Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy
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The priest said, ‘If that’s the only reason, that’s not good enough. Thank God you survived, you survived as a Jew, you are Jewish stay what you are.’
We went back and told Łoziński what the priest said. He said, ‘Well, it’s the priest’s decision and you have to abide by what he said.’ Poles living in countries outside occupied Poland, among them members of the Catholic clergy, also played a role in saving Jews. A little known chapter of the war is the rescue effort of Henryk Sławik, the Polish chargé d’affaires in Budapest, who is credited with rescuing at least five thousand Polish Jews, both members of the military and civilians, who fled to Hungary during the war. When Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944 and embarked on a massive deportation of its Jews to Auschwitz, the fate of Polish Jews living in camps for Polish refugees became very precarious. The rescue operation required that Polish Jews pass as Catholic Poles, and therefore Sławik turned to the Polish Committee and the Polish Catholic Mission in Hungary, headed by the Pauline priest, Rev. Michał Zembrzuski, for assistance. The Polish Catholic Mission, which counted some 60 priests, stationed for the most part in the camps set up for refugees, issued instructions to all its priests to assist any Jew who needed to assume a new identity as a Christian. Every Jew who sought a false baptismal certificate was issued one without question, without having to undergo baptism or conversion. Although this fact became widely known among the Polish Catholic refugees, none of the Jew was denounced. All of them were able to escape and leave Hungary in time. About 100 Jewish children were placed in a special orphanage in the town of Vác, ostensibly housing children of Polish officers, where they posed as Catholics. A Piarist priest from Slovakia, Rev. Pavel Boharčík (also known as Bucharczyk), pretended to teach religion to the children. The children and Jewish personnel attended Sunday mass at the local church as part of their guise. Itzhak Bretler, a Jew passing as a Catholic by the name of Władysław Bratkowski, taught the children the Old Testament and Torah. When Fr. Zembrzuski visited the orphanage, the Jewish children would greet him with the words “Praised be Jesus Christ!” The children still recall the warm and caring atmosphere that permeated the orphanage. Sławik was arrested by the Germans on March 19, 1944. Although brutally tortured, he did not betray any of his Hungarian and Polish colleagues. He was sent to the Mauthhausen concentration camp where he was executed probably in August 1944. Henryk Sławik and Rev. Boharčík were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentile.608 The following account is from Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, at pages 768–69. With the defeat of Poland in September 1939 and the subsequent German [and Soviet] occupation, thousands of Poles crossed into Hungary and settled there. The Polish refugees were followed by hundreds of Jewish families. Among them were also many orphaned children. Izaak Brettler (Wladyslaw [Władysław] Bratkowski) and his wife, Mina, took care of many of them. In July 1943, they gathered a group of 76 children between the ages of three and 19 from Budapest and led them out to the locality of Vac [Vác], some 30 kilometers away. There, Izaak organized a boarding school and with the help of the local Jews got in touch with the delegate to Hungary of the Polish Government-in-Exile, Mr. Henryk Slawik [Sławik], and asked him for help. In September 1943, the boarding school was proclaimed a Polish educational institution acting on behalf of the Polish Committee in Hungary. All students and personnel were given forged documents and Polish army officer Franciszek Swider [Świder] was appointed director of the school. Maria Tomanek, a teacher, also volunteered to work there. With the invasion of German troops into Hungary on March 19, 1944, the institution appeared to be under threat. To give the school a more Polish and Christian image, all the students and teachers attended regular church services at the local church. In addition, a priest from Slovakia, Dr. Pavel Boharcik [Boharčík], came to the school to teach religion, but in reality he was teaching the students Hungarian. A Polish nun working in France, Kazimiera Małolepszy, known as Sister Madeleine of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, was honoured by Yad Vashem for her part in the rescue of three Jewish sisters. (The Database of Righteous Among the Nations, Yad Vashem, Internet: Oscar and Margurete Roth lived in Mulhouse, in the département of Haut-Rhin with their three daughters, and the girls’ grandmother. When the war began, the Roths moved to Paris, believing that this would be better for them as Jews. They rented an apartment in Paris, Oscar found a job, and as French citizens, they lived reasonably for a while. When the mass arrests of Jews began in July 1942, the Roths split up to improve their prospects of survival. The grandmother, who was blind, was placed in an old age home, and the three daughters, Renée, Denise, and Liliane, aged eight to eleven, were sent to a Catholic institution. Oscar and Marguerite left their apartment and hid in a small room near Oscar’s workplace. The Catholic institution that took in the three girls belonged to the St.-Vincent-de-Paul order and was located in Flers, in the département of Orne. Sister Pannelay, the Mother Superior of the institution, sheltered the Jewish girls despite the danger. The Roth girls were the only Jews in the home, and in order to keep them from standing out, Sister Marie-Louise taught them basic Catholic customs. She confided in two other sisters in the institution, Sister Madeleine Malolepszy [Małolepszy], who was Polish, and Sister Anne-Marie le Cahérec. Sister Madeleine became very attached to the girls, for she understood their distress. It was difficult to be deprived of all contact with their family and to be alone in a Christian setting that was foreign to them. She thus treated them very kindly and devotedly. When she worked in the kitchen, she always gave them an extra portion. The girls became very attached to her and she was the one they turned to when they had a problem. The sisters kept the secret and helped the Jewish girls get along with the other children. Sister Marie-Louise devised a cover story for the Jewish girls, presenting them as three Parisian girls whose parents, afraid of air raids and lacking food, had sent them to this institution for safety and better nutrition. Although no attempt was made to convert the girls, Sister Marie-Louise had them baptized when the Germans entered Flers in March 1944, so that they could take part in religious ceremonies reserved for baptized Catholics and thereby mask their Jewishness more effectively. Until the area was liberated, Sister Marie-Louise and her colleagues spared no effort to protect the girls, even when German soldiers were terrifyingly close. After the war, Renée Roth emigrated to the United States and documented the story of her survival in a children’s book, Touch Wood. On February 19, 1992, Yad Vashem recognized Sister Marie-Louise Panneley and Sister Madeleine Malolepszy and Sister Anne-Marie le Cahérec as Righteous Among the Nations. Many cases of rescue of Jews by the Roman Catholic clergy will never be known. Understandbly, due to their Christian modesty, the clergy did not go out of their way to publicize such deeds. Many of those rescued by the clergy have not come forward with their stories or identified their benefactors. Sidia Cowen, who born in 1940, was placed in a convent by her mother in 1941. When the convent was bombed, the children were moved to safety. In 1944, Sidia’s mother returned for her. The locality of the convent has not been identified. In 1945, both ended up in Bytom, Poland. A year later, her mother married and the family moved to Munich. In 1951, her family arrived in Canada and settled in Toronto.609 Freda Felman was born in Warsaw in February 1940. In 1942, her parents entrusted her to a Christian friend. That woman became fearful of hiding Freda, and left her in a park when she was three. Some nuns found the child and took her to a convent where she survived the war. Freda’s parents also survived in hiding and reclaimed their daughter. The details of the rescue of Freda are not known. The family settled in Australia. Freda’s brother, Dr. Jack Felman, states: “An intense hatred of Poles and Germans was more than evident in our home. When my wife and I visited Poland in 1975 I can still vividly remember the intense hatred I felt for the 8 days I had to endure in this country. Although I acknowledge the fact, I find it unbelievable that there are so many Jewish survivors who re-visit this country. As a doctor, I have had to counsel a number of these people who were traumatised after going back to Poland. In my own case, my parents shuddered at the prospect of going back, even when I told them that my wife and I were going to visit Poland.”610 Chava Fefer, one of the last survivors of the German Aktion in Tarnogród, emerged from her hiding place in the emptied ghetto and turned to a friendly Polish family for help. Soon after she chanced on a young Pole who remained with her throughout the German occupation, enlisting the help of his sister, his parents, and a priest whose identity is not known. (K. Shimoni, “The Heroic Struggle of the Two Heroes, the Adler brothers,” in Book of Tarnogrod: In Memory of the Destroyed Jewish Community, Internet: Organization of Former Residents of Tarnogrod and Vicinity in Israel, United States and England, 1966], pp.373–80.) Chava Fefer was alone in her house, hiding under a bed. The Germans suspected that someone was still in the house and shot into all the dark shadowy corners and into the bedclothes. It was a great miracle that none of the bullets hit her. The house filled with feathers and the Germans were convinced that there was no longer a living soul there and in resignation left the house. Frightened and pale as death, Chava Fefer decided to creep out of her hiding place. She became aware that she was alone, the only survivor in the emptied ghetto. She barely took a step, shaking at every rustle. Suddenly she was startled. In a corner of the yard, near the gate, she noticed a figure, which stood as if pressed into the wall. She started to run away, but just at that moment she heard her name quietly whispered. The figure was her brother. They embraced each other arms in silence. They would have cried, but their eyes were all dried out. Their words stuck in their throats. They took each other by the hand and moved carefully, like people lost in a dark wood. She remembered the name of a Pole, a close acquaintance of theirs, whom she believed would save them. But at that very moment heavy soldier’s boots echoed through the empty street. They stood for a moment frozen with fear. Her brother panicked and without a word began to run back. In despair she wanted to call to him to go on with her, but he had disappeared from her sight and she ran on in a different direction, to the house of the Poles, in whom she placed so much hope. She finally succeeded in reaching this house. The people there, frightened by her appearance, stood in the open doorway, not knowing what to do. But they let her in and for three weeks hid her in their house. Her first request was that they find out what happened to her brother. Carefully the Polish people began to creep around every house in the ghetto, looking for a trace of the brother who had disappeared. After long searches they succeeded in finding out that on that same day, immediately after running back to the house, he poisoned himself. The Germans found him dead. Chava Fefer realized the danger in which the Polish people hiding her found themselves. These were good and honest people and she did not want to put their lives at risk. After about three weeks she fled into the woods. It was on a cold evening at the end of autumn, when, finding herself on the road to Czeplic [?], she suddenly spied a young man, a Pole, eighteen years old. Fear seized her…. Frightened, she looked around for an escape route. As she stood confused the young man approached her. He must have noticed that she was afraid. He began to calm her. His voice, his polite speech inspired trust. He introduced himself and told her his name was Frantiszek [Franciszek] Czapek. As long as he had lived, he said, he had never yet done anyone any harm, and she could be absolutely sure that nothing would happen to her. They walked along together and he told her the he belonged to the underground and so was forced to hide out at his sister’s house. She lived not far from the woods and he believed that she too could hide there. The young Pole did indeed bring her to his sister’s. There she was hidden for several days in the barn. Every evening the young man brought her bread and water. He was somewhat embarrassed at this and assured her that he too ate the same thing, because he was busy day and night working for the Polish underground. He smuggled weapons for the Polish partisans who were in the near-by woods. In all probability he took no money for this and therefore fed himself very poorly. He really did share his last morsel with the Jewish woman. After several days the young man announced that he had to go away. He was leaving for Central Poland, which at that time was separated off by a border and was called “General Government”. Chava Fefer saw no other way than to accompany him, since no one was left who could get her anything to eat. They set out together on the road and passed the border, and went on until they arrived at the village from which the young man came. For a short time she hid in his parents’ house. When it became dangerous, he reached an understanding with the parish priest, who agreed to hide Chava Fefer in the church. She stayed there until the Liberation, when the Soviet army took the village. The following testimonial bears eloquent witness to the sacrifice and selflessness of countless Polish rescuers, among them members of the clergy, whose identity will never be known. (Gilbert, The Righteous, pp.179–80.) Yehuda Bauer, a pioneer of research and writing on the Holocaust, tells a story from his personal experience in Israel after the war … ‘On my kibbutz,’ he writes, ‘there lives a man whom we shall call here Tolek. All he knows about himself is his name. He was born near Cracow [Kraków], or in Cracow, prior to World War II, and he was three when the war broke out. He was in an orphanage, probably because his father had died and his mother could not support him. A Polish woman took this circumcised man-child to her home and raised him there during the Nazi occupation, in alliance with a Catholic parish priest. When the Nazis came searching Polish homes for Jewish children, the woman used to hand over Tolek to the priest. Tolek still remembers how, at the age of five and six, he used to assist the priest at Mass, swinging the incense around, walking behind the priest through the church. They survived the war, and when liberation came, the woman took Tolek to a Jewish children’s home and said, “This is a Jewish child, I have kept him throughout the war, he belongs to your people, take him and look after him.” Tolek does not know the name of the Polish woman, nor does he know the name of the priest.’ Once the German occupation came to an end, as we have seen, priests who were entrusted with Torah scrolls for safekeeping, returned them to the remnants of the Jewish community. (Yehuda Weinstock, “Returned from the Red Army,” in Shuval, The Szczebrzeszyn Memorial Book, p.191.) Arriving in Lublin, after I was let go from the Red Army in the year 1944, … Lublin could be compared to a [prison] camp. The bombs fell on the side where the Nazis were. No people could be seen in the streets. I ran into single Jews and they told me about the terrifying fate that had befallen all the Jews of Poland. As a soldier in the Red Army, they invited me to the ‘Peretz House,’ where there were several hundred Jews—men and women, mostly partisans from the forests, a large number from out of the country, who were dragged by German fascists to the Polish camps to be killed. The day was precisely Hoshana Rabbah. The Jews made a pulpit out of stones in order to conduct services, and a Polish priest that had concealed 6 Torah scrolls, brought them to the ‘Peretz House.’ All of the several hundred Jews began to pray and prepare for the Festival Holiday.
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