finding herself alone with a young baby during wartime, she took her own life. The baby was put in the care of her paternal grandparents, in the town of Podbrodzie. In June 1941 the German army invaded the area. All Jews were ordered to move to the ghetto, and rumors about mass murders in neighboring towns started to spread. Understanding that they were all in mortal danger, Chana’s grandfather decided to try to save her. He contacted an acquaintance of his, Stanisław Świetlikowski, and asked him to take the little girl.

Stanisław Świetlikowski and his wife, Katarzyna, were poor farmers who lived with their three children—Jan, Maria, and Piotr—in a nearby village. Chana, a toddler not yet two years old, was handed over to Świetlikowski, along with her grandparents’ milking cow to help provide for the child. The rescuers’ daughter Maria recalled in her testimony that “one day, when we returned from school, there was a little girl in the house who could not yet walk and did not speak but three words. Father said, ‘We have this child, and we need to respect her, lover her, and watch out for her, so no harm will come to her.’” The Świetlikowskis had Chana baptized and registered as their fourth child. They were constantly concerned about a possible denouncement by the neighbors, who figured out that the sudden new addition to the “Świetlikowski family was a Jewish girl. This, however, did not stop the Świetlikowskis from caring for her. From the moment she arrived at their home, they treated her as a member of the family, a beloved youngest child. “They were a very loving family,” wrote Chana in her testimony, “and I was the apple of my mother’s eye. I never forgot them, never will, and I will carry them in my heart for the rest of my life.”

Zvi Mirski, Chana’s uncle, was long acquainted with the Świetlikowski. He was hiding in forests in the area of Podbrodzie after jumping off a train that was taking him to Ponar [Ponary]. He took it upon himself to watch over little Chana, and from time to time he came to visit her. He would come at night, and the Świetlikowskis would leave a window open so he could enter without anyone noticing. After the war Zvi returned to Podbrodzie. A single man without any means, however, he could not care for his little niece, so she stayed with the Świetlikowskis. Maria would bring Chana to visit her uncle, until he immigrated to Palestine in 1945. In 1947 a man from the Jewish Coordinating Committee arrived at the Świetlikowskis wanting to take Chana. Stanisław Świetlikowski fiercely objected to being parted from the girl he had raised as his own for six years. He refused offers of money and was only finally convinced by the argument that Chana had a father waiting for her in Palestine and that there she would receive an education he could not afford to give her.

In 1948 Chana arrived in Israel and was united with the biological father she had never met. For the first few years, she kept in touch with the Świetlikowskis, exchanging letters and packages with the help of her uncle Zvi, as she could not read or write Polish herself, but this connection was cut off at some point. Chana never forgot her adoptive family and never gave up on reconnecting with them. In 2005 she finally managed to locate Maria, the only member of the Świetlikowski family still alive. In 2006 Maria came to Israel for a visit and the three-Chana, Zwi, and Maria—were finally reunited, 60 years after they had all last met in Podbrodzie.
After fleeing from their hometown of Podbrodzie, the brothers Irving and Morris Engelson (then Engelczyn) together with their mother made their way to the home of a Polish woman. Their stay there was interrupted when a Lithuanian policeman came around searching for Jews on the run. The woman’s teenage son ferried them across a river to help them escape. They eventually spotted the steeple of a church and decided to approach it. The exact locality and priest are not identified. (Morris Engelson, “The Story of My Survival,” 2009, Internet: .)
Suddenly, way, way in the distance, there is a spire—there is a very tall building, and the tip of the building can just be seen between the trees. It turned out that this spire was the top of a church. My mother followed the direction of this building that we could see, and after a while we came out in a clearing. There was a village there, and in the village there is a church with a very tall spire or steeple …

My mother just came to the church and knocked on the door. She had no choice. A woman came out. She was the housekeeper. She explained that the priest was not there. He had heard that the Jews were being killed, and he went in to see if he could help in some way. I doubt that he could help, but anyway he went. But he had given her instructions what to do if Jews should happen to show up, if Jews had escaped and they happened to come to the church. And she said what we needed to do was go to a certain place, to a certain house, to a certain individual, tell him that the priest had sent us, and he would help us. So that’s about all she said. And she gave instructions, she gave directions to my mother where in the village to go and find this person.

So we went. We got to this house, and the individual happened to be in. He came out. My mother explained that the priest said that he could help us, and he said yes he could. …

It turns out that he was one of a whole range of individuals that were part of a smuggler gang, or a smuggler group. … The priest knew who he was and everything was just fine. It was OK to do it, apparently. And this fellow was called an honorable smuggler. He was not out to kill the Jews or anything else. He could have gotten a good bounty by handing us over.
The smuggler ended up taking the Engelsons to the ghetto in Soły where Mrs. Engelson’s sister resided. Afterwards, her husband found them there and, with the help of two Polish brothers, Adam and Bronisław Sienkiewicz, brought them to the Sienkiewiczes’ farm. Later, the Engelsons stayed in the barn of another Polish family, the Bogdanowskis, who were a large and very poor family.⁵⁰³
Rev. Witold Szymczukiewicz, the vicar of Rukojnie near Wilno, was instrumental in saving the lives of several Jews by furnishing them with false documents and finding shelter for them. The Jews of Rukojnie asked Rev. Szymczukiewicz to say a mass for them when they were deported by the Germans. He was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile in 1966. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, p.807.)
Witold Szymczukiewicz, a priest, lived in Rudomino, near Vilna [Wilno], during the war. One day an old acquaintance of his told him that she had recently been in Lida where she bumped into Faiga Reznik [later Zipora Berkovicz Barkai], a high school friend of Witold [from Drohiczyn]. Faiga asked her to relay a message to the priest that she needed help in getting Aryan papers for her and her son [Jonatan, born in 1937]. “Obtaining such documents was not a hard task for me. Therefore, I sent the documents that Mrs. Reznik and her son needed via an acquaintance. I was glad that I could help them and save someone from death. I did this not as a priest, but as a human being,” wrote Szymczukiewicz in his testimony to Yad Vashem. Witold “took us out of the Lida ghetto, brought us to his home and later to Vilna, where we stayed [with Jadwiga Romanowska, a trusted parishioner] under the cover of being ‘Christians’ until the end of the war,” wrote Jonatan Barkai, Faiga’s son. He added that Witold also arranged papers for another friend of the Rezniks, Jadwiga [Edzia] Szejniuk Bergman, and helped other Jews as well.⁵⁰⁴
Brocha Bernan escaped from the Wilno ghetto with her three young sons in the fall of 1941. They made their way to the vicinity of Porudomino, south of Wilno, where they hid in the forest. They survived by begging for food from local farmers. Brocha decided to entrust her two youngest sons to two Polish families. Kazriel Bernan was taken in by Apolonia (Polina) Tarasewicz and her husband, a childless couple. Samuel Bernan was taken in by Monika and Ludwik Koszyc. In order to pass as Poles, the boys were baptized, most probably at the Catholic church in Porudomino, and secured birth and baptismal certificates in the names of Antoni Kasiński and Michał Kasiński, respectively. The administrator the parish at the time was Rev. Florian Markowski. Both boys survived the war. Their mother and oldest brother disappeared. Tragedy befell Apolonia Tarasewicz. While her husband was away, she learned that someone had denounced her. Warned of a police raid, she told Kazriel to hide in the forest. When the police arrived, they found children’s clothes, seized Apolonia, and set fire to the farm buildings. Apolonia was beaten and then shot to death on January 1, 1943. She was recognized as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 2013, under the name of Polina Tarasevich, at the behest of Kazriel Bernan, now Anatolii Kasinskii.⁵⁰⁵
When, in 1941, the Germans wanted to set fire to the ghetto in Kiemieliszki near Worniany, Rev. Henryk Wojniusz, the local pastor, announced that a special procession would take place in the village, which caused the Germans to change their plans. As Masza Rudnicka recalls in her testimony, Father Wojniusz was a balding, chubby old man, who was not too good at theology or at making poignant speeches, but he “spoke right from the heart.” Thanks to that, his words truly reached his parishioners.⁵⁰⁶ Masha Rudnicka was later transported to the ghetto in Kiemieliszki, from which she would be relocated to labour camps. After the liberation, when she and her sister, Rachela, returned to Kiemieliszki, Rev. Wojniusz offered them help and took care of them.⁵⁰⁷
Rev. Jan Sielewicz, the pastor of Worniany near Wilno, helped a number of Jews by organizing hideouts for them with parishioners in the surrounding villages. He was assisted in this undertaking by the vicar, Rev. Hipolit Chruściel. Rev. Sielewicz was awarded by Yad Vashem in 2000.⁵⁰⁸ He was nominated by Zvi Borodo, formerly Hirsz Borodowski, who had escaped from the ghetto in Wilno with his mother. (Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, p.614.)
In June 1942, after the father, Avraham Borodowski, and son, Arie, were murdered at the Ponary murder site near Wilno (today Vilnius, Lithuania), the mother, Genia-Szeina (née Lurie), with her 13-year-old son Hirsz (later, Zvi Borodo) fled the Vilna [Wilno] ghetto for the surrounding villages in order to seek safety. A Polish acquaintance in one of the villages sent them to the priest Jan Sielewicz in the town of Worniany (Vilnius-Troki County, Wilno District), telling them that he was helping Jews and would also assist them. The priest Sielewicz indeed took them under his protection and sent them to farm families in the surrounding towns and villages ho needed working hands in exchange for food and lodging. Their employers did not know that they were Jews. However, when they were asked to register at the local police [as they were required to do], both returned to Father Sielewicz for a temporary hiding place until he could find them work and secure lodging elsewhere. In 1943, while a new hiding place was being sought for Genia and her son Hirsz, they learned that the priest had dies. The mother and her small son returned to wandering through villages and towns until the liberation by the Red Army in the summer of 1944. When he grew up, Hirsz Borodowski became a well-known opera singer in Isarel, under the name of Zvi Borodo.
Zvi Borodo recalled:
We wandered in the forests for a long time before we reached the village of Worniany. Here we learned that the Catholic priest Jan Sielewicz helped rescue Jews. The priest placed people like us in distant colonies (hamlets) in the vicinity of Worniany and Świr. They were poor farmers who fed us country bread and soup. It seemed to us then that there was nothing more delicious on earth. And we helped out with their work. And thus, thanks to the truly saintly man Jan Sielewicz, my mother and I survived.
Some of the Jews that Rev. Sielewicz placed with his parishioners had been directed, and sometimes transported personally, to the countryside by Rev. Michał Sopoćko, professor of theology at the Stefan Batory University in interwar Wilno. Rev. Sopoćko was also the spiritual advisor of the recently canonized Sister Faustina (Faustyna Kowalska). His rescue activities included providing Jews with baptismal certificates (some of the Jews underwent conversion voluntarily), finding hiding places for them, and sheltering Jews in his residence. A Jewish couple wrote of their experiences thus:
Rev. Sopoćko was deeply concerned about the fate of the Jews who were already suffering repression, and helped many of them. Some of these persons underwent baptism, which he prepared us for. … At the beginning of September [1941], a ghetto was created in Wilno. Thanks to Rev. Sopoćko, who furnished us with fictitious documents and placed under the care of [Rev. Jan Sielewicz], the dean of Worniany, we were able to get by until the spring of 1942. Afterwards, we managed on our own … Rev. Sopoćko was highly respected in Wilno, and helped many people at the risk of his own safety. Our salvation and survival in those years is thanks to the help of many people, but at the beginning of that chain stood Rev. Sopoćko.
Among those Rev. Sopoćko assisted were Dr. Aleksander Sztajnberg, who assumed the name Sawicki, and his wife Franciszka Wanda (née Berggrün); Dr. Erdman, who became Benedykt Szymański, his wife, and their daughter; and Dr. Juliusz Genzel and his wife. The Gestapo uncovered some tracks of Rev. Sopoćko’s activities and detained him for several days. When he learned that he was again wanted, Rev. Sopoćko fled to the countryside in March 1942. He hid for two years in the convent of the Ursuline Sisters of the Agonizing Heart of Jesus in Czarny Bór, on the outskirts of Wilno, where he had previously directed Jews. Rev. Sopoćko assumed a false identity working as a gardener and carpenter. The following account attests to Rev. Sopoćko’s dedication to rescuing Jews. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, p.182.⁵⁰⁹)
On the eve of the German occupation, Franciszka-Wanda Sawicka (née Berggruen) lived with her husband, a doctor, in Vilna [Wilno]. After the occupation, before the establishment of the ghetto, the Sawickis decided to go into hiding. Polish acquaintances of theirs referred them to a priest [Rev. Michał Sopoćko], who agreed to help them. In September 1941, the priest found a separate shelter for each of them with friends of his. Franciszka-Wanda Sawicka was sent to Anna Dolinska [Dolińska], who gave her a warm welcome although she was a stranger and saw to all her needs, without expecting anything in return. After Dolinska, an activist in the Polish underground, obtained Aryan papers for Sawicka and her husband and supplied them with clothing and other necessities, the Sawickis left Vilna for [Worniany, where they were welcomed by Rev. Jan Sielewicz, and then taken by Rev. Hipolit Chruściel to the hamlet of Kuliszki near Worniany. They stayed there for several months before relocating to the hamlet of] Onzadowo [Onżadowo] near Oszmiana, where they lived as Polish refugees until the area was liberated in July 1944. While living in Onzadowo, the Sawickis occasionally went to Vilna to visit Dolinska, whom they considered their guardian angel. After the warm Dolinska was arrested by the NKVD for belonging to the AK [Armia Krajowa or Home Army] and exiled to Siberia for eight years. After her release, she moved to an area within the new Polish borders, where she renewed contact with the Sawickis, who had moved to Warsaw.
Rev. Sopoćko mentions Rev. Tadeusz Makarewicz, pastor of St. John the Baptist church, and Rev. Jan Kretowicz, pastor of the Bernadine church of the Seraphic St. Francis and St. Bernard, as priests who agreed to baptize Jews who had expressed a desire to convert.⁵¹⁰ At the request of Anastazja Bitowt, the nanny to whom the child had been entrusted by her mother, Rev. Jan Kretowicz agreed to baptize Ruth Siemiatycka (born in 1939), knowing that she was Jewish. Ruth assumed the identity of Irena Siemiatycka. Both she and her mother survived passing as Polish Catholics with the assistance of several Poles.⁵¹¹ In her testimony, Ida Lewkowicz Kaplan confirms that she received forged documents from Rev. Makarewicz.⁵¹²
Stefania Dąmbrowska’s family owned a manor in Orwidów Dolny near the city of Wilno where a number of Jews found shelter: Stefan and Nata Świerzawski, Miriam Kurc,⁵¹³ Sonia Tajc, Lusia Wajnryb (Helena Snarska), and Helena and Artur Mińskowski. Recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile, Stefania Dąbrowska mentions the assistance of two priests from Wilno, Rev. Jan Kretowicz and Rev. Chlebowski (possibly, this is Rev. Lucjan Chalecki), who provided false birth certificates to Jews. (Poles Who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust: Recalling Forgotten History, p.45.)
The first to come to the manor in Orwidów Dolny in the Wilno region were a pair from the Dąbrowicz family, with their goat Sabina. “They were not Jews, though I am unsure where the goat was descendent from.”