Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Recognition and (In)Gratitude
Szymon Datner, long-time director of Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute:
“In my research I have found only one case of help being refused [by nuns]. No other sector was so ready to help those persecuted by the Germans, including the Jews; this attitude, which was unanimous and widespread, deserves recognition and respect.”⁹⁷⁹
Yehuda Bauer, Israeli historian:
“Nor was the Catholic clergy any help at all. With some very honorable exceptions, the clergy by and large not only echoed the antisemitic sentiments, but led them. … Against the background of church antisemitism in an overwhelmingly Catholic country, the action of the Uniate archbishop of Lwow [Lwów], Count Andreas Szeptycki, who ordered his clergy to save Jews despite his antisemitic views, stands out. So do the actions of the Ursuline sisters, and other individual monastic houses and occasional village priests.”⁹⁸⁰
“… from the perspective of most Jews, interwar Poland was an oppressive regime and could hardly demand loyalty from its badly treated Jewish population.”⁹⁸¹
Statements by Jews rescued by Poles:
“I do not accuse anyone that did not hide or help a Jew. We cannot demand from others to sacrifice their lives. One has no right to demand such risks.”⁹⁸²
“Heroism is something extraordinary, something that one cannot demand from anybody, something, moreover, that cannot even be expected. An individual becomes a hero not because this is what is demanded of him, or even less so because that is what he is forced to do. Heroism is a matter of personal decisions and personal courage. And if someone complains that there were not very many righteous heroes, he should think of whether he himself would have acted heroically in the opposite situation: what would you have done if somebody else, rather than yourself, had been sentenced to extermination. Would you have come running to save him at the peril of death? This is an abstract question, essentially a rhetorical one, but I think it needs to be asked all the same. Even though there is no answer to it, for heroic deeds are done in particular, for most part unpredictable situations.”⁹⁸³
“Everyone who states the view that helping Jews was during those times a reality, a duty and nothing more should think long and hard how he himself would behave in that situation. I admit that that I am not sure that I could summon up enough courage in the conditions of raging Nazi terror.”⁹⁸⁴
One Polish Jew who often asked this question of Jewish survivors recalled: “The answer was always the same and it is mine too. I do not know if I would have endangered my life to save a Christian.”⁹⁸⁵
“I am not at all sure that I would give a bowl of food to a Pole if it could mean death for me and my daughter,” a Jewish woman admitted candidly.⁹⁸⁶
A Jewish woman who was rescued as a child by a poor Polish family: “Today I would like to talk about my saviors and about the great heroism it requires to give the same amount of food to a third child who isn’t yours. Even at times of great hunger they shared each slice of bread—which was so rare—into three equal parts. I have three children and I don’t know if in the same circumstances I would be able to give my child less in order to feed someone else’s child. It is the greatest heroism one can ever imagine.”⁹⁸⁷
“Today, with the perspective of time, I am full of admiration for the courage and dedication … of all those Poles who in those times, day in, day out, put their lives on the line. I do not know if we Jews, in the face of the tragedy of another nation, would be equally capable of this kind of sacrifice.”⁹⁸⁸
“And what right did I have to condemn them? Why should they risk themselves and their families for a Jewish boy they didn’t know? Would I have behaved any differently? I knew the answer to that, too. I wouldn’t have lifted a finger. Everyone was equally intimidated.”⁹⁸⁹
“I’m not surprised people didn’t want to hide Jews. Everyone was afraid, who would risk his family’s lives? You can accuse the ones who kept a Jew, exploited him financially, and later gave him away or killed him. They’re murderers. But you absolutely can’t blame an average Pole, I don’t know if anyone would be more decent, if any Jew would be more decent.”⁹⁹⁰
“We did survive thanks to some Polish people. And we are grateful to the Polish Home Army, the leaders, the people directly involved with us who saved many other Jewish people, poor people, without any compensation. Risked their own lives, and I said it before, could anyone of us? Try to inspect my own soul. Could I do the same thing what those Polish people did? I honestly don’t know. I was never a hero. Maybe I’m a coward, I don’t know. But they were heroes in my eyes, they were.”⁹⁹¹
“When I later traveled in the world and Jews would talk to me about how badly Poles behaved with respect to Jews, that they didn’t hide them, I always had this answer: ‘All right, they could have done more. But I wonder how many could one find among you, the Jews, who would hide a Polish family knowing that not only you, but your children, your whole family, would get shot were you found out?’ After that there was always silence and nobody said anything more.”⁹⁹²
“To tell the truth, I don’t know whether today … there are many Jews who would do the same for another nation. We were another nation …”⁹⁹³
“As for the Poles: I do not bear a grudge because many of them did not want to incur danger for us [Jews]; I do not know how we would have behaved [towards them].”⁹⁹⁴
“When we come to Poland with Israeli youth and I tell them about what happened during the war, I say to them: ‘I know that if I had to risk my own life, and my family’s, for a stranger, I probably wouldn’t have the courage to do so.’”⁹⁹⁵
“I say this without needless comments, because I’ve been asked before: If I had a family I would not shelter a Jew during the occupation.”⁹⁹⁶
“If I were in their place, would I act like them [i.e., his Polish rescuers]? This is the question that I have been asking myself from the days of my youth, and until this very day I have not come up with an answer. I believe that even if I were to give a positive answer to this question, it is most doubtful if I would act accordingly, were I to find myself in a similar situation as the Righteous Among the Nations.”⁹⁹⁷
Leon Lepold, who, like his future wife, survived with the assistance of Poles in southeastern Poland, took issue with those Jews who blamed the Poles for the Holocaust. “If not for the Poles, none of us would have survived …. A lot of Polish people were murdered, hung, shot, and had their homes burned because they were hiding Jewish people. … It would be opposite … Jewish people wouldn’t do that for the Polish people.”⁹⁹⁸
Hymen (Chaim) Federman was one of three brothers rescued by a Polish family in the village of Borów near Działoszyce. In the 2004 documentary Hiding and Seeking: Faith and Tolerance after the Holocaust, when asked whether he would have undertaken the risk that his Polish benefactors did, Hymen Federman answered that he would not have done so.
“One must pay tribute to those Poles who lost their lives rescuing Jews. Moreover, one cannot blame those who did not rescue Jews. We should not forget that one cannot demand heroism from ordinary, average people. True there are times and causes that demand heroism, but only certain individuals can aspire to that. One cannot harbour ill-feelings towards or have grounds for complaining about someone for not attaining that level.”⁹⁹⁹
“I always protest when I hear that Poles did ‘too little.’ How can one judge people who found themselves in such a difficult situation? Human nature is such that one is concerned foremost about one’s own life and the lives of close ones. It is their safety that is the most important thing. One has to have great courage to risk death – one’s own and one’s children – in order to rescue a stranger. To require this of ordinary people terrorized by the occupiers is to ask too much. The Jewish people themselves didn’t pass that test either. Who knows how many heroes like the Polish Righteous would be found among the Jews.”¹⁰⁰⁰
“Would Roman risk his own life now to save others? ‘It’s funny that you should ask that question,’ he said, ‘because when I teach the children, sixth graders, and I tell them how Maria saved my life, I say to the children, ‘How many of you would be willing to risk your life to save someone else, knowing that if you’re caught you’ll be put to death?’ And, of course, after hearing my story, many of them say, ‘Oh, we would, Mr. Frayman, we would.’ But I say, ‘Put your hands down. Let me tell you honestly, if someone asked me if I’d do it, my honest answer is, ‘I don’t know.’ Would I be willing to sacrifice my children, my grandchildren, I don’t know. You don’t know that until you are in that circumstance. I don’t know how gutsy I am.”¹⁰⁰¹
Other survivors:
“‘Now you see why we hate the Polacks,’ one survivor concluded her account, in which she presented many instances of Poles’ help. There was no word about hating the Germans.”¹⁰⁰²
“The Wanderers were among the luckiest Jewish families in town. Both parents and the girls survived the war. They were hidden successively by several Polish families. After the war, the Wanderers emigrated to America. I sent the Wanderer sisters information about the Regulas, one of the Polish families in whose house on the outskirts of Brzeżany they had hid after the Judenrein roundup. I hoped that they would start the procedure of granting them the Righteous Gentiles award, but nothing came of it. … When I called Rena, the older one, and asked whether a young Polish historian, a colleague of mine who was doing research in New York, could interview her for my project on Brzeżany, her reaction was curt and clear: ‘I hate all Polacks.’ … Rena advised me not to present the Poles in too favorable a way ‘for the sake of our martyrs.’”¹⁰⁰³
Liwa Gomułka, the wife of Communist leader Władysław Gomułka, “refused to see an old Polish woman who had hidden her during the Nazi occupation and had come to her for some small favour.”¹⁰⁰⁴
After his escape from the German death camp in Sobibór, Stanisław Szmajzner took refuge with a Polish family, where he survived the war, and settled in Brazil. Characteristically, Szmajzner said the following in a 1983 interview given in German:
“I will never return to Poland, ever. Had the Poles been different, more like the Danes, the Dutch or the French, I think 70, 80 or possibly even 90 per cent of the Jews would still be alive today. Because the Germans had no idea who was Jewish and who wasn’t. … I don’t want to speak Polish and I don’t want to return to Poland. This is my sixth visit to Germany and believe me: I really don’t want to go to Poland. … If they [i.e., the Poles] wanted to kill Jews they could always find a pretext. … That’s what the Poles are like. Can you ever like these people? It’s impossible. … Poland was never, and never will be, a country where Jews can live. I would like to make an appeal to those few Jews still in Poland: Leave. This is not a country where you can live. … It is not necessary for all Germans to atone for all of this. Many Germans were opposed to fascism.”¹⁰⁰⁵
Ephraim Sten (Sternschuss), one of more than forty Jews rescued by a number of Polish families in the village of Jelechowice:
“They (the Poles) had no objection to the job being perpetrated by the Germans … That is why the overwhelming majority did not lift a finger to help. … Poland was the perfect center for the Jewish liquidation.”¹⁰⁰⁶
Raoul Harmelin, who survived in his native Borysław with the help of a Pole named Jankowski, a Home Army member: