Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy
Collective Rescue Efforts of Polish Christians
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Collective Rescue Efforts of Polish Christians
As for the accomplishments of Poles in rescuing Jews, the most comprehensive research regarding the Warsaw area is that conducted by Gunnar S. Paulsson. Paulsson has summarized some of his findings in an article entitled, “The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland,” which appeared in The Journal of Holocaust Education, volume 7, nos. 1 & 2 (summer/autumn 1998): pp.19–44. In the league of people who are known to have risked their lives to rescue Jews, Poland stands at the very top, accounting for more than a third of all the ‘Righteous Gentiles’. … Of the 27,000 Jewish fugitives in Warsaw, 17,000 were still alive 15 months after the destruction of the ghetto, on the eve of the Polish uprising in 1944. Of the 23,500 who were not drawn in by the Hotel Polski scheme, 17,000 survived until then. Of these 17,000, 5,000 died in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and about 10,500 were still alive at liberation. … As it happens, there is an excellent standard of comparison, because it is estimated that in the Netherlands, 20–25,000 Jews went into hiding—about the same number as in Warsaw—of whom 10–15,000 survived—again, about the same number. … The conclusion, then, is quite startling: leaving aside acts of war and Nazi perfidy, a Jew’s chances of survival in hiding were no worse in Warsaw, at any rate, than in the Netherlands. … The small number of survivors, therefore, is not a direct result of Polish hostility to the Jews … The Jews were deported from the ghettos to the death camps, not by Poles, but by German gendarmes, reinforced by Ukrainian and Baltic auxiliaries, and with the enforced co-operation of the ghetto police. Neither the Polish police nor any group of Polish civilians was involved in the deportations to any significant degree, nor did they staff the death camps. Nor did the fate of the Jews who were taken to their deaths depend to any significant degree on the attitudes and actions of a people from whom they were isolated by brick walls and barbed wire. … The 27,000 Jews in hiding in Warsaw relied on about 50–60,000 people who provided hiding-places and another 20–30,000 who provided other forms of help; on the other hand, blackmailers, police agents, and other actively anti-Jewish elements numbered perhaps 2–3,000, each striking at two or three victims a month. In other words, helpers outnumbered hunters by about 20 or 30 to one. The active helpers of Jews thus made up seven to nine per cent of the population of Warsaw; the Jews themselves, 2.7 per cent; the hunters, perhaps 0.3 per cent; and the whole network—Jews, helpers and hunters—constituted a secret city of at least 100,000: one tenth of the people of Warsaw; more than twice as many as the 40,000 members of the vaunted Polish military underground, the AK [Armia Krajowa or Home Army]. … How many people in Poland rescued Jews? Of those that meet Yad Vashem’s criteria—perhaps 100,000. Of those that offered minor forms of help—perhaps two or three times as many. Of those who were passively protective—undoubtedly the majority of the population. All these acts, great and small, were necessary to rescue Jews in Poland. A further study of this topic by Gunnar S. Paulsson appeared in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, volume 13 (2000), at pages 78–103, under the title “The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw, 1943–1945.” Paulsson wrote at pages 96 and 99: For the sake of comparison, the case of the Netherlands might be examined. There, 20,000–25,000 Jews are estimated to have gone into hiding, mainly in Amsterdam, of whom 10,000–15,000 survived the war. The overall survival rate in Holland was thus 40–60 percent, and in Warsaw, after levelling the playing field, notionally 55–75 percent. Thus the attrition rate among Jews in hiding in Warsaw was relatively low, contrary to expectation and contemporary perceptions. The main obstacles to Jewish survival in Warsaw are seen to have been the Hotel Polski trap and the 1944 uprising and its aftermath, rather than the possibility of discovery or betrayal. Despite frequent house searches and the prevailing Nazi terror in Warsaw (conditions absent in the Netherlands), and despite extortionists, blackmailers, and antisemitic traditions (much less widespread in the Netherlands), the chance that a Jew in hiding would be betrayed seems to have been lower in Warsaw than in the Netherlands. … it is clear that Warsaw was the most important centre of rescue activity, certainly in Poland and probably in the whole of occupied Europe. The city accounted for perhaps a quarter of all Jews in hiding in Poland … The 27,000 Jews in hiding there also constituted undoubtedly the largest group of its kind in Europe … See also the following studies by the same author: Gunnar S. Paulsson, “Evading the Holocaust: The Unexplored Continent of Holocaust Historiography,” in John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell, eds., Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of Genocide (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001), volume 1, pp.302–318; Gunnar S. Paulsson, “Ringelblum Revisited: Polish-Jewish Relations in Occupied Warsaw, 1940–1945,” in Joshua D. Zimmerman, ed., Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2003), pp.173–92 Gunnar S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002). Most Jews who survived the war hiding in Poland received assistance of various sorts from at least several persons, and often from a larger number of Poles. Most of that help was casual or short term, and very often came from complete strangers. That type of assistance is the least likely to be acknowledged since the benefactors are rarely known by name and no effort has been made by Holocaust commemoration and research institutions to identify them. The following survivors attest to their experiences in this regard:
Of the more than 500 Poles who came to the assistance of these fourteen Jews alone most remain nameless and only a few were ever awarded by Yad Vashem for risking their lives and those of their families. For example, after escaping from the ghetto in Czyżew, Etka Żołtak made her way to the village of Helenów where she was taken in by a farmer named Franciszek Świątkiewicz for two weeks, and then by another farmer, Jan Bogucki, for some ten days, before she moved on to Warsaw. The farmers were afraid to keep her longer. Their names are known only because Eta Żołtak recalled them when her testimony was recorded. The vast majority of such help has gone unrecorded and the benefactors will remain forever nameless.713 Of course, some Jews remained with the same protector throughout their entire period of hiding, and occasionally one rescuer (usually a family) sheltered several Jews. But even in these cases, the Jews often received assistance from several other persons along the way. Many long-term rescues were preceded by periods of wandering, during which occasional help such as food and temporary lodging was provided to the Jewish fugitives by a number of Poles. The following rescue stories, in addition to many cited earlier in this compilation, are representative of this phenomenon and belie the notion that farmers were anxious to denounce Jews wandering in the countryside:
As for the make-up and predisposition of Polish rescuers, Lawrence N. Powell offers the following astute observations: “There is a burgeoning literature on the sociology and psychology of ‘righteous gentiles,’ but the sociological literature is frankly inconclusive. Rescuers do not cluster on one or two rungs of the social ladder. They derive in almost equal proportions from the working class and the middle class, the peasantry and the intelligentsia, the educated and the unlettered. Nor are they conspicuously religious or unusually politically active. There have been attempts to identify them as social marginals, people who marched to a different drummer and were impervious to the good opinion of friends and neighbors. But, apart from a psychological ability to act independently of social norms, there is little evidence showing that rescuers were anything but organically embodied in the communities in which they lived.”726 Moreover, as is evident from memoirs from the Warsaw area, Powell noted: “Almost without exception Jewish rescue occurred within networks. Minimally, it required ten rescuers to save one Jew. … Several of these rescue operations were complex organizations, such as Żegota … But most underground railroads were informal and ad hoc, carefully woven webs of associates whose involvement started out gradually and then, before they realized what was happening, metamorphosed into major commitments. … The challenge of starting a rescue network, however, was knowing whom to trust. Which friends and relatives were reliable, who was discreet? Routine intimacies had to be reevaluated, well-worn social conventions sifted through for clues as to who combined the right mixture of empathy and discretion.”727 Contrary to what is often claimed in Holocaust literature,728 there are many recorded cases of entire Polish villages sympathizing with the Jews and participating in their rescue. Such rescue activities were simply unthinkable in Germany and Austria—no Jew would have survived the collective scrutiny of the local villagers in those countries. With rare exceptions, these Polish rescuers—and indeed the vast majority of those who extended assistance to Jews—have not been recognized by Yad Vashem. Emanuel Ringelblum recorded: “I heard from Jews of Glowno [Głowno] how peasants helped them during the whole of the winter. A Jew who went out to a village in search of food usually returned with a bag of potatoes … In many villages, the peasants showed open sympathy for the Jews. They threw bread and other food [through the barbed-wire fence] into the camps … located in their neighborhood.”729 Hercek Cedrowski, Tojwje Drajhorm and Jankiel Borkowski wrote in 1947: “The Jews of Ozorków maintained contact with the Poles. The Polish population did not help the Germans in the liquidation of the Jews. They traded with the Jews and brought food to the ghetto. The Jews were afraid of speaking with Poles, and Poles were afraid of helping Jews, but there were no denunciations of Jews.”730 Isadore Burstyn, as a boy of eleven, was able to survive through the kindness of people in the village of Głupianka near Otwock (outside of Warsaw), where he passed as a local boy and herded cows. He hid in the forest when his presence threatened the family with whom he often stayed and friends from the village would bring him food. “In my case the entire village sheltered me even though I know there were still about 20 per cent anti-Semites among them.”731 Abram Jakub Zand, a tailor from the village of Bolimów near Skierniewice, “stole back to his village; the local peasants welcomed him back, and he was passed from house to house, working a week or two in each. … ‘If I were to thank everyone, whole villages would have to visit me.’” Both he and his sister survived in this way.732 Shmuel Eliraz, then known as Ludwik Poznański, was born in Warsaw in 1935. Confined in the Warsaw ghetto with his parents, they arranged for their little son to be taken to safety, and entrusted him to his mother’s former nanny, Maria Walewska. Walewska was unmarried, had no children of her own, and after a long service to their family had moved to the village of Nowy Kawęczyn near Skierniewice. Shmuel became Wiesiu, Maria’s nephew. When she first brought the boy home, her neighbours were distrustful and suspected that she was hiding a Jewish child. However, they eventually left them in peace. He remained in the village under Walewska’s care for the rest of the war years.733 A Polish Red Cross worker gave over to a Polish couple by the name of Kaczmarek, themselves refugees from western Poland living in the town of Żyrardów near Warsaw, a young Jewish girl found abandoned in an empty death train: “Many of the neighbours knew that she was Jewish, yet no one informed.”734 Ten-year-old Estera Borensztajn was sheltered by the villagers of Osiny, between Żelechów and Łuków: “the peasants arranged among themselves that each would hide a Jewish girl for a certain period so that ‘everyone would be guilty and no one could inform.’”735 Sara Bryn took up residence in the village of Adamów with her young child, passing as a Christian by the name of Stefania Romaniuk. Although it was widely suspected that she was Jewish, and she was told as much, no one betrayed her.736 The Latoszyński family of Lendo Wielkie near Ryki took in 12-year-old Arthur Cytryniaz (later Citrin) from Warsaw as a farmhand, at the behest of his mother, who also hid in the vicinity under a false identity and visited her son from time to time. Although the boy had a good command of Polish, his mother’s Polish accent gave her Jewish identity away. Among the people on the farm it was never openly said that he was Jewish but everybody knew it.737 Henryk Prajs survived the war passing as a Pole in the village of Podwierzbie near Magnuszew where the fact that he was Jewish was widely known, with the protection of the head of the village.738 Hana Grynberg, who was just ten years old when she escaped from the ghetto in Kozienice in 1942, lived openly with the Polish Bratos family in the village of Trzebień near Magnuszew for some two years, where the fact that she was Jewish was widely known.739 In the small village of Bokowo Wielkie near Sierpc four Jews were rescued b y diverse Polish farmers.740 Mindzia Kirszenbaum (Mindze Kirschenbaum) was taken in by the family of Bolesław Topolewski in the village of Przeradz Mały near Bieżuń, where she lived openly for some two years and her origin was known to the villagers. Previously she had lived with various farmers in the villages of Sadłów, Września and Lutocin, where her origin was also known.741 After being smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto with her bother and wandering around villages working for farmers as shepherds, 12-year-old Ester Rotfing (later Livny) began working for the Jankowski family in the village of Młyniec(?). She remained with them until the end of the German occupation, even though many of the villagers knew that she was Jewish.742 After escaping from the Warsaw ghetto in August 1942, 13-year-old Chana Ajzenfisz and her ten-year-old sister Chaya wandered for two weeks from village to village, in the countryside north of Warsaw. Unkempt and dirty, they were readily recognizable as Jews by their appearance and accent but received food and temporary lodging from farmers on whose doors they knocked. When they arrived in the village of Krzyczki-Pieniążki near Nasielsk, about 50 kilometres from Warsaw, they were taken in by the extended Krzyczkowski family. The girls lived in the village openly, passed off as distant family members, for the rest of the war. Although the villagers were aware of their Jewish origin no one betrayed them.743 After marrying and converting to Catholicism, shortly before the war Władysław Gugla, a school teacher, settled in the village of Chociszewo, north of Warsaw, where his origin was widely known. He survived with assistance of a number of villagers who sheltered him, as he moved from place to place, teaching village children clandestinely.744 Yisrael Golos, then a 12-year-old boy, managed to escape from the ghetto in Ciechanów during an Aktion. He took on an assumed Polish identity and began to wander in the area, hiring himself out to do farm work in villages where he was not known. In early 1943, he arrived at the home of Stanisław and Maria Pajewski in the village of Mierzanowo near Grudusk. They hired Golos in return for room and board. One day a farmer from another village happened to arrive at their house. He recognized Golos and revealed that he was Jewish. “To Golos’s surprise, not only did his employers not treat him any worse as a result, they treated him even better. From that time on, the family took special precautions to safeguard Golos’s life and the neighbors demonstrated solidarity with the Pajewski family and did not inform on them to the Germans.”745 After escaping from a German camp, Margita (Miriam) Weiss-Löwy, a Czech Jew made her way to the farm of Józef and Maria Sadurski in Końskowola near Puławy. Although the neighbours were aware of her presence, she remained there safely until the end of the German occupation.746 A Jewish man by the name of Duczy lived openly, without any problems, in his native village of Tarzymiechy near Zamość throughout the entire war. He had always been on good terms with the villagers and was so well liked that he lived there safely, without fear of being betrayed to the Germans. He also arranged for several Jews to hide on the farm of a Catholic family in that village.747 The case of author Jerzy Kosinski and his parents, who lived openly in Dąbrowa Rzeczycka near Stalowa Wola, is another example. The Kosiński family attended church in nearby Wola Rzeczycka, obtained food from villagers in Kępa Rzeczycka, and were sheltered temporarily in Rzeczyca Okrągła. Other Jews were also assisted by the local villagers.748 A network of Polish families was instrumental in rescuing the 8-member Krüger (Krueger) family, consisting of parents and six children, from Sowina, a village located north of Jasło, and Jacek Klec, a tailor from the Warsaw area. The rescuers included two families from Sowina who were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles, namely, Stanisław and Anna Kopeć, and Jan and Kunegunda Frączek with their daughter, Adela Liszka, as well the Stasiowski and Hendzel families and others.749 Marcin and Maria Brykczyński had an estate in Skołyszyn, a village west of Jasło, where they lived with their four children. In 1940, they took in a Polish family who had been expelled by the Germans from Poznań. Feliks Sandauer, born in 1928, was brought there from Lwów by Maria Brykczyńska’s sister in 1941, and ostensibly passed as their nephew, Feliks Sawicki. Although word of this spread among the villagers, no one betrayed them.750 Józef and Józefa Marć hid at least twelve Jews in the attic of their house in Jedlicze near Krosno, among them many members of the Fries family. They were assisted by their son and the Zub family, who lived in the neighbourhood. Many inhabitants of the village were aware of this but no one betrayed them.751 Zila Weinstein-Beer (later Cipora Re’em or Zippora Ram), born in 1939, was taken in Maria and Stanisław Dudek of the village of Odrzykoń near Krosno. She was able to pass with the assistance of the local pastor, who baptized her, and the solidarity of the Dudeks’ neighbours. Most of the villagers knew where the little girl, the daughter of a local sawmill owner, had come from, but kept silent.752 Five Polish families in the neaby villages of Przybówka and Niepla, lying between Jasło and Krosno—Obara, Zajchowski, Stefanik, Pomprowicz, and Faryniarz—sheltered the Abraham and Regina Bigajer and their daughters, who also hailed from Przybówka.753 Several dozen Polish families sheltered Jews in the villages of Ropa, Moszczenica and Rzepiennik Strzyżewski near Gorlice.754 The entire village of Ciechania, located south of Jasło near the Slovak border, rescued a local Jew, who moved from one farmer to another.755 It was widely known that the young daughter of Reb Moshe of Grodzisko near Leżajsk was sheltered in an orphanage in that village run by nuns, yet no one betrayed her.756 Menachem Superman, who survived in the Rzeszów area, wrote: “the entire village knew that I was Jewish, but [my rescuer] always said to me that I shouldn’t be afraid, because no one will hand me over to the Germans.”757 The teenager Józef Leichter was hired as a farmhand by Jan Trojanowski, from Nowy Borek near Rzeszów. Although it was common knowledge in the surrounding villages that the boy was a Jew, the farmer allowed the boy to stay despite the danger. On the advice of the village headman, the boy did not venture out. Despite some threats, he was not denounced.758 Fifteen members of the extended family of Isaac and Leah Gamss were hidden from 1942 to 1944 in the attic of a farmhouse belonging to Stanisław and Maria Grocholski in the vicinity of Urzejowice near Przeworsk. The villagers knew the Grocholskis were hiding Jews because several members of the group called on a number of villagers to ask for food and it was the only house that in the winter did not have snow on the roof. Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, the daughter of one of the hidden Jews, states: “I would say it took a whole village of people for my mother’s family to survive.”759 Faiga Rosenbluth, a penniless teenage Jewish girl from Kańczuga, roamed the countryside moving from one village to the next for some two years; she was helped by very many peasants and was not betrayed, even though she was readily recognized as a Jew.760 Marian Gołębiowski, who was awarded by Yad Vashem, placed Dr. Bernard Ryszard Hellreich (later Ingram) and his future wife Irena Szumska, who went by the names of Zbigniew and Irena Jakobiszyn, in the village of Czermna near Jasło. Their presence was known to all the villagers and they enjoyed the protection of the owners and manager of a local estate.761 The Kądziołka family of Więckowice near Jarosław took in two siblings, Mojżesz and Blima Katz, from the neighbouring village of Czelatyce. They were joined by a third person, Mejer Blau, and were visited occasionally by the brother, Icek, who was welcomed to eat with them. The neighbours suspected that the Kądziołkas were hiding Jews but said nothing.762 Barbara Mikłasz, an elderly woman from Pruchnik near Jarosław, sheltered Elżbieta Roserman (born in 1940) at the behest of her parents, who were deported by the Germans. The villagers were aware of this as the child lived there openly throughout the occupation, and remained with her adoptive family after the war.763 The case of Doctor Olga Lilien, a Holocaust survivor from Lwów with a very marked Jewish appearance, who lived with a Polish family near Tarnobrzeg, is another example of solidarity among Polish villagers. A German came looking for a fugitive and summoned the villagers to a meeting to question them about his whereabouts. “Suddenly he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, but this is a Jewess.’ The head of the village said, ‘Oh, no, she cooks at the school. She is a very good cook.’ Nobody said, ‘Oh, well, she is Jewish. Take her.’ He let me go. The population of the village was about two thousand. They all knew there was something ‘wrong’ with me. Any one of them could have sold me to the Germans for two hundred deutsche marks, but out of two thousand people nobody did it. Everybody in the village protected me. I had very good relations with them.”764 The villagers of Czajków near Staszów were known for the support they gave to Jews who were hiding from the Germans: “it was something exceptional to see the humane way the villagers behaved. These simple people helped us of their own free will, and without receiving any money in return. From them we often heard some kind words, quite apart from the money, loaves of bread and boiled potatoes they gave us from time to time.”765 More than a dozen villagers have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles.766 Two Polish families in the village of Rytwiany sheltered the Mandel family, consisting of parents and their four children, from nearby Staszów, even though people in the village suspected them of hiding Jews.767 Many villagers in Głuchów near Łańcut were also engaged in sheltering Jews, and did so with the support of the entire community.768 An illiterate Jewish woman who survived in a village near Lublin acknowledged that “the entire village rescued me. They all wanted me to survive. And when the Germans were routed, I left the village and shall never return there.” When asked why she didn’t want to see the people who saved her life, she replied: “Because I would be beholden to the entire village. So I left and won’t return.”769 Marianna Krasnodębska (née Jarosz), whose family was awarded by Yad Vashem for rescuing thirteen Jews in Piaski near Lublin, stated: “With absolute confidence and with a clear conscience,” she states, “I can say that none of the residents of Piaski ever betrayed the Jews in hiding. They might have been too afraid to help, but would not sell one out. There were two informers, but they were executed by the Home Army.”770 The villagers of Wola Przybysławska near Lublin took turns sheltering and caring for a young Jewish girl who survived a German raid on a forest bunker. She was passed from one home to another, thus ensuring there wouldn’t be any informing.771 A Jewish woman named Berkowa (née Zelman) was rescued by Jan Łoś in the village of Żabno near Żółkiewka; although this was widely known, no one betrayed her. The Wajc family, consisting of Mendel and Ryfka and their two young sons, Jankiel and Zygmunt, survived in the village of Różki near Żółkiewka, where they were known to the villagers.772 Hershel Mostyzer and Sara Fuks were directed by a mailman to the home of his mother, Franciszka Rybak, in the village of Rogalin near Hrubiszów. Mostysser, a tailor by profession, did odd sewing jobs for his rescuer’s tenants and her neighbours in order to help support themselves. Despite some opposition because of the danger this created for the village, no one betrayed them.773 Moshe Frank, a teenager from Zamość, was taken in by a poor farmer in Dębowiec who lived in a one-room hut with his wife and sister-in-law. Upon learning he was Jewish, they consulted with relatives and friends about what to do, and decided to go on behaving as though Moshe were a Christian.774 Jakub Hersz Griner, an 11-year-old boy from Zamość, looking for a job as a farmhand, was taken in by a poor Polish family in Białowola. Although he posed as a Polish orphan named Grzegorz Pawłowski, his flawed Polish and behaviour gave him away. He had been wandering through the villages from one farmhouse to another. He remained with this family for about a year, and then worked for another family in this same village. News that the boy was Jewish had long spread in the village, but no one openly mentioned this. The boy remained in the village until liberation.775 A Jewish boy of seven or eight years named Abraham, who tended geese for a farmer near Sandomierz, was known to the peasants as “Żydek” (little Jew), and yet survived unharmed.776 The Idasiak family took in a teenaged Jewish boy by the name of Dawid, whom they sheltered for almost two years near Jedwabne. The neighbours were fully aware that he was Jewish and also helped him. He herded cows and played with the village children.777 A 9-year-old Jewish boy by the name of Wintluk (Wintel), who had lost his mother and three fingers when shot at by Germans while escaping, was taken in by a poor Polish family in Mulawicze near Bielsk Podlaski and then cared for and protected by the entire village who took pity on him: “The entire village, which was more aware of the danger, took responsibility for his survival. The village administrator gave warning of visits by the Germans, who were stationed in the village school. Thanks to this collective effort, the boy survived the war.”778 Alfreda and Bolesław Pietraszek sheltered several Jewish families consisting of 18 people on their farm in Czekanów near Sokołów Podlaski for a period of two years. Although they had to rely on the assistance of neighbours for food for their charges, no one betrayed them.779 Two young Jewish men were passed from farmer to farmer in the village of Zdziebórz near Wyszków and were eventually accepted into the Home Army.780 Yitzhak Kuniak from Kałuszyn hid among peasants for whom he was sewing secretly. He moved about in a few villages where he was fed and sheltered.781 A teenaged boy and his mother, who lived in a damaged, abandoned house in Drzewica where he openly played with village boys, survived the war despite his Semitic appearance.782 A poor Jewish tailor survived the war by being passed from home to home in the village of Dąbrowica near Ulanów.783 Jerzy and Irena Krępeć, who were awarded by Yad Vashem, sheltered and otherwise assisted a number of Jews on their farm in Gołąbki near Warsaw. Their son, a 14-year-old boy at the time, recalled: “the fact that they were hiding Jews was an open secret in the village. At times, there were 20 or 30 people living on the farm. Many of the visitors were urban Jews who spoke Polish with an accent. Their children attended underground schools that moved from house to house. ‘The neighbors knew. It would have been impossible to manage this without people finding out. But everyone knew they had to keep quiet—it was a matter of life or death.’” In fact, many of the Krępeć’s Polish neighbours helped, “if only to provide a meal.”784 Hinda Żaboklicka was rescued by Salicki family in the village of Złotokłos near Warsaw. The rescuers were her prewar teachers, who smuggled her from the ghetto in Kałuszyn and brought her to their home. They obtained false identification for her and kept her for the rest of the occupation, even though the neighbours suspected she was Jewish and some of them expressed concerns anout the risk this posed.785 After living in Warsaw on Aryan papers passing as a Christian, Joseph Dattner moved to a village outside Warsaw in May 1944. Working as a tailor to earn food, he moved from house to house sewing clothes. Dattner recalls: “I survived, like my brothers, by pretending to be Christian. I took the name Poluk but I was well-known and most people knew I was Jewish.”786 After leaving the ghetto in Jeżów, Nathan Gold received extensive support from Poles in the nearby villages of Przybyszyce and Słupia: “Some ten families in the villages took turns hiding him, each one not knowing about the other’s activities. They were poor people, many of the older ones illiterate, but all opened their hearts and their homes to him.”787 Ludwika Fiszer was one of three women who escaped naked from an execution pit where Jews from the Poniatowa labour camp were taken by Germans and their Ukrainian henchmen. Roaming from village to village, despite their dishevelled appearances, they received various forms of assistance, even though the peasants were clearly terrified of Ukrainian retaliation. Although most peasants were reluctant to keep them for any length of time, no one betrayed them, and several weeks later they met up with a Polish woman who took them to Warsaw.788 In June 1943, Hary (Tzvi) Norich, born in Chorzów in 1928, left the ghetto in Będzin and found shelter with Andrzej and Maria Skop in the village of Woźniki, south of Częstochowa. He stayed with the Skops for eight months, despite the fact that quite a few people from Chorzów could have recognized him as Jewish, and did a few times, and many people in Woźniki knew his parents, who had lived there for a while after their marriage, and saw their likeness in him. He decided to look for a different hideout so as not to endager the Skops, and survived the war with the help of another Polisg family.789 David Danieli, a 9-year-old boy from Rybnik, was taken in by a Polish family who looked after him devotedly and saw to all his needs. He later discovered that many people had known he was Jewish but had not denounced his adoptive parents.790 After escaping from the Sosnowiec ghetto, Adela Grünfeld and her son Leon took up residence in Bujaków near Bielsko-Biała, in the Beskid Mountains. She was recognized by Bolesław Blachura, a friend from before the war and underground member hiding in the same village with the Wawak and Porębski families. Adela Grünfeld brought many other Jews to the village, including her sister and brother-in-law. They stayed in the barn or in the attic, and only the boy Leon lived openly in the house. When asked about the danger of being denounced because of this large movement of people, Władysław Porębski answers: “I was only afraid of [being denounced by] Germans, not Poles, because one of them [the Poles] was in Auschwitz, another in forced labour, transported to Germany, another one was a partisan, yet another left in 1939 and never came back… These things united people.”791 Hania Gross was taken in by the Matlak family of Przeciszów, a village near Oświęcim, at the age of nine. She was passed off as a distant relative, but the neighbours soon began to suspect the child’s true identity. Despite the danger posed to their lives, the Matlaks continued to care for Hania as if she were their own. “They were afraid they might get denounced. Fortunately, no one did.” Hania lived a normal life, playing with other children, attending church – not in hiding at all.792 A Jew from Kraków by the name of Gelbart settled in the nearby village of Wyciąże with his wife and child. They survived the occupation by moving from cottage to cottage, providing tailoring services in exchange for room and board. Their presence was known to hundreds of people, yet no one betrayed them.793 Bogusława Lifszyc was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto and brought to the village of Laskowa near Nowy Sącz, where she was taken in by the Kraśny family. Although posing as a Catholic, Halina Pisz, her dark features made her stand out and the villagers suspected she was Jewish. However, no one betrayed her.794 Alter Szymszynowicz made soap for villagers near Opoczno and Końskie in exchange for food and shelter.795 In the village of Dziurków near Radom, a local Jew lived openly throughout the war with two Polish families under an assumed identity furnished by the Home Army, and even took seasonal employment with the Germans, without being betrayed.796 In the village of Tarłów, between Zwoleń and Sandomierz, Józef and Wiktoria Krawczyk agreed to shelter Ewa Górecka, the three-year-old daughter of a Jewish woman whom they did not know. They passed her off as their granddaughter, even though their two adult sons were childless and the neighbours knew she was not their granddaughter. They kept the child until 1949, when she was removed from them by deception.797 When a Jew passing as a Christian became a driver and had to transport some German officials to his hometown of Wierzbnik, he wondered “How come no one recognized me? There are many gentiles who knew me in the town where I was born and raised and still I was not exposed.” After the war he learned that many had indeed recognized him, but “kept their mouths shut.”798 The Konarski and Mermer families sheltered seven Jews who escaped from the Hassag labour camp in the attic of their house in the village of Komorniki, on the outskirts of Częstochowa, for a period of twenty-two months. Although their neighbours were aware of the rescue, no one betrayed them.799 In the village of Olsztyn near Częstochowa, four Jewish families passed as Polish Christians with the collusion of the villagers.800 After escaping from the ghetto in Częstochowa, Ignacy Jakobson and his colleagues joined a partisan unit near Koniecpol where they were assisted by a priest and a number of farmers in Kościelna: “the farmers in that village were most favourably disposed to us.”801 Another eyewitness writes: “In Kielce Voivodship I know of cases where an entire village knew that a Jew or a Jewess were hiding out, disguised in peasant clothes, and no one betrayed them even though they were poor Jews who not only could not pay for their silence but had to be fed, clothed and housed.”802 A similar attitude in several villages near Łowicz is described by Joseph Szmekura.803 Hanna Mesz, along with her mother, spent the period September 1944 to February 1945 in the village of Korzeniówka near Grójec, supporting themselves by working for various farmers who suspected they were Jewish.804 Zygmunt Srul Warszawer hid for 26 months moving from place to place among numerous villages, such as Wielki Las, in the triangle formed by Łaskarzew, Sobolew, and Wilga, “visiting every farm because he figured that if everyone helped him no one would turn him in—to do so would mean self-destruction.” No one turned him away empty handed during those 26 months: “‘No one ever refused to help you?’ ‘No, not food! In twenty-six months, not once. Sometimes they were afraid to let me into the house, or into the barn. It varied, but their food they shared.”805 Jankiel Grynblatt found shelter with farmers he knew in villages southeast of Żelechów, for whom he worked as a tailor. His presence there was known to other villagers who treated him well.806 The young sons of Janina Dulman, namely Jerzy and Władysław, whose mother had married a Jew and converted to Judaism before the war, were sheltered by her their aunt, Władysława Kaszubska of Żelechów, who was Janina’s younger sister. She hid them with different people in the surrounding villages until the liberation.807 Lea Starowiejska, a young girl from Warsaw with Semitic features, somehow managed to make her way to Żeliszew Podkościelny, a village lying between Mińsk Mazowiecki and Siedlce. She was taken in by Rev. Julian Borkowski, the local pastor, who taught her Catholic prayers so that she could play the part of a Polish orphan. The appeal for a Polish family to take her in was answered by the Górzyńskis, who cared for her like a daughter. They lived in the hamlet of Łęki. Everyone there was aware that the child was Jewish. No one betrayed them.808 Eva Safszycka, not yet 20 at the time, left the ghetto in Siedlce, obtained false identity documents with the help of a Pole, a stranger she happened to encounter, and took a position as a domestic on an estate owned by a Pole. She recalled: “I met with so much kindness from the Poles, so many were decent and helpful that it is unbelievable. … They hid other Jews, one of them a girl of eleven.”809 Tema Rotman-Weinstock from the Lublin area presents a similar story. Dressed as a peasant, during the last stage of the war she roamed the familiar countryside moving from employer to employer, most of whom were hungry themselves and found it hard to feed her. She met a cousin who lived with his wife in a bunker in the forest, but he refused to let her join them. Once when she was on the verge of collapse, kind peasants took her into their home. After a month, afraid to keep her, they directed her to a woman who lived on a farm with her daughter in the village of Kajetanówka. She remained there until the liberation, even though the word had spread that she was Jewish. “Fortunately, no bad consequences followed because she found a powerful protector in the local priest. He baptized Tema and defended her … ‘The priest stood up for me, arguing that conversion was a wonderful Christian deed.’”810 Rina Eitani (11 years old at the time) and her mother and sister (10 years old) supported themselves by smuggling farm goods from the countryside to Warsaw. They worked separately to lessen the risk of discovery. While the Germans were ruthless toward smugglers, the natives treated them kindly: “One day I was buying something in a store. A little girl came in, warning me, ‘The Gestapo are in the house where you live.’ Right away, the owner of the store, a woman, put me in the cellar. She wouldn’t let me go until the Gestapo left. … We stayed a lot in the villages where we bought the produce. The peasants were nice to us. They would feed us and sometimes, in exchange, we worked for them.”811 Chava Grinberg-Brown, who hailed from the village of Wiskitki, roamed the countryside near Żyrardów for the final years of the German occupation: “…at the end of each day, I would beg people to let me come in and sleep. I remember that once someone gave me a place to stay and offered me chicken soup … In another home, one of the women gave me medication for my skin condition. They knew that I was Jewish … it was obvious. As I wandered from one little place to another, people fed me and let me sleep in their homes or close to them; in barns, pigstys, etc.” When a Pole who recognized her wanted to turn her in, “Some peasants who realized what he was after threatened to give him a beating he would never forget. That stopped him from bothering me.” Her story continues: “I went to the place I had worked before [the war]. I stayed there for a few days. After that, I kept moving from one place to another. Some refused me work. Then a peasant offered me a more stable job. … I remained with this peasant for most of the summer. Then I left and went to another village. I went from one village to another. Even during the summer I would change places. When the Poles sent me away, I was not angry. I understood that they were afraid or had not enough food and could not share the little they had. I did not particularly feel their anti-Semitism. … Most people knew right away when I came in that I was Jewish, but they did not harm me. Only a few times did I have to run away. … When I entered a village I would go first to the head of the village, and he would send me to a peasant. Usually they were not afraid if they had a note from the head of the village. … I have no bad feelings toward the Christians. I survived the war thanks to them.”812 A 31-year-old barber named Zimler, who wandered with his wife in the Wiskitki area near Żyrardów in 1941, cutting hair for farmers, wrote that “the attitude of the farmers to us was extremely good.” The farmers in various villages such as Oryszew, Wyczółki and Janówka, allowed them to stay in their homes, gave them food, washed their laundry, and even invited them to a wedding.813 After escaping from the Warsaw ghetto, the teenage brothers Zwi and Józef Ditman from Wisktiki wandered the villages in the area, looking for a place to stay, until they were taken in by a family in the village of Skrzelew.814 A number of Jews were sheltered in another (unnamed) village outside Warsaw, with the knowledge of the entire village, and no one was betrayed.815 Józefa Grzegorek of the village of Nowa Wieś near Sochaczew took in a Jewish girl from Zwierzyniec by the name of Jadwiga, whom she sheltered from 1942 until 1945. The entire village was aware of this, but no one betrayed the girl.816 Franciszka Aronson, from a village near Mińsk Mazowiecki, wandered from village to village, including villages where she was known, begging for food before she was taken in by nuns at a convent in Ignaców.817 Brindla (Bronka) and Mojżesz Siekierka and their two sons were sheltered by the family of Bronisław Bylicki in the village of Żwirówka without compensation. Stanisława Roś, a friend of Brindla’s, brought them food and money for fuel on a regular basis, and Brindla would make the rounds in surrounding villages begging for food.818 Dr. Zofia Szymańska, who was sheltered by the Grey Ursulines in Ożarów, received material care and an abundance of spiritual comfort from many nuns and priests, without any effort on their part to convert her. News of her stay was widely known to the villagers but no one betrayed her, not even when a German military unit was, at one point, quartered in the convent. Her 10-year-old niece, who had a very Semitic appearance, was sheltered by the Sisters of the Immaculate Virgin Mary in Szymanów, along with more than a dozen Jewish girls. All of the nuns were aware that their young charges were Jews, as were the lay staff, the parents of non-Jewish children and many villagers. None of the Christian parents removed their children from the school despite the potential danger, and in fact many of them contributed to the upkeep of the Jewish children. Dr. Szymańska wrote: “The children were under the protection of the entire convent and village. Not one traitor was to be found among them.”819 Another example is provided by Mary Rolicka, whose mother, one other Jewish woman and two Jewish men were sheltered by the Sisters of Charity, with the assistance of their chaplain, Rev. Albin Małysiak, in the Helcel Institute in Kraków and later at an old age home in Szczawnica. Rev. Małysiak recalled: “All of the charges of the institute as well as the personnel (nuns and lay staff) knew that there were Jews hidden among us. It was impossible to conceal that fact, even though it was known what danger faced those who were responsible for sheltering Jews. After the passage of weeks and months many of the residents of Szczawnica learned of the Jewish boarders. No one betrayed this to the Germans, who were stationed in the immediate vicinity.”820 Henryk Schönker recalled that when he was fingered in Wieliczka by a boy who started to chase him, the passers-by ignored the boy’s cry to “catch the Jew.” No one made an effort to apprehend him. One of the onlookers seized the boy and admonished him.821 Marian Małowist, who survived the war in the village of Jabłoń near Parczew, said: “The family with whom I lived knew everything about me—in fact, two families knew. After the war it came out that more families knew, and also the chief of the navy-blue police, a Pole, a very decent person. Juliusz Kleiner was hiding in the neighbourhood; in the next village there was a Jewess; in that area many were hiding.”822 Jewish partisan Gustaw Alef-Bolkowiak identifies the following villages in the Parczew-Ostrów Lubelski area as ones where “almost the entire population was actively engaged in helping fugitives from the ghettos”: Rudka, Jedlanka, Makoszka, Tyśmienica and Bójki. He also states that in the village of Niedźwiada near Opole Lubleskie, the foresters sheltered several Jewish families with the knowledge of the entire village.823 The Pinkies family was rescued by the villagers of the hamlet of Czyżyczka of Gierczyce near Bochnia.824 About one hundred and fifty Poles were killed in mass executions in the villages of Białka in the Parczew forest and Sterdyń near Sokołów Podlaski for extensive help given to Jews by those villages.825 More than a dozen villagers in Mętów near Głusk, outside of Lublin, sheltered Jews.826 Survivors from Sokoły recall: “The village Landowa [Lendowo near Brańsk] had a good name among the Jews who were hiding in the area around Sokoly, and they regarded it as a paradise. Many Jews began to stream there. … there wasn’t a house in Landowa where there weren’t three or four Jews.” (Liba Goldberg-Warobel) “Finally, we came to the village of Landowa [Lendowo]. … we knocked on the door of a house, not far from the forest. An old farmwoman brought us into the house. … I remained alone with the old farmwoman. … Over time, it became known to all of them that I was not related to her family and that I didn’t even know Polish. The farmwoman did not hesitate to admit that she had adopted me, a Jewish girl, as her daughter. … The farmwoman began to teach me Christian prayers, and on Sundays I went with her to church. … The goyim, residents of the village who knew I was Jewish, did not hand me over to the Germans.” (Tzipora Tabak-Burstein)827 Another survivor writes: “This village Lendowo became a refuge for a lot of wandering Jews, they called this village the Garden of Eden. … here they opened wide the doors without having any fear. Soon there were Jews in every house.”828 Several Jews, among them Ida Lewartowska and her daughter, were hidden in a forest bunker near the village of Leńce, just north of Białystok. The villagers in the area from Nowe Aleksandrowo, Dobrzyniewo Fabryczne and Letniki knew about these Jews, but no one denounced them.829 Szymon Datner recalls how his Jewish partisan group “Forojs,” consisting of escapees from the Białystok ghetto, were assisted by many villagers in Dworzysk. Among those mentioned as offering food and shelter to the partisans were Alfons and Stefania Radziwanowski and the Sławiński and Kuklik families. The entire village was aware of this assistance, and no one betrayed the partisans or rescuers.830 Rywka Chus and her husband, a grain merchant from Ostrów Mazowiecka, were protected by the villagers of Króle Duże who respected and helped them survive the war.831 Kalmen Wewryk describes the assistance he received, after his escape from Sobibór, from numerous peasants as he wandered from village to village in an area south of Chełm populated by decent but frightened Catholic Poles and some Ukrainian Baptists. A family of five Jews hid in Teresin near Chełm: “Everybody in the hamlet knew that this family was hiding, but nobody knew where and they didn’t want to know. Moishe told me how they were loved in that hamlet—there were decent people there.”832 A teenager, Marian Finkielman wandered the villages in the vicinity of Dubeczno where he was employed as a farmhand by various farmers: “In 1941 and 1942 many young Jews wandered from village to village, offering their services in exchange for room and board. The peasant farmers knew who they were, and for some time took advantage of their help, just as the farmer in the village of Kozaki benefited from my situation.” In Kozaki, “Luckily, during my stay there from April through July 1942, … none of the inhabitants of the village, Ukrainians or Poles, informed of Jurek’s [a Jewish boy from Warsaw who also worked as a herdsman] or my existence. It seemed that there were no informants in this village …”833 Cypora Frydman, the daughter of a mill owner in Nowy Orzechów near Ostrów Lubelski, hid in a hut near a lake. She recalled: “All the peasants in the village knew me because all of them used to come to our mill, but not one of them denounced me even though everyone knew I was hiding near the lake. Sometimes they gave me bread for free, sometimes a little milk … I used to return from the village late at night and hid in my hut.”834 The villagers of Kubra near Radziłów (in the Białystok District) did not betray the family of Helena Chilewicz when the Gestapo came looking for them in July 1942, and she and her mother survived the war penniless moving from village to village.835 Mirla Frydrich (Szternzys), from Żółkiewka, was shot in the thigh when she jumped from a train headed for the Bełżec death camp. A Pole who happened to be driving by took her in his carriage and nursed her back to health with the help of another Pole. When Mirla returned to Żółkiewka she received assistance from a number of Poles in several nearby villages.836 About 12 miles outside Lwów, Abraham Trasawucki, dressed only in rags, jumped from a death train headed for Bełżec in the middle of winter. Although he was easily identifiable as a Jew on the run, the villagers did not betray him, rather he was offered temporary shelter, food, clothing and money at two random Polish farmsteads, and given rides in the wagons of other Poles. He was sold a train ticket by an official, allowed on the train by a guard who checked his ticket, and not denounced by the passengers, even though everyone recognized him as a Jew.837 Ryfka Goldiner, a newborn at the time, was sheltered by Stanisław and Helena Wiśliński in Bełżyce near Lublin. Although the villagers were aware of her origin no one betrayed them. The local priest did not agree to formally baptize the child in the event her parents survived the war. In fact, they did survive and reclaimed their daughter.838 Luba Hochlerer, ten years of age, lived openly with Józef and Bronisława Zając in the hamlet of Witoldów near Wojsławice, where she attended village school, yet no one betrayed her.839 Irena Sznycer, a Jewish girl with strikingly Semitic features, who was sheltered by a Polish woman in the village of Bełżec, recalled shortly after the war: “I was well cared for by that lady and was not afraid of anything. Although the neighbours knew I was Jewish, this lady had no enemies so nothing [bad] could happen.”840 Julia Pępiak of Bełżec agreed to shelter Bronia Helman, the young daughter of her former neighbour and friend, Salomea Helman, something that became widely known in the village. The child remained with Pępiak and was reclaimed by her mother after liberation.841 According to three separate testimonies of Jewish escapees from the death camps of Treblinka and Sobibór, they “walked about the villages” and were “known to everybody,” including the farm-hands and school children, without being betrayed.842 After escaping from Treblinka, Szymon Goldberg made his way to the villages of Kukawki, Basinów and Kiciny, just beyond Łochów, where the farmers protected him. He recalled: “There were good people, they helped, they gave me food.”843 Mieczysław Grajewski, who escaped from the Treblinka death camp, recalled the help he received from peasants: “I was free. I walked to a village. … I knocked to ask for bread. The peasants looked at me in silence. ‘Bread, bread.’ They saw my red hands, torn jacket, worn-out slippers, and handed me some hard, gray crusts. A peasant woman, huddled in shawls, gave me a bowl of hot milk and a bag. We didn’t talk: my body had turned red and blue from the blows and the cold, and my clothes, everything proclaimed Jew! But they gave me bread. Thank you Polish peasants. I slept in a stable near the animals, taking a little warm milk from the cow in the morning. My bag filled with bread.”844 A Jew from Serock (north of Warsaw) who escaped from a German execution site badly wounded, was cared for by very many villagers where he sought refuge.845 Izaak Zemelman of Płock recalled the assistance provided by a large number of Polish families in the nearby village of Sikórz where he and his family took shelter: Stawiski, Romanowski, Górski, Danielak, Adamski, Kłosiński, and others.846 Some Jews came to realize that their guise as Christian Poles was not as foolproof as they had believed, but this had not caused them to be betrayed. A Jew who called on farmhouses in the Urzędów area, pretending to be a Christian, recalled: “I would cross myself, bless Jesus Christ, and ask for something to eat. I had made up a story in case questions were asked. Most farmers were not talkative. Viewed suspiciously, sometimes I would be given soup or bread and asked to leave quickly: sometimes I was just told to go. Later it dawned on me that I was crossing myself incorrectly, touching my chin rather than the chest.”847 In 1942, Jerzy Mirewicz, a Jesuit priest, escorted a Jewish fugitive by train from Biłgoraj to Milanówek near Warsaw, so that he could join members of his family who were being hidden by a Christian family. Even though the priest had permission to travel, officials were constantly checking the papers of passengers. When the train reached Dęblin, a policeman came into the car and demanded to know if his companion was a Jew. Fortunately for the priest and the fugitive, the whole compartment came to their rescue by insisting that priest was escorting a “lunatic” to a hospital asylum.848 Irena Bakowska, then a teenager, was part of a group of six Jews being smuggled from Warsaw to the countryside: “We entered into a single train compartment occupied already by the Christian Poles … We were greeted in a friendly manner, and the man sitting by himself moved over and sat with his four companions. … The conductor, a Christian Pole, entered the compartment to check the tickets. … we uncovered our armbands to identify ourselves. I watched the reaction of the Christian Polish passengers with great apprehension. ... But the attitude of the Christian passengers was sympathetic and not at all hostile. They started talking with us, and urged us to throw away our armbands and our Jewish identity. … Those five people seemed truly to care about my survival, repeating over and over again that I could be saved and survive as a Pole. They persuaded me that all Poles did not hate us, did not wish us to perish.”849 A Jewish lawyer was able to continue his practice in Mielec, in defiance of a Nazi ban, with the collusion of the town’s entire legal profession, until he was denounced by a fellow Jew, first to the Gestapo and then to the Justice Department.850 In the village of Czajkowa near Mielec, where the brothers Zygie and Sol Allweiss were sheltered by the family of Maciej and Zofia Dudzik, neighbours who lived around the Dudzik farm were aware that Jewish boys were hiding there but chose not to betray the family: “In the village, if one knows something, everyone knows,” the rescuers said. “They were our neighbors and they were good people.”851 Menachem Kuperman, then a young teenage boy, wandered into the village of Borki Nizińskie, north of the town of Mielec, without any documents. He entered the home of Eugeniusz Pieróg, a farmer whom he had never met before, and introduced himself as a Polish boy looking for farm work. Pieróg agreed to take him on as a farmhand. One day, when they were collecting wood in the forest, they came across German soldiers. Pieróg warned Kuperman not to approach them and on the way home said to the boy, “Did you think I didn’t know you were Jewish?” In time, Kuperman learned that not only did Pieróg know that he was Jewish but that there were others in the village who suspected his true identity. Whenever Kuperman became frightened that someone in the village would inform on him, Pieróg cheered him up, telling him not to fear because he had no enemies who would harm him in the village. Kuperman remained with Pieróg unharmed until the war ended.852 The Jewish Social Self-Help organization in the town of Proszowice near Miechów, in November 1941, solicited food supplies from 20 Polish estates in the vicinity fot the soup kitchen in the ghetto; 19 owners promptly responded, promising produce free of charge.853 In the village of Goszcza near Miechów, everyone was aware that Jews, some of them with a marked Semitic appearance, were being sheltered yet no one betrayed them.854 After fleeing the Szczucin ghetto during its liquidation, Shiyer Mutzenmacher ran to the farm of Anna and Stanisław Jaje in nearby village of Lubasz. Everyone in the village knew that a young man of Jewish descent was hiding in the Jajes’ house, but nobody denounced him. He did tailoring jobs for the neighbours and other villagers, which contributed to the household expenses.855 Similar reports come from the villages of Gałuszowice and Chrząstów near Mielec.856 In the latter village, it was widely known among the villagers that the Markowski family was sheltering the Verstandig family, and several other Polish families were also hiding Jews.857 In Majdan Nepryski, west of Tomaszów Lubelski, several families sheltered a young Jewish girl thrown from a train headed for Bełżec.858 A teenage boy with a Semitic appearance, the son of a Jewish beggar woman, lived openly in the village of Głowaczowa near Dębica, with the Polish farmer who had taken him in, without being betrayed.859 In Grodzisk, a small community just outside Warsaw, an elderly Jewish teacher married to a Polish Catholic woman was able to live openly with his wife throughout the war: “Everybody knew my uncle was Jewish but no one reported him to the Gestapo.” This family took in other Jews, also without incident.860 A foundry in Wołomin, outside of Warsaw, engaged a Jew whose appearance and manner of speaking readily gave him away, yet no one betrayed him.861 After receiving a great deal of sporadic help from Poles as he wandered in the countryside around Garwolin, Meir Herc was introduced, through a Jewish friend and his Christian intermediary, to a farmer in the village of Jagodne who agreed to shelter him for payment. Herc was one of six Jews the farmer hid in his pigsty. Herc was able to pay for his upkeep with the money he received from various Poles to whom he had entrusted his property. The money was collected by an intermediary and delivered to Herc. The entire group of six Jews survived this way for 23 months. Meir Herc writes: “I only survived thanks to more than a dozen Poles who sold our goods and would send the money to me. They even knew the village in which I was hiding but did not betray me.”862 The most frequent form of assistance was, however, casual assistance for short periods of time offered by many fearful but courageous Poles whose names will never be remembered and whose deeds are largely forgotten. A Jew from Zabłudów made an effort to recall the numerous Poles who helped him to survive the German occupation in the Białystok District: “We heard the shooting and immediately went to the path leading to the village we knew very well. Some farmers gave us flour, barley, and butter … Early in the morning they took us through the path where we could go to Bialystok [Białystok] … [The Nazis] kept hitting me until I fainted. … I dragged myself to the road; some Christians that stood there and saw me started crying. … Other [Jewish families] went through back ways to the village to get some food. I managed to get a job from Vintzig Volnetzvick, the Christian … His son-in-law, Chashick [Czesiek], promised me that if I stayed with him I wouldn’t have to work for the Germans … One day Vinchick, the Christian that I lived with drove me to Bialystok … Zabludow [Zabłudów]’s Jewish women went to the Christian’s field to get some potatoes for the winter. … We hid in Vinchik Velosoviches barn deep in the hay … The helpful Christian’s wife came to the barn begging me to leave. “There were whispers in the city that you were not seen among the people in the wagons, saying that you are probably hiding.” She asked that I pity her, because if I would be caught her family will be held responsible, and they will be punished severely. I was able to convince her to let me stay until Sunday. … I came to Novosad [Nowosady] village, I knew a good Christian there. My appearance scared him, and immediately he told me about the order that they have to bring any Jews without delay to the Nazi headquarters. “I have to be very careful,” he said. He gave me some food and took me to a place behind the barn where I could escape. When evening came I arrived at a new village. I had a friend there … He too took me in courteously and brought me food, but refused to let me stay. Fearfully he gave me food quickly and begged me to leave, I continued my wandering … later on I had the opportunity to find shelter in an agriculture farm of Christian people I knew. I left the place when they told me that the Germans were hunting the area and were planning to sleep in their house. I wandered all night through fields and forests until I got to Baranke [Baranki] village, where my father used to live. A farmer, a good acquaintance that we knew from the past took me in nicely. I shaved and bathed; they even provided me with clean clothes. I hid in the side section of the house where no one lived. … I stayed in the forest until the evening, and then I came back to the Christians. The Germans were not in the village anymore, but the farmer didn’t let me stay and take the risk. I wandered again, and soon I got to another agriculture farm and stayed there a couple of days. The farmer didn’t allow for me to stay with him; he was afraid the children might talk and risk giving me away. From there I moved to a farm near Araje. … The farm’s owners gave me shelter. I knew his son from the old days where we were both captured by the Germans. For a while I was able to rest. When the Christians’ holiday came I took part in the ceremonies, and I acted like them. … In the forests there were a lot of Russian partisans … When I realized that the Nazis raided around the farm where I was staying I decided to escape. … I got to a big village by the name of Zavick [Zawyki]. I slipped away secretly to the barn and laid there until the morning. The barn’s owner found me, but he was a good man who was ready to help. He took me to his house, fed me, and helped me hide. It was a secret basement under the dining room. … the Nazis searched the village and came to the farmer’s house. … They were looking for Jews and partisans. … I stayed in the hiding place for a few days. I was asked to leave by his wife who had started to cry, saying that I was putting her family in danger. “I’m a mother of six children,” she said. “If they’ll find out that I am hiding you they will kill us. I’ll give you food and drink and be on your way. Have pity on us, and save your soul.” I promised that I would leave that night. … I got to the previous farm from which I had escaped. The frightened Christian told me that the night I escaped the Nazis searched the house and barn. … It was dangerous to stay in the village, where to go? I decided to go toward Bialystok. On the way I stopped at different villages. … The Christian who told me the news was ready to leave the next morning with his wagon to bring food to Bialystok. I asked him to take me with him in his wagon. His wife gave me bread and fat. We left early in the morning so that nobody would see me. … When we approached Bialystok the farmer got scared and asked me to get off the wagon. I got off, raised my collar and continued by foot …”863 Other examples of communal assistance by Poles in central Poland include: Niedźwiada near Opole Lubleskie; an entire street in the city of Przemyśl was aware of a Jewish hideout; Runów near Grójec; Janina Tarnowska, a school teacher in Gorzyce near Dąbrowa Tarnowska, sheltered a Jew from Tarnów by the name of Birkam, whom she held out to be her cousin—the villagers were aware that he was a Jew but no one betrayed him; Przydonica, Ubiad, Klimkówka, Jelna, Słowikowa, and Librantowa near Nowy Sącz; Rakszawa near Łańcut.864 Additional examples include: two villages near Parczew865; Piszczac near Biała Podlaska and nearny Kolonia Dworska866; villages near Lublin867; Mchy near Krasnystaw868; villages near Skierniewice, Rożki near Krasnystaw, villages near Zamość, villages near Radzymin, and villages near Otwock.869 Several Polish families in the villages of Bobrowa, Wola Bobrowska, and Nagoszyn near Dębica sheltered various members of the Knie family. Among the rescuers from Nagoszyn recognized by Yad Vashem are Michał Dygdoń and Józef Cholewa. Although a number of villagers became aware of the Jews’ presence, no one betrayed them.870 People readily recognizable as Jews who spoke poor Polish were able to survive in the Western Polish countryside, an area that was incorporated directy into the German Reich, without being betrayed: “[Alexander] said that he had gone through the war with a false identity. It sounds like a joke with his Yiddish accented Polish, with his looks. ‘I presented myself as a Lithuanian, I had no papers, I had no money, but I was young and strong. … I escaped westward, to the Poznan [Poznań] region where Jews were hardly known. I worked in the village, at the farm of somebody … He didn’t pay me anything. … What matters is that he fed me, gave me some rags to wear, and I lived like a king.’”871 Even when neighbours were displeased with the fact that they were put at risk because of the Jews sheltered in their midst, and justifiably fearful of German retaliation, this did not necessarily result in denunciations, as is shown by several cases.872 Nor did public executions of Polish rescuers bring rescue activity to a hault.873 Assistance by Polish villagers in Eastern Galicia and in Volhynia was also plentiful. Jewish historians Tatiana Berenstein and Adam Rutkowski list several examples of help extended by entire rural communities. In Kretowce near Zbaraż, Tarnopol voivodship, “several dozen Jews were able to move about almost freely because the whole village shielded them from the Nazis.” In Woronówka near Ludwipol, Volhynia, “the collusion of the peasants was cemented by blood ties: every villager was either a Kuriata or a Torgoń. The peasants in Kościejów, in the vicinity of which ran the railway line leading to the extermination camp at Bełżec, tended to Jews who jumped out of the ‘death trains.’ They not only brought them food and clothing but also sent word to Jews in the nearby village of Kulików to come and fetch the heavily injured immediately; the rest were taken by the peasants themselves to Kulików under cover of darkness. In Bar [near Gródek Jagielloński] villagers supplied a group of 18 Jews hiding in the neighbouring woods with food; they came into the village at night for their provisions and thanks to this help were able to hold out until the area was liberated by the Soviet Army.”874 Several Jews were sheltered by Polish villagers in Święty Stanisław near Stanisławów. No one betrayed them.875 One of the rescued Jews praises the “noble attitude of the entire population, without exception, of the Polish village of Bar” (near Gródek Jagielloński), who helped more than twenty people hiding in nearby forests to survive.876 In the Polish village of Czukiew near Sambor, a farmer hid 18 Jews, who were not betrayed although most of the village knew about them.877 Almost every Polish family in the hamlet of Zawołocze near Ludwipol, in Volhynia, sheltered or helped Jews. None of the Jews were betrayed.878 Jews hiding in the forests in the vicinity of Berezne (Bereźne) near Kostopol, Volhynia, received extensive assistance from Polish villagers and partisans.879 A number of Jews were sheltered in the Polish colony of Święte Jezioro near Olesk, some of them living there openly. Their presence was also known to Poles living in nearby villages. The villagers also provided food to Jews living in the forests.880 Polish villages in the vicinity of Korzec, Volhynia, helped Jews hiding in the forests.881 After leaving the home of a Ukrainain Baptist family in the village of Charałuh, Haya Tessler, her brother Israel and their nephew Mordechai Tennenbaum, all from Międzyrzecz Korecki, “got to a village where Poles lived … we stayed in their midst for a while, and when they decided to abandon the village for the safety of the dense forests, … we joined them.”882 A report about the village of Stara Huta near Szumsk, in Volhynia, states: “The people of a small Polish village named Stara Hota [sic] welcomed a group of Jews to stay and hide in their homes. The Ukrainians found out about the Jewish presence in the village. They informed the Germans right away. The Poles had managed to help the Jews run into the fields, but they were all caught and killed during their escape.”883 Dawid Sasower recalls: “near Zaturne [near Łuck], there was a Polish village in which about twenty Jews lived. In the daytime they worked in the fields and at night the Poles gave them rifles so that they could protect themselves from the banderovtsy [Ukrainian nationalist partisans].”884 Regarding conditions in Kozowa, a small, predominantly Polish town near Brzeżany, Bronia Beker (née Rohatiner) states: “My aunt didn’t have to hide. She was so well loved and respected by all because she always helped the poorest of the poor, that while she was walking around freely, living among the ruins nobody gave her away. … The people in the town also made sure she had food at all times.”885 Samuel Eisen, a teenager who survived in the forest near Tłuste, recalled: “We had no money, but in the village nearby lived a lot of Poles who knew us and were good to us. They were afraid to hide us but they gave us food.”886 Maria Fischer Zahn, who hid near Zborów, stated: “Everybody in the neighborhood knew we were hiding, but nobody told the Germans. The people in Jezierna were good people. They didn’t give us away. They helped us with food. We couldn’t have survived without them.”887 Shlomo Berger, who passed as a Pole in a small town near Czortków, working for Tadeusz Duchowski, the Polish director of a company, recalled: “I rented a room in Niźniów with one of the Polish workers. I learned from him that the man who was in charge of the office was the son of a judge who was a Jew who had converted to Catholicism. The son was probably raised as a Christian, but by German criteria he was still Jewish. The people at the office knew who he was, but nobody said anything.”888 A number of Jews were sheltered by Polish villagers in Ułaszkowce near Czortków.889 Markus Lecker, who joined up with a large group of Jews living in a forest bunker in the vicinity of Borszczów, describes their relations with a Polish settlement that provided them with food: “The colony … consisted of six houses with six Polish families living there. … These 6 Polish families were the main support for us Jewish outcasts who lived in the bunker. We used to go to the Polish colony at night and exchange whatever we had left for food … But I must say these Polish colonists did supply us with some food … even if we didn’t have what to give them in return …”890 Hundreds of Jews were helped by Polish villagers in Biłka Szlachecka,891 about 20 kilometres east of Lwów, and in Hanaczów and Świrz,892 about 40 kilometres east of Lwów. More than 200 Jews were sheltered or helped by Poles in Hanaczów.893 Even though their presence was widely known, the Polish villagers did not betray them. Of Ostra Mogiła near Skałat Jewish survivors wrote: “The people in this village were friendly to the Jews and provided them with whatever they could. … Twenty-nine Jews survived in Ostra-Mogila.”894 One of the Jews stated that of the ten houses on the street where his rescuers, the Firuta family lived, almost everyone had sheltered Jews and that the entire street merited recognition.895 Other examples of communal assistance by Poles include: Władysławówka near Swojczów896; Konińsk near Sarny, Pańska Dolina near Dubno, Świnarzyn near Dominopol, an entire street in the city of Przemyśl was aware of a Jewish hideout, the vicinity of Bereźne near Kostopol, Woronówka near Ludwipol, Obórki, Wólka Kotowska near Łuck, Przebraże897; Zdołbunów, Adamy, Huta Brodzka 898; Konińsk near Sarny899; Blizhov (“I must say that these peasants treated us fairly well. In the area of Blizhov there were no attacks or denunciations of Jews.”), Netreba, Okopy, Dołhań, and Borowskie Budki (or Budki Borowskie) near Kisorycze (“in the village of Netrebe [sic], tens of Jews from Rokitno and the area found shelter. They were helped by the villagers who not only did not harm them but also hid them near the village during the day. At night they took them to their homes. Many Jews survived there until the liberation by the Red Army. In the Polish village of Budki some Jews survived ... In the same area, in the Polish village of Okopi [sic], some tens of Jews were saved thanks to two special individuals… the Catholic priest [Rev. Ludwik Wrodarczyk] and the village teacher. The priest used to give sermons to his followers telling them not to be involved in the extermination of Jews. He asked them to help the Jews to survive … The village teacher also had compassion for the unfortunate Jews. Their suffering touched her heart and she helped in any way possible. She was killed by a Ukrainian gang on the way from the village of Rokitno where she was helping a Jewish family. The priest was burned alive in his church.”), a village near Snodowicze (“in a Polish village near Snodovich [Snodowicze], we found a few Jewish families working in the houses and fields of the villagers”)900; after escaping from the ghetto in Rokitno, Rachela Sznuler moved from village to village surviving by sewing for farmers901; Huta Sopaczewska near Sarny, and Polish villages near the village of Berezołupy near Rożyszcze (“When I arrived in the Polish village, someone told me that five kilometers from there, here was another Polish village where I might find my brother … I went there and asked the farmers about him. They told me where to go, and I found him in a forest, with a group of six other Jews. … They too had spent the winter in the forest, and at night they had brought potatoes and bread from the Polish village. … I was accepted by an older couple … My brother also got a job with another Polish farmer, about four kilometers from the village where I was. … I stayed with that farmer for almost a year, until the Russians freed our area in April 1944.”)902; Karaczun near Kostopol (where both the Polish underground and Polish villagers were extremely helpful to Jews who hid in the forest), and Huta Stepańska903; Karaczun near Kostpol904; a village near Horochów905; Kurdybań Warkowicki, Bortnica, Pańska Dolina, Żeniówka, all in Volhynia906; a Polish village in the vicinity of Międzyrzec near Równe, Volhynia907; Przebraże and Huta Stepańska, in Volhynia908; Tresteniec, a Polish settlement near Aleksandria in Volhynia where all the villagers knew about and assisted the sisters Cypa and Rywa Szparberg and their father909; Głęboczyca, Volhynia910; Rakowiec and Hołosko Wielkie, both near Lwów911; Adamy near Busk912; near Żeniów (“The few Jews of Gliniany who saved their lives were hiding in the woods near Zeniow [Żeniów]. The Polish peasants of that village supplied their food.”)913; Dzwonica, Huta Pieniacka, Huta Werchobuska near Złoczów914; Horyhlady or Horyglady near Tłumacz, and Wojciechówka near Skałat915; Horyhlady or Horyglady near Tłumacz, and Wojciechówka near Buczacz916; Matuszówka near Buczacz917; Dźwinogród near Buczacz918; Nowosiółka Koropiecka near Buczacz919; Wojciechówka near Buczacz920; an unnamed village near Buczacz921; Hucisko Olejskie (or Huta Olejska) near Oleska (“It is a Polish village … The gentiles were also very kind. We were there. We slept in barns. We slept here a day, here a day, here a night.”)922; the Polish village of Hucisko near Brzeżany, a Home Army base.923 Spontaneous assistance was much more frequent than is often assumed, as illustrated by the following additional examples. Michael Zipper and his cousins, Maria Goldhirsh and her daughter Ruzia (later Rose Slutzky), and Fella Sieler were among the thirteen Jews, including five children, hidden in a forest bunker near the predominantly Polish village of Zabojki near Tarnopol, for a period of eight months. According to Rose Slutzky, “The whole village kept us a secret, and when they could, they shared some food with us. … good Polish people who gave us a bit of food, when they themselves were hungry.”924 A group of 28 Jews took refuge in the forests near their hometown of Skała Podolska, on the River Zbrucz, in Tarnopol voivodship. They turned for food and other supplies to a Polish colony known as Mazury: “There was a small village at the edge of the Skala [Skała] forest, called Mazury. … I vividly remember the late June of 1943, when my two cousins and I, along with a handful of other young men and women, escaped to the forest during a week-long rainy weather spell. We were cold, wet and starving for days. Our first ‘meal’ in the forest, was a slice of cold corn pudding we all shared, that my cousin, Nechamia Stock of blessed memory, brought from the Mazury colony after sneaking out of the forest and knocking at the door of a Polish colonist, a total stranger. Later that summer, my cousin Malcia Rothststein (nee Stock) made a deal with a woman colonist to knit sweaters with wool provided by her in exchange for bottles of milk, a rare luxury at the time. In the fall of 1943, after German troops raided our section of the forest, killing scores of Jews, we decided to build underground bunkers for the winter. The Mazury colonists were those who lent us the necessary construction tools—saws, picks, shovels and hammers—no questions asked. Those tools eventually made our survival possible! Regretfully, the names of those individual Polish colonists lie buried in the graves of the survivors who dealt with them at the time, but their deeds are still remembered with gratitude.”925 In October 1942, after the liquidation of the ghetto in Zdołbunów, the Germans and Ukrainian militiamen combed the town to locate any signs of survivors: “[Fritz] Germ would point to a certain house, always one occupied by Polish citizens, and the guards would crash through the door or a window, emerging with a family and the Jews whom they had hidden. The fate was the same for the rescuers as it was for the Jews. This occurred at four or five different homes.”926 Irene Gut Opdyke, a Polish rescuer recalled: “There was a priest in Janówka [near Tarnopol]. He knew about the Jews’ escape—many of the Polish people knew about it. … Many people brought food and other things—not right to the forest, but to the edge—from the village. The priest could not say directly ‘help the Jews,’ but he would say in church, ‘not one of you should take the blood of your brother.’ … During the next couple of weeks there were posters on every street corner saying, ‘This is a Jew-free town, and if any one should help an escaped Jew, the sentence is death.’”927 The warning soon became a terrifying reality when the town square in Tarnopol “was choked with a milling, bewildered crowd. SS men abruptly pushed me into the middle of the square, just as they had the others, with a command not to leave. A scaffold had been erected in the center of the square, and what appeared to be two separate families were slowly escorted through the crowd to the block. A Polish couple, holding two small children, were brought up first, followed by a Jewish couple with one child, all three wearing the yellow Star of David. Both groups were lined up in front of dangling nooses. They were going to hang the children as well! Why didn’t somebody do something? What could be done? Finally, their ‘crimes’ were announced—the Polish family had been caught harboring the Jewish family! Thus we were forced to witness the punishment for helping or befriending a Jew.”928 Public executions of Poles who had helped Jews became commonplace in an effort to instil fear into the population.929 About twenty residents of Berecz, in Volhynia, were killed during a pacification of that Polish settlement by Ukrainian police in November 1942 for assisting Jews who had escaped from the ghetto in Powursk (Powórsk).930 In Huta Werchobuska or Werchobudzka (near Złoczów) and Huta Pieniacka (near Brody), the Polish villagers were simply annihilated and their homes and farmsteads burned down in German pacifications (the primary perpetrators were the SS Galizien forces) brought on in part by long-standing assistance provided to Jews.931 Feiwel Auerbach, a Jew from Sasów, made the following deposition shortly after the war: “There were 30 of us [Jews] in the forest. We hid in Huta Werchobuska and Huta Pieniacka. The Polish inhabitants of those villages helped us. The peasants were very poor and were themselves hungry but they shared with us their last bits of food. We stayed there from July 1943 until March 1944. Thanks to them we are alive. When there were manhunts, the village reeve warned us. Once 500 Germans encircled the forest, but since they were afraid to enter deep into the forest they set their dogs on us. We were saved because our Polish friends warned us of the impending danger. Because of a denunciation [by the Ukrainian police] all of the villagers of Huta Pieniacka and Huta Werchobuska were killed. Some of them were burned alive in a barn. The village was burned to the ground.”932 In Polesie (Polesia), a largely Belorussian area, Kopel Kolpanitzky describes the helpfulness of the residents of Zahorie [Zahorze], a small village of Polish Catholics three kilometers from Łachwa, which the Germans later burned to the ground.933 There were also many examples of collective rescue in northeastern Poland. Shulamit Schreyber Żabinska, a teenage girl who was sheltered by Poles in the Wilno countryside, recalled that many Poles brought food to the ghetto, “otherwise everyone would have starved to death. It was dangerous, and people were shot for this.” After escaping from the ghetto she was taken in by Weronika (“Wercia”) Stankiewicz and her mother, passing as Wercia’s niece. Although the villagers knew she was Jewish no one betrayed her.934 Similarly, Estera Bielicka was taken in by the Myślicki family in Matejkany where she lived openly. Although the villagers knew about her Jewish origin, no one betrayed her.935 After miraculously surviving a mass execution in Ponary, Ita Straż wandered in the countryside without documents near Nowa Wilejka, Witaniszki and Gajluny, sewing for farmers in exchange for food. A pharmacist survived in the vicinity of Kiemieliszki by healing sick villagers and livestock.936 The neighbours of a Polish family in Białozoryszki near Wilno were aware that that family was sheltering a Jewish boy.937 Pola Wawer, who hailed from Wilno, recalled the help she and her parents, Don and Dr. Maria Komaj, received from all of the inhabitants of the hamlet of Zameczek, north of Wilejka, who consisted of the families of five cousins, the Aloszko and Nieścierowicz families.938 Chana Mirski (later Hana Shachar), born at the end of 1939 or early 1940, 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. Stanisław and his wife Katarzyna had the child baptized, as their own. Given her age at the time, it would have been apparent to the priest, even if he had not been not told, that the child was likely Jewish. The birth and baptismal certificate facilitated the cover-up. Their neighbours also figured out that the sudden new addition to the family was a Jewish child, yet no one denounced them.939 Another Jew from the Wilno region recalled the assistance he and his father received from the villagers of Powiłańce on a number of occasions: “The village was composed of some forty houses strung out side by side on a single street. Each house was inhabited by Poles, but my father knew many of them and had done favours for them in the past. At each house, we knocked and explained our plight. Only a few turned us down … Very soon our wagon was filled with butter and eggs and flour and fresh vegetables, and my father and I wept at their kindness and at the realization that we had been reduced to beggars. The people of Powielancy were so generous … Now we sent out a food gathering group each evening to beg in the neighbouring villages where most of the people felt kindly toward us. One of the villages in this area was Powielancy whose people had filled our cart with food when father and I had come from the Radun [Raduń] ghetto. They helped us again most willingly for they sympathized with our plight.”940 Meir Stoler, who escaped the German massacre of Jews in Raduń on May 10, 1942, managed to reach the tiny Polish hamlet of Mizhantz [Mieżańce], where the villagers took him in and gave him food.941 The village of Mieżańce is mentioned in other accounts as friendly to the Jews.942 Murray Berger of Wsielub near Nowogródek attests to receiving extensive help from numerous villagers from December 1941, when he left the ghetto, until he joined up with the Bielski unit the following year.943 Sarah Fishkin of Rubieżewicze left a diary attesting to repeated acts of kindness by villagers in that area.944 The Krepski family of Helenów near Stołpce sheltered Shimon Kantorowicz for two years. Even though almost the entire village was aware of this, no one betrayed them.945 Jews passing as Christians in Warsaw have reported that they unexpectedly ran into many Poles whom they knew without being betrayed: “I often met people I knew who either looked at me without greeting me, or greeted me with open sympathy. … Occasionally, I did not even realize that the person I met knew me.”946 Marcus David Leuchter, who lived in “Aryan” Warsaw for more than two years, attested: “Having escaped from the Ghetto [in Kraków], I assumed a Polish gentile identity. While everybody around me knew, or at least suspected, that I was a Jew, nobody betrayed me.”947 Henryk Grabowski, the famed liaison officer between the Polish and Jewish underground who smuggled scores of Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto, often used his small, crowded home in Warsaw to hide Jews—something that was widely known to his neighbours.948 Edward Reicher, who resided with a group of Jews on Waliców Street in Warsaw, recalled: “Petty incidents led us to quarrel constantly and without dignity. We fought not just with words but also with our fists.” He continues: “It was obvious that we were living there, but days, weeks, and months went by and nobody denounced us, even though the entire apartment complex, which was home to several hundred people, knew of our presence. Even the Polish prostitutes who received German clients in the same building did not betray us.”949 An entire apartment building in the working-class district of Mokotów in Warsaw was aware that an extended Jewish family, some of them Semitic-looking and speaking Polish poorly, resided in their midst.950 The journalist Rafał Praga and his wife were sheltered by Franciszek and Klementyna Olbrychski in their apartment on Nowogrodzka Street in Warsaw. Although Rafał Praga had a distinctly Jewish appearance and used to frequent a nearby café, no one betrayed them even though their Jewish origin was common knowledge.951 Fryderyka Godlewska (Szulemit Karmi), then a 6-year-old child with obvious Semitic features, was taken in by the Domański family of Warsaw and passed off as their daughter. The entire tenement house in Mokotów was aware of this but no one betrayed them.952 Another such Warsaw tenement house was located at 11 Wielka Street, as well as the boarding house on 45 Morszyńska Street.953 A Jewish woman who had to find new lodgings in Warsaw for herself and a friend with a Jewish appearance recalled: “Maria’s physician paid a house call, bringing some medication and an injection. It was only one of several visits for which he never asked payment or information of any kind. … We combed the neighborhood, asking in the storefronts if there might be a room to let. We gave many in those streets occasion to wonder about the two forlorn young women, one with a black-and-blue face. But no one denounced us a Jews or escapees from the ghetto. In fact, one morning the owner of a barber shop on Rakowiecka Street offered Maria his shop to stay in. All he asked was that she come late and leave early, before his help arrived.”954 Fanny Gothajner and her teenaged son lived with the Słowakiewicz family on Powsińska Street in the Czerniaków district. Many of the residents of the apartment buiding were aware she was Jewish, but no one betrayed her; in fact, they were favourably disposed.955 Employees of the Warsaw Department of Social Services were heavily involved in the rescue of Jewish children, placing hundreds of them in Catholic convents. “Once we were informed that two boys were hidden in a cubbyhole in [the suburb of] Praga. One of them was running a high fever and it was imperative to move them. A nun took the sick boy on a streetcar and he started to scream out something in Yiddish. The driver was astute enough to sense the danger and yelled out: ‘This streetcar is going to the depot. Everyone out.’ At the same time he signalled to the nun that she and the boy should remain.”956 A Jewish woman who was being pursued by a blackmailer in Warsaw turned to the conductor of the streetcar she had boarded with a plea, “‘Sir, that man is an extortionist and he’s persecuting me.’ Without hesitating, the conductor went over to the intruder and slapped him twice across the face.” In the ensuing confusion, she managed to jump off.957 Tomasz Prot, who was accepted into the Stefan Czarnecki Boarding School for Boys in Warsaw run by the Central Welfare Council, wrote: “At that time my looks were very characteristic. I was a dark-haired boy, the features of my face were clearly Semite. … seeing my looks … would hardly have any doubts on me being a hiding Jewish boy. Nevertheless, during my stay at the school, … none of the teachers, nor even my schoolmates made me feel that they knew I was Jewish.”958 Feliks Tych, a historian at the Jewish Historical Museum in Warsaw, who survived the war as a teenager, recalls: “Not infrequently, I would see individuals on the tramway or on the street who were, rather doubtless, Jews, looking about themselves anxiously, but no one paid attention to them, or rather pretended not to. … For most of the time I was in hiding, I lived with my adopted family in the Warsaw suburb of Miedzeszyn. The neighbours could not have not known that several Jews were hidden in that building. No one was denounced. They all survived.”959 A network of Poles in the Warsaw suburb of Żoliborz was engaged in finding rooms among trusted persons for Jews passing as Poles.960 As one Jew remarked, “in the small houses in Warsaw’s Żoliborz district inhabited mostly by the Polish intelligentsia there were hidden many Jews who had escaped from the ghetto. I was in such a home which belonged to a known prewar Endek [nationalist]. Having learned that he was sheltering two Jewesses I asked with surprise: ‘You who before the war were an anti-Semite are now harbouring Jews in his home???’ He replied: ‘We have a common enemy and I am fighting in my way. They are Polish citizens and I have to help them.”961 Almost all of the Jews who survived the uprising, numbering at least several thousand, were evacuated along with the Polish population to a transit camp in Pruszków, some 20 kilometres away. As historian Gunnar Paulsson points out, these included people who had a conspiculously Semitic appearance and had previously lived under the surface. Along the way, there were many opportunities for hostile Poles to spot and denounce them. However, no concrete evidence has come to light of Jews being betrayed during this exodus. Nor is there evidence that any Jews perished in Pruszków as a result of denunciation by Poles.962 There were also many Jews among those injured during the uprising that were taken to the make-shift hospital in nearby Podkowa Leśna. All the patients were treated with great care and devotion by the Polish doctors and nurses without distinction. There is no record of any betrayals by fellow patients or personnel.963 Jews hiding in larger cities outside Warsaw also reported favouravle experiences. Helena Ziemba, one of several Jews rescued in Kalinowszczyzna, a suburb of Lublin, stated that many Poles knew she was being hidden and some even brought food to her hideout. A Polish housekeeper who had an illegitimate son by her Jewish employer was not betrayed by anyone.964 An entire street in the city of Przemyśl was aware of a Jewish hideout which was not betrayed.965 Nine Jews lived behind a false wall in an attic of a flour mill in Tarnów for two years. Some of the Jewish men used to leave the hideout at night to forage for food. It is unclear how many Poles knew about the Jews in hiding, yet not one of them denounced the Jews to the Germans. Israel Unger, one of those hidden there as a child, at first estimates about ten: “Who knew about the Jews in the attic? I am not sure even to this day. Probably the Dagnans, and the Skorupas, and the Drozds. … Likely about ten non-Jewish people knew about the Jews in hiding and no one told on us.” However, later Unger learns that the existence of the hidden Jews was an open secret among the Poles who worked at the flour mill.966 Mordecai Peleg, who was passing as a Pole, remained in his native Tarnów for a time and then returned on several occasions. He was not betrayed by anyone even though he was well known: “Among the Poles, as it turned out, I had no enemies and no-one bothered me.”967 Henryk Meller hid for a time on the Aryan side of Kraków, where he was one of the street children who sold cigarettes for a living. According to his testimony, he made enough money to allow himself to dress properly and eat well and even attend the cinema in the evening. The local Polish youths viewed him as an equal, and if they were short of stocks they would shout to him, “Jew-boy, give us a Sport” (the brand of cigarettes). They knew he was a Jew but respected him and did not inform on him.968 Poznań, a stronghold of the anti-Semitic National Democratic (Endek) Party, relations with the Jews imprisoned in the Stadion labour camp in 1941–1943 were amicable. Samuel Bronowski, who appeared as a witness in the trial of Arthur Greiser, Gauleiter of the so-called Wartheland, made the following deposition before the Supreme National Tribunal: “The only help possible was aid in kind by supplying food. In the camp we received 200 grams of bread and one litre of turnip soup per day. Obviously, those who had no help from outside were bound to die within a short time. A committee was formed in Poznań for the collection of food. This was no easy matter since everything was rationed under the food coupon system. Many a time, we received bigger parcels which reached us secretly at the construction sites where we worked and met the Polish people. Parcels were also thrown into the camp by night. It is not easy to describe the attitude of the civilian population outside the camp—to say that it was friendly, would be too little. There was marked compassion. There has not been a single case in Poznań of a Pole who would betray a Jew escaping the camp. There has not been a single case on the construction site of a foreman striking a Jew without immediate reaction on the part of the Polish co-workers. Those Jews who survived did so only thanks to the help from the Polish population of Poznań.” Maks Moszkowicz, another inmate of the Stadion labour camp, stated in his deposition for Yad Vashem: “I wish to stress that the behaviour of the Polish population in Poznań towards us, the Jewish prisoners, was very friendly and when our labour battalions were coming out of the camp, people—mostly women—waited for us in the street in order to throw us food in spite of severe interdictions and punishment.”969 Similar stories come from other German camps. After the war, when representatives of the Jewish Committee went looking for Jewish children who had survived hidden with Polish farmers and in convents, their main source of information were Poles. As Izajasz Druker stated, “When I began my work with the [Polish] army rabbinate in 1945, Jews were returning from all points and reporting that while visiting family villages and town they had heard of Jewish children who had been saved by peasants. During the war one could not talk about this, but after the war people talked about this openly. I then began an operation to find these children, and this became my main work during the years 1945–49.”970 Ethnic Poles played a prominent role in rescue activities on interwar Lithuanian territories. Nine Polish families (consisting of 18 people) from the predominantly Polish county of Giedraičiai (Giedrojcie) were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles,971 as well as some Poles from largely Polish Kėdainiai (Kiejdany) county.972 A Jewish woman from Butrimonys (Butrymańce) recalled the widespread assistance of the local Polish minority: “Parankova [Parankowa] became known among us unfortunate Jews as a Polish hamlet where nobody would hand you over to the murderers; ‘to me Parankova is truly the Jerusalem of Lithuania’.”973 Other survivor accounts mention Butrimonys (Butrymańce),974 villages near Stakliškės (Stokliszki),975 Keleriškiai near Kaišiadorys (Kieleryszki near Koszedary),976 Telšiai (Telsze),977 and various other localities.978 Yüklə 7,11 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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