Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Those medals, awards, they shouldn’t be for us. It was God who chose to save those children. It was His great protection, Divine Providence. I am positive about it.

Our children were, among others, Marysia, two Jadzias, Irenka, Stasiu, Edziu … I can’t remember many names. [The account is from October 1998—M.P.] Ah, yes, there was also Zosia. I remember, when I went to the RGO one day, there came a thirteen-year-old girl and asked to be taken under protection. The president of the RGO asked me:

“Will you take her, sister?”

“Well, yes, I will.”

And Zosia, the Jewish girl, came with me.

We tried to organize their time. There were different age groups. The eldest child was fourteen. They were all very apathetic. Well, they had been through terrible things. We couldn’t make them smile. They just sat there and stared ahead. We tried to keep them busy, to prevent them from thinking. We organized physical exercise for them. They would go to church with us and learn to pray. Sister Bernarda used to make them stand at the back of the church for other children not to see that they didn’t know how to pray. They learned with time. They were very worried when the front was approaching. The older girls asked to be baptized, but we didn’t do it. Later they recalled it like this: “For me the church was heaven and rescue, while being Jewish meant the Germans and death.” Such were their associations.

At the end, when parents and families started collecting their children, they didn’t want to leave. Stasiu stretched out his arms and screamed: “Tyćka Gina Tyćka Gin!” He meant Sister Longina who worked in the kitchen and loved him very much. The children used to call us “mateczki” (mothers), hence “Tyćka.”

Apart from Sister Longina, Sister Bernarda and myself, there was also Sister Alfonsa Wąsowska. … There was also Sister Jakuba. And, of course, our Mother Superior, Sister Emilia from Warsaw, a good and noble person, mother of the orphans.
Testimony of Sister Alfonsa:
I was born in Węgrów, Poland. My father was a farmer. I had four brothers and sisters. My father bought animals for butchering, and he often did business with Jewish people. Jews were often in our home.

When I was thirteen I was badly hurt in a farm accident and was in a coma. My father promised Go that if I lived he would give me to the Catholic Church. I recovered and in June of 1939, my father kept his promise and I became a nun. In August I joined the convent of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart and took the name Sister Alfonsa.

Mother Superior, Emilia Małkowska, thought I would do well with children and sent me to the St. Joseph Orphanage in Przemyśl. We had about forty children, ages two to twelve, two of them we knew to be Jewish. Mother Superior decided we should save the Jewish children. …

One day a little girl came to the orphanage crying. She said her name was Maria and that she was Catholic. I saw a couple in the woods some distance away. I suspected they were Jewish and I felt we had to save these children. Soon more children came. The parents were preparing to go to the death camps and wanted their children to survive. Each child had a Polish name and some knew some prayers. We treated them as Catholics so as not to arouse the suspicions of the other children or the Polish people who visited the orphanage. We knew we were risking our lives because we knew the Germans killed people who helped Jews, but what kind of Christians would we be if we put our own safety first?

We had to make-do in terrible conditions. I was very young myself, a teenager, but I had to learn how to nurse and how to make clothes. I made medicine out of foxglove and made valerian herbal tea to relax the children. We could never risk calling a doctor because two of the Jewish boys were circumcised. Maria contracted pneumonia and was close to death. I applied leeches and finally she opened her eyes and recovered.

Most of the time the children were quiet and nervous. They cried at night about missing their parents. We had no news of them, of course. Sometimes a child at a meal time would cry and throw food on the floor. We used psychology and acted as if nothing had happened, talking to the child gently until he felt better.

We told one of the Jewish boys who wanted to be a rabbi that if a stranger comes to the convent and asks what he wants to be when he grows up, he should say a priest. We took the Jewish children to church not to convert them but so that no one would know they were Jews. The Germans did come but they found nothing suspicious.

We had no heat, no toilets, and food was very scarce. We had to go out begging or scavenging for food. We cooked lollies which we exchanged with Ukrainian farmers for food. In my nun’s habit I could go places where other people could not go. Once I went to the big German army hospital to ask for sauerkraut which was good for the treatment of worms. The German officers called me names and insulted me. I told them I was working only for God. I left without anything. A little while later a German soldier brought a huge barrel of sauerkraut to the orphanage. We had enough to share with other orphanages and poor people.

In 1944 we were liberated by the Red Army. … In one case the parents came back and claimed a child. They could not find words to thank us. The father who was a shoemaker made me a pair of shoes to show his appreciation. The other Jewish children I took to the Jewish Orphanage that was set up by the surviving Jewish community. Most of the children went to Israel.
Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, at page 852, provides the following additional information:
The nuns’ rescue operation began one day in July 1942, when they found an abandoned infant crying piercingly at the convent gate. Because Aktionen and deportations from the Przemysl [Przemyśl] ghetto were occurring at this time, additional Jewish children were taken to the convent—several directly by their parents, some by Catholic go-betweens such as Kazika Romankiewicz, and others placed at the convent entrance with a note attached to their clothing. As devout Catholics, the nuns rescued the Jewish children even though they were aware of the personal risk. The children received devoted and loving care and the nuns kept them fed and clothed despite the state of deprivation at the convent. As part of the nuns’ precautions, the Jewish youngsters were not issued official ration cards and Sister Alfonsa unhesitatingly begged and solicited donations for the convent children. Notably, the four nuns [awarded by Yad Vashem] had no missionary motive in their rescue effort and never attempted to convert the young wards. In November 1944, after Przemysl was liberated, the nuns at their own initiative delivered the 13 Jewish children whom they had saved to the Jewish Committee that had been established in the town.
Julian Ostrowski was found wounded by a Catholic priest near railway tracks and eventually made his was to the social services agency in Przemyśl. He was then placed him with the Sisters Servants of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. When he ventured out of the convent one day, his Semitic appearance drew the attention of German officials so he was transferred to an orphanage for boys in Przemyśl run by the Salesian Society. Julian recalled that the Germans once came to the institution looking for Jewish boys, of whom there were several. They were accompanied by a Jew dressed as a priest. Fortunately, the boys passed the religion test he administered to them.¹⁵⁰
Seven Jews were sheltered by the Felician Sisters (Franciscan Sisters of St. Felix of Cantalice) at their convent of St. Hedwig (św. Jadwiga Śląska) on Waygart Street in Przemyśl, under the care of the mother superior, Sister Maria Honorata (Irena Bielawska). The charges included Abraham and Ela Wajtman (Weitman) and their son Jakub; Mr. and Mrs. Poler (Fuller); and 4-year-old Lila Rosenthal (later Lea Fried).¹⁵¹ The Felician Sisters also gave shelter to at least one dozen Jews—among them the teenagers Bilha Wajtman (Weitman) and Helena and Maria Poler, seven other children and two women—at their convent of Blessed Angela of Folgino on Szczytowa Street in Przemyśl, which was under the care of Sister Maria Klara (Aniela Kotowska).¹⁵² The rescue efforts of these two nuns, who were recognized by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations,” is described in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, at page 89.
In October 1942, Bozena Zlamal [Bożena Złamał] helped the Wittman [Weitman?] family (father Abraham, mother Ela, son Jakub, and daughter Bilha) escape from the ghetto in Przemysl [Przemyśl] and find shelter on the Aryan side of town. Bozena contacted two Polish nuns—Aniela Kotowska (Sister Klara) and Irena Bielawska (Sister Honorata)—and asked them to help rescue a Jewish family. Both nuns, each from a different convent in Przemysl, agreed to hide the Wittmans. [The parents stayed in a cell-like room, whereas the two children, born in 1936 and 1939, were in separate locations. M.P.] Abraham Wittman later wrote about Kotowska that she was “an angel in a human body,” emphasizing her goodness and compassion towards her [dozen Jewish] wards. [When he no longer had enough money to pay for food and board, his fears were stilled by Sister Klara: ‘Don’t worry; we shall keep you until the war’s end.”] During the war, Bielawska (Sister Honorata) also hid a Jewish couple named Fuller as well as a five-year-old Jewish girl called Lila Rosenthal (later Lea Fried). Both nuns acted without reward, receiving only small sums of money from their charges that covered the cost of their food. After the war, the Wittmans emigrated to Sweden. The fate of the Fuller couple is unknown. [The Fullers or Polers remained in Przemyśl after the war. M.P.]
Gerta Zilber (later Magdalena Orner) from Lwów, passing as Magdalena Szymańska, was one of the Jewish children sheltered in a Felician convent in Przemyśl. She arrived there at the age of ten, having stayed previously with two Polish women.¹⁵³
The Carmelite Sisters of the Infant Jesus sheltered a number of Jewish children in the orphanage they opened for homeless children in Sosnowiec during the war. Their help was widely known among the local population. One of the Jewish children and her grandmother had been directed to the sisters by Rev. Mieczysław Zawadzki, the pastor of Będzin.¹⁵⁴ The superior, Mother Teresa of St. Joseph (Janina Kierocińska), was awarded by Yad Vashem posthumously in 1992. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, pp.346–47.)
Mother Teresa-Janina Kierocinska [Kierocińska] was mother superior of the … Carmelite Sisters Convent in the town of Sosnowiec. On her orders and instructions, some local Jews were hidden in the convent. Among them were a Jewish woman, Pinkus, and her granddaughter, who was “christened” Marysia Wilczynska [Wilczyńska]. They stayed at the convent until the area was liberated in January 1945. Teresa Jablonska [Jabłońska], a Jewish girl who escaped the liquidation of the Sosnowiec ghetto, stayed with the nuns until after the war, when her mother came to reclaim her. In 1943, a Jewish baby was brought to the convent from the town of Szydlowiec [Szydłowiec]. On Kierocinska’s express orders, the nuns took care of the little baby, passing him off as a Polish orphan called Jozef [Józef] Bombecki. It was only after the war that the child discovered his Jewish origins. Mother Teresa-Janina also sheltered Andrzej Siemiatkowski [Siemiątkowski], whose mother, a convert to Christianity, had perished in Auschwitz. The survivors of the Sosnowiec convent later remembered Mother Teresa-Janina as someone of exceptional humanity whose love of mankind was rooted in deep religious faith.
One of the Jewish charges, then a boy, recalled (“Sprawiedliwa wśród Narodów Świata: Rozmowa z siostrą Bogdaną Batog, karmelitanką Dzieciątka Jezus o Matce Teresie Kierocińskiej. Rozmawiał ojciec Bartłomiej Kucharski OCD,” Głos Karmelu, no. 4 (2006), Internet: ):
As a Jewish child I encountered exceptional care and protection. The Sisters created for us family conditions and took care of us with the greatest open-heartedness. This was heroism! Their heroic attitude I attribute above all to Mother Teresa.
The Carmelite Sisters of the Infant Jesus sheltered Maria Leonia Jabłonkowa, a theatre director, in their convent in Czerna near Krzeszowice. Previously, she had been sheltered in Warsaw with the help of a number of Poles. She was baptized clandestinely by Rev. Jan Zieja in April 1944. She was wounded during the Warsaw uprising of August 1944. After the evacuation of Warsaw, she was taken into the care of the Carmelite Sisters.¹⁵⁵
In Klimontów, a small town near Sandomierz, the Sisters of the Most Holy Name of Jesus under the Protection of the Virgin Mary Help of the Faithful (Siostry Najświętszego Imienia Jezus pod opieką Najświętszej Maryi Panny Wspomożenia Wiernych, known commonly as Siostry Imienia Jezus or Siostry Marylki) sheltered three Jewish girls in their orphanage, under the care of Sister Urszula (Maria Herman): Eva Nisencwajg (later Eve Bergstein), her 3-year-old cousin, Lucy Nisencwajg, and, from September 1942, Maria Ropelewska (actually Manya Sztajnman, later Marion Staiman Weinzweig, born in May 1940).¹⁵⁶ The nuns also rescued a Jewish man, who assumed the name Zasławski.¹⁵⁷ (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, p.797.)
Wiktoria and Stanislaw [Stanisław] Szumielewicz lived in the village of Rytwiany near Staszow [Staszów] in the Kielce district during the war. In the summer of 1942, they sheltered Eva, the five-year-old daughter of prewar friends Moshe and Hena Nisencwajg. The Szumielewiczes, who had moved to the area from Bydgoszcz upon the outbreak of the war, introduced Eva as “Iwonka, our orphaned niece.” Being a teacher by profession, Wiktoria provided Eva with an education. Some time afterwards, the Szumielewiczes also sheltered Eva’s cousins, Lucy and Janek Nisencwajg. When someone informed on them and the children were in danger, Wiktoria decided to move them to the cloister orphanage. Janek did not go to the orphanage; instead he returned to his parents. A few days later, Lucy also ran away from the cloister and joined her family. … Eva stayed in the orphanage in Klimatow [Klimontów] for a year. When the cloister was bombed during an Allied [actually, it was bombed by the Germans] air raid, Wiktoria located Eva and sheltered her once more. After the liberation, the Szumielewiczes, along with Eva, returned to Bydgoszcz. There Eva was found by her uncle Henryk Nisencwajg and taken to Cracow [Kraków]. … In 1947, Eva (later Bergstein) was sent to her mother’s sister in Canada.
The same order of Sisters of the Holy Name of Jesus sheltered Jewish children in Wilno and Suchedniów near Skarżysko-Kamienna. Joanna Przygoda (later Joan Kirsten) was entrusted to the orphanage in Suchedniów as a child.¹⁵⁸ In 2013, Yad Vashem recognized Adela Rosolińska (Sister Serafia), the superior, and Sister Kornelia Jankowska, Joanna’s caregiver, as Righteous Among Nations. (Jankowska Family, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: .)
Zdzisław Przygoda and his wife, Irena (nee Mizne), lived in Warsaw. Przygoda was an engineer. With the establishment of the ghetto, the Przygodas went to live with Irena’s parents. There, in 1942, they had a daughter named Joanna. It was very dangerous to be in the ghetto with a baby, so they started looking for a way to escape to the Aryan side. They knew a man named Roman Talikowski, and he helped them escape the ghetto. …

The place Roman had arranged for them was in the home of Maria Kaczyńska. The house was a twenty-minute ride away from the center of Warsaw, in a sheltered wooded area. Two other women were already hiding there, one of whom may have been Jewish, but both were linked to the resistance. The Przygodas spent several months there. Zdzisław eventually joined the underground resistance; he was away most of the time but kept in touch with his wife and daughter.

One day in 1943, German soldiers came to the house looking for the hiding women. They drove them out and killed them all, despite Maria Kaczyńska throwing herself between them and the shooter and begging for mercy on their behalf. They had been looking for resistance fighters and did know Irena was Jewish. This may be the reason that they did not touch Kaczyńska herself, nor little Joanna. …

Zdzisław heard that his wife had been murdered and rushed back to collect his daughter. Joanna was unaware of what had happened and was playing when he saw her. He took her away and hid her in several consecutive places, including the home of Irena’s sister Alicja and her husband, Mieczysław Dortheimer, in Tarnów, until finally she ended up at the Order of the Most Holy Name of Jesus convent in Suchediów. …

The Mother Superior of the convent was Sister Serafia Adela Rosolinska [Rosolińska]. She chose one of the nuns, Sister Kornelia Jankowska, to care for Joanna. The sisters knew that the child was Jewish, and while there were 75 other children living in the convent’s orphanage, Joanna was cared for separately, living with Sister Kornelia in her quarters. Everyone loved Joanna at the convent—she was a pretty and intelligent child. She survived until the end of the war and was collected from the convent in 1945 by an acquaintance of her father’s, who had survived concentration camp and was eventually reunited with his daughter.
Assistance was often unorganized and random. Krystyna Kalata-Olejnik recalls how, in April 1943, as a four-year-old child fleeing from the ghetto, she was plucked off the streets of Warsaw and whisked to safety by a nun, a stranger she met entirely by chance. She was taken to a home for orphans in Ignaców near Mińsk Mazowiecki, run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, where a number of Jews, both adults and children, were sheltered. (Śliwowska, The Last Eyewitnesses, p.280.)

I was born in Warsaw, but my autobiography actually begins the moment I stepped out of a sewer canal onto the Aryan side during the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Sister Julia Sosnowska, no longer alive today, a nun from a nearby order on Nowolipie Street, was passing by near the canal. She spotted a little girl with dark hair and helped her get out of the sewer. And that, indeed, was me. She decided to help and traveled with me to the children’s home in Ignaców near Mińsk Mazowiecki. In precisely this home [run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul], where I was being hidden, I stayed until the end of the war. I supposedly had a small slip of paper with the name: Krystyna Olejnik, age 4. I stayed there until October 1945.

Sister Julia Sosnowska, the nun who rescued Krystyna Kalata-Olejnik, was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, p.741.)

In April 1943, Julia Sosnowska, a nun, noticed a young child in a tattered and torn dress crawling out of the sewer near the border of the Warsaw ghetto. Shocked by the spectacle, Julia picked up the girl, who was in a state of near exhaustion, and, guided by Christian love, took her back to her room in the house that she shared with other nuns. Julia learned that the foundling had tried to escape from the ghetto, but being too weak to stand had only managed to crawl as far as the sewer opening. Julia washed the girl, fed her, and looked after her devotedly until October 1943, when she placed her in an educational establishment in Ignacow [Ignaców], near Minsk [Mińsk] Mazowiecki, in the Warsaw district. The little girl, registered as Krystyna Olejnik in the Aryan papers that Sister Julia obtained for her, remained in the institution until the area was liberated. After the war, she was officially adopted by a Polish family and stayed on in Poland under the name of Krystyna Kalata.
Three Jewish teenagers from the Mińsk Mazowiecki area were also rescued at the convent of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Ignaców: Fryda (Frida) or Franciszka Szpigner (later Aronson or Aharonson), Irena Kuper (later Irit Romano), and Miriam Sala (later Mirjam Saadia).¹⁵⁹ Fryda Szpigner (Aronson) states that there were nine Jewish girls in total that she was aware of, as well as an elderly Jewish woman and a Gypsy girl. Sister Marianna Reszko (Sister Marcjanna), the superior, and Sister Joanna Mistera were recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles, although the charges also recall the kindness of other nuns. All fourteen nuns were aware of the presence of Jewish children in the convent, as was the chaplain. Jewish girls with marked Semitic looks had to be had to be hidden from sight when the premises were inspected by the German authorities. The conspiracy also extended to the lay staff at the orphanage which housed 150 children. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, pp.230–31; Part 2, p.668.)
[1] Jan Gawrych lived with his wife and their four children in a small house adjacent to the Wolka Czarninska [Wólka Czarnińska] estate near the town of Stanisławów, which is near Minsk [Mińsk] Mazowiecki in the Warsaw district. … Jan Gawrych worked there as a forester. … In 1942, when a young girl named Fryda Szpringer [Szpigner, later Aronson] escaped from the ghetto in Minsk Mazowiecki, which was about to be liquidated, she went straight to the house of the Gawrychs, who did not hesitate to accept her unconditionally into their home. They treated her kindly, gave her help, and told anyone who asked about her identity that she was a relative. In September 1942, the Stanislawow ghetto was liquidated and its inhabitants were taken to the extermination camp in Treblinka. Three of them—Chaskiel Paper, Tirza Zylberberg, and Moshe Aronson—escaped from the transport and after wandering through fields and villages arrived at the home of Jan and Aleksandra Gawrych, who at great risk took them in too and gave them food and lodging. … On March 8, 1943, after somebody informed on them, German policemen raided the Gawrych home. The Jews hiding there tried to escape, but except for Szpringer they were all shot to death. The Gawrych home was burned down, Jan was arrested and transferred to the Gestapo in Minsk Mazowiecki, where he was tortured and murdered. Szpringer managed to flee the massacre and after wandering through the neighboring villages found shelter in a convent in Ignacow [Ignaców], where she remained until the liberation of the area in the summer of 1944 [under the name of Frania Malinowska]. After the war she immigrated to Israel.
[2] In August 1942, during the liquidation of the Minsk [Mińsk] Mazowiecki ghetto in the Warsaw district, three girls—Irena Romano [née Kuper], Frania Aronson [née Szpigner], and Miriam Sada—escaped. After wandering through the area, the three reached St. Anthony’s Convent … in the nearby village of Ignacow [Ignaców], where they were welcomed by Marianna Reszko, the mother superior. Although she realized they were Jewish refugees, Reszko took them in and put them to work as kitchen hands and maids. Joanna Mistera, a nun who was also let in on the secret, looked after them devotedly and watched out for their safety, especially when Germans visited the convent. The three Jewish girls stayed in the convent until September 1944, when the area was liberated and after the war immigrated to Israel.
As a 14-year-old girl, Franciszka (Frania) Aronson, from a village near Mińsk Mazowiecki, survived by wandering from village to village, including villages where she was known, begging for food before she arrived at the convent in Ignaców in February 1943. Irena Kuper (Irit Romano) was about twelve years old when she started to wander in the countryside near her hometown of Mińsk Mazowiecki, posing as a Polish orphan. Everyone who moved to a village had to be registered with the village headman and provide proper documents. After the farmer who employed Irena learned from other villagers that Irena was Jewish, she promised to bring him a document attesting to her Christianity. She then approached an unknown priest in Mińsk Mazowiecki who issued her a birth and baptismal certificate in the name of Irena Kowalczyk. (Nahum Bogner, At the Mercy of Strangers: The Rescue of Jewish Children with Assumed Identities in Poland [Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2009], p.96).
She returned to her native city and in her despair asked the priest for a birth certificate, based on the names of her supposedly Christian parents. After being unable to find the name in the church records, the priest evidently understood the situation and told the girl to come back the following day. When he returned, he gave her a birth certificate in the name of a girl born out of wedlock. The peasant took the document to the village headman and came home happy and cheerful. From that moment, he no longer considered Irit to be Jewish, but an illegitimate Catholic girl.
Franciszka (Frania) Aronson recalled her arrival and stay at the convent in Ignaców in an account published in Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, at pages 171–77.
It was February, 1943. I was dressed in a blouse with short-sleeves and my legs were bare. Suddenly an older woman stopped me and asked where I was going. I told her that I was displaced and that I was looking for work.

   “You’re looking for work?” she asked. “Do you have some documentation?”

   “No,” I answered.

  “If you don’t have documents then no one will take you,” she replied.

   “But you know what? Do you see that church steeple? There are nuns there, and a convent and an orphanage also. Maybe they will take you in. When you get to the convent, say, ‘Praise the Lord,’ [Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus] and kiss the nun’s hand and ask her whatever you want.”

   I went off the main road and went to the convent. When I went inside, it was just like the woman said.

   The mother superior, Sister Marcjanna, came out. I said, “Praise the Lord.” She didn’t ask me much. She asked me my name, where I was from, how old I was, and what kind of work I wanted to do. She said she was sorry but that diner was already over, and there was only bread and milk left. She called the postulant, Regina, to take me to the kitchen and give me something to eat. 

   In the kitchen I was given bread and milk. I ate. Then I was taken to the bathroom, where I was washed and given clothes. They were not new clothes but they were clean, from one of the children, for there were 150 of them there. Regina asked me what job I wanted to do and if I liked children. I replied that I liked them, so Regina led me to the so-called “barn.” This was a separate building in which one group of children stayed.

   The work was not hard—simply helping out with the children. One had to help them make their beds, wash their cups, lay the table, etc. For some time I helped the teacher nuns, and later I was transferred to working in the hen house. …

   Once, when I was still working with the children, I came down from the bedroom and saw that the courtyard was filled with German soldiers. Whenever I saw Germans I always felt that they were there for me. I continually thought that someone would betray me and that the Germans would take me away. In this “barn” slept Sister Bronislawa [Bronisława], the nun in charge of education (she had a room next to mine), and two other workers besides me. When I heard this nun coming out of her room (one could not enter the room of a nun) I went up to her and said: “Sister, what should I do?”

   At the time I still didn’t have my work permit but only a piece of paper showing that I had registered at the police station. This police registration always worried me, for I feared that someone would try to verify the false information that I had given. I always felt that something bad could happen around the corner. At the time, there was a round-up of Jews hiding in the woods.

   So I asked Sister Bronislawa what I should do. The sister replied that she would go to the big house, to the mother superior, because she didn’t know what to do. She opened the door.

   “Halt! Who is there?”

   Sister Bronislawa came from the German border and spoke the language well; so she answered in German:

   “A group of children live here, along with me and three helpers—two grown-up and a young one.”

   The Germans demanded documents, but when the sister said that I still didn’t have any, they had me summoned. When I came into the room they said that they had to take me to the big house to make sure that I hadn’t come to the convent just now at the time of the round-up of the Jews. Then I showed them my police registration and Sister Bronislawa translated it, the result being that they said I didn’t have to go with them. It was said that the Germans caught a lot of Jews in the forest that day.

  The following day Sister Bronislawa came to me and stated that I had to go to Minsk [Mińsk] Mazowiecki to get myself a work permit.

   “How can I get a permit?” I asked. “I don’t even have a birth certificate!”

   “I will take care of everything at the office,” she replied.

   Everyone who applied for a work permit got it after two weeks. With me it took three months. When I finally received it, I felt relived. I stayed with the nuns until the liberation in 1944.

   Throughout the entire time I was in the convent I was considered Polish.

   The sisters never asked about anything. Even Sister Joanna, though we were such good friends. … The sisters did not know that I was a Jewess. They could only suspect it. In the convent, however, there was an old priest, who, every time I went to confession, always mentioned something about Jews.

   Obviously, since I was in a convent, I went to confession. This priest was served by Jozka Mankowska [Józka Mańkowska], and when she went to visit her family, I took her place. I brought him food and cleaned his room. One day the priest asked me why I wasn’t writing a diary.

   “Why should I write a diary?” I asked him.

   “Because your life is more interesting than other peoples,” the priest replied.

   I think that he knew who I really was.

In the convent all the children belonged to the “Association of the Children of Mary,” and every Sunday after dinner we had a meeting with this priest, who taught us and explained certain religious matters. At every one of these talks he would add something about Jews. Not against Jews, but he always put in a word on the subject. He would say that it was a great sin for someone not to confess to which religion he belongs and to accept holy communion without being baptized. We sat and listened. Irka [Kuper] was there too.… After that lesson we both came to the conclusion that we were committing a sacrilege because both of us were Jews…. It was, in truth, this Irka who took me to the woods and told me that she was committing a sin because she was Jewish.

How could she not be afraid to tell me about it? After all, if she had told someone else…. Irka told me that she sensed that I was Jewish also, and that is why she told me about herself.

   I remember one more incident. The day I came to the convent, Sister Bronislawa sent me to get coffee for breakfast. Outside I met a teacher I knew from Wolka Czerniejowska [actually, Wólka Czarnińska], Irena Cudna, who knew me and my parents very well. I pretended not to see her. Through the entire time of my stay in the convent, she saw me everyday; despite this, she did not tell anyone about me to the end of the war. Only after the liberation did she tell her family that Szpigner’s daughter had been staying at the convent. …

   As far as I know there were ten Jewesses living at Ignacow [Ignaców]. In my group there was a little girl, perhaps four-years-old, who did not know who she was.

   She was called Marysia. I remember a game she played one day with the children. She placed all the chairs in a row and sat the children down, after which she crawled under a chair. When I asked her why she wasn’t sitting on the chair but hiding underneath it, she replied: “Quiet, Miss Frania! If the Germans catch me, I’m dead!”

   When I asked her why she said that and from where she came, the girl told me her story. She told me that she was once walking down a street in Warsaw with her aunt and when they came to the doorway of her building, the aunt told her to remain on the street and if a policeman asked her any questions she was to say that she knew nothing. Marysia wound up in the Boduen house [for foundlings, at which the Sisters of Charity worked], and then Ignacow. I told her not to tell anyone what she had told me, but this was a child. … She always hid under the chair, so that the Germans would not kill her. …

  During the war one of the convent buildings, the “barn,” burned down. The Germans stationed in nearby Janowa [Janów] proposed that the nuns use one of their barracks. The children were without a roof over their heads, so the nuns transported them to Janowa. Marysia did not go, however, but was placed in the “big” house. She was too Jewish-looking for the nuns to allow her to live among the Germans.

   Aside from various inspections, the Germans would come to Ignacow for their walks, while the children cuddled next to the nuns for they needed a mother, and they didn’t have any. … One day a German officer came to Ignacow for a walk with his wife. Marysia was holding onto Sister Bronislawa. Then that German woman—I was standing nearby—pointed to Marysia and said to Sister Bronislawa: “That girl looks Jewish!”

   “We have absolutely no Jewish girls here!” the sister replied categorically. “We know where each child comes from.”

   She was lying, of course, for there was no way for her to know from where each child came.

   In any case, Marysia was kept hidden a lot, for she looked very Jewish.

   Apparently, so was another girl, the slightly older Marysia Kuczynska [Kuczyńska], who couldn’t go to school with the rest of the children because she also looked Semitic. The nuns brought over a teacher to the convent to teach Marysia.

   In the convent there were fourteen nuns, the old priest, 150 children and 50 other people, among whom were farm-hands and so-called “ladies”—women who were hiding. When I went to work in the sewing room, I moved to the bedroom of these ladies. Among them was an older woman named Maria Kowalska, who when she entered the chapel seemed to speak to God Himself, she was so religious.

   After the liberation I joined the army and worked in the army hospital in Lublin. One day a doctor, a Jew, asked me to accompany his aunt from Szojadel [?]. You can imagine my surprise when I saw that the aunt of my doctor was the lady from Ignacow, Maria Kowalska, the woman with whom I had slept in one room! When we finally reached Lublin, Maria said to me: “Frania, let us go to church to say a prayer in thanks for our successful journey.”

   I found this very funny, for she already knew that I was a Jew and that I knew she was a Jew, too, and yet. … I’m laughing at Maria now, but I myself had in the convent a praying-desk by the main altar, and every free moment I would sit in the chapel and pray.

   I came from a very religious Jewish family. Despite that, I believed in Jesus Christ. Because, firstly, a young person is very susceptible. Secondly, being a convent will make a believer out of anyone! To be in those surroundings, a part of that life, of that wonderful life. The nuns lived so nicely! It was a peaceful life.

   Materially? The war was on and not much was expected. But everyone had enough.

   I valued life in the convent above all because I knew how I had lived before. I knew that I lived well here, that I got everything I needed. I did not get money, but I didn’t need it. I had enough to eat, a clean bed and a kind word—everything I needed at the time, everything that a person could need. …

   In the convent I was very religious. I began to believe in Christ when that old woman on the road pointed the convent out to me and had me go there.

   I went off the road then, knelt and prayed to Christ to help me. That was the first time I prayed to Christ. I promised Him that if they accepted me in the convent and I survived the war, that would mean that he was the real God and I would never leave Him. I did not keep my word, but through the entire time I was in the convent I prayed, went to confession, took holy communion—I did everything, believing in it! I believed in it!

   After the war, I couldn’t decide whether to be baptized and change my faith, for I was brought up in the Jewish faith and all the people close to me were dead because they were Jewish. When I was older, I thought differently.

The Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul (popularly known in Polish as Siostry Szarytki) maintained a number of institutions in Warsaw where they extended help to Jews. One of the institutions where they provided their services was the Father Boduen Home for infant foundlings (Dom Małych Dzieci im. Ks. Gabriela Piotra Baudouina), located at 75 Nowogrodzka Street. The Father Boduen Home played an important role during World War II, providing shelter to hundreds of abandoned children. As many as 200 Jewish children are believed to have passed through the home.¹⁶⁰ Many of the Jewish children stayed just temporarily before being placed with Polish families or transferred to other institutions, usually convents, including those of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Klarysew and Góra Kalwaria outside Warsaw. Children who stayed at the Home only for a short time were not registered at all, so it is difficult to account for all of the Jewish children. The Father Boduen Home rescue operation, which involved a large network of helpers, was undoubtedly the largest single rescue conspiracy in Warsaw during the German occupation. The lay director of the Home, Dr. Maria Prokopowicz-Wierzbowska, oversaw a staff of more than 200 persons; their tacit cooperation was indispensable for the success of the operation. Dr. Prokopowicz-Wierzbowska was recognized by Yad Vashem, as was Władysława Marynowska, the institution’s guardian. The Father Boduen Home was under the jurisdiction of the Department of Social Welfare of the municipality of Warsaw and was subject to strict rules and control of the German authorities. Despite periodic raids by the Gestapo, no Jewish child fell into the hands of the Germans. Each child was accepted based on documents such as a social inquiry, birth certificate and health certificate. The decision to accept Jewish children—whose identities had to be hidden from the German authorities—was made with the knowledge and full approval of Jan Dobraczyński, who was the director of the Closed Welfare Section of the Department of Social Welfare. Jan Dobraczyński, a writer and prewar National Democratic activist, has also been awarded by Yad Vashem. He used his contacts with Catholic religious orders to place Jewish children in convents and orphanages, personally signing each referral as a code that a Jewish child was involved. Priests from parishes in Warsaw as well as distant parishes such as those in Lwów were enlisted to provide false birth and baptismal certificates for the Jewish children. The operation also depended on the cooperation of a large group of employees of the Social Welfare Department, among them Irena Schultz (also recognized by Yad Vashem) and the nurse Helena Szeszko, both of whom had passes to the Warsaw ghetto and secretly took out children from the ghetto. A planned drop-off of a child was usually announced by telephone in a code, including information about the child’s appearance and the time of its arrival. Some of the Jewish children were brought to the Father Boduen Home by their parents or by their Polish guardians, who were fearful or unable to continue to care for them any longer; others were brought by underground activists or employees of the Social Welfare Department. The chaplain, Rev. Piotr Tomaszewski, also brought children to the institution.¹⁶¹ Newly arrived children were hidden among the rest of the charges, fed and cared for. They often required medical attention because of the poor state of their health. Children with a “bad appearance” had to be transferred out of the Father Boduen home as soon as possible. They were placed with foster families, employees of the Social Welfare Department, or institutions run by religious orders. The employees of the Social Welfare Department involved in this network included the legendary Irena Sendler, Jadwiga Piotrowska, Irena Schultz, all three of whom were awarded by Yad Vashem, Nonna Jastrzębska, Halina Kozłowska, Janina Barczakowa, and Halina Szablak.¹⁶² Among the former Jewish charges who attended the award ceremony in Warsaw in February 2007¹⁶³ were: Krystyna Kalata, Teresa Lisiewska, Katarzyna Meloch, Joanna Sobolewska-Pyz, Debora Stocker (née Rygier, then passing as Wanda Katarzyna Szymeczko), Barbara Schmid, Anna Szpanowska,¹⁶⁴ Michał Głowiński, Stan Kol, and Aaron Seidenberg. Other charges include: Mania Powązek’s daughter,¹⁶⁵ Bruria (Anusia) Taglicht,¹⁶⁶ Sabina Żelazko’s son,¹⁶⁷ and Bronisława Kotlińska’s daughter.¹⁶⁸ Lena Küchler claims to have smuggled several children out of the Warsaw ghetto, some with the assistance of a Polish Red Cross nurse named Sieradzka [likely, the aforementioned Helena Szeszko—M.P.], and placed them in the care of a priest at the Father Boduen Home.¹⁶⁹
The rescue efforts of Dr. Maria Prokopowicz-Wierzbowska, the director of Father Baudouin Home for Foundlings, and some of her collaborartors are described in the following account. (Prokopowicz Family and Sobolewski Family, The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: .)
Inka Grynszpan was born in Warsaw on July 31, 1939, to Tadeusz and Halina (née Zylberbart). The next year, the family was incarcerated in the ghetto, where they stayed until March 1943, not long before the ghetto uprising. Before being taken to Umschlagplatz, Halina and Tadeusz managed to hide four-year-old Inka in a sewage pipe. There she was discovered by some workers employed by Walerian Sobolewski. The workers somehow knew to take the little girl to the home of Wanda Bruno-Niczowa, a Polish teacher and acquaintance of her parents, who was also hiding her cousins’ child. When Walerian’s wife Anastazja heard that a pretty little girl was being hidden there, she decided [to] try and adopt Inka, as she and her husband were childless. At Niczowa’s home in Żoliborz, they finally met the blue-eyed, blonde-haired beautiful Inka. They were determined to look after her, but she was dressed in rags, she drew unwanted attention from onlookers as they travelled home by wagon. The Sobolewskis made an effort to speak loudly about their “cousins sending their daughter to the doctor” dressed in an embarrassing way. Luckily, they were not denounced and got home safely. After a while, a Russian neighbor told Anastazja that she suspected that Inka was Jewish. This was very dangerous, so the Sobolewskis asked Niczowa to formally register Inka (under the name of Joanna Kwiecińska) at the G. P. Baudouin [Boduen] Home for Infants in Warsaw. The papers obtained from the home allowed the Sobolewskis to keep up the pretense of having legally adopted a Polish child. In 1943, Walerian was arrested and incarcerated in Pawiak Prison, which was extremely stressful and frightening to his wife, but he survived and returned home. In 1944, the Soboloewskis moved to Milanówek with their adopted daughter and beloved dog, to live with their relatives. One day, a German officer came by the house, which terrified little Inka, but he ended up holding her and giving her a chocolate bar because the blonde child reminded him of his own. Inka grew up with the Sobolewskis until the 1960s. After the war, the family lived very comfortably, thanks to Walerian’s business enterprise. However, after Walerian was arrested for alleged sabotage, and Anastazja suffered [a] fatal heart attack in 1958, someone revealed the truth to Inka about her adoption. This news set her searching for her blood relatives in advertisements and the Israeli embassy. When she discovered a family of cousins by the name of Prusak, Inka left Walerian and continued her life with her relatives.

The Baudouin Home provided a sanctuary to more refugees than just Inka. During the war, its head, Maria Wierzbowska, took in many Jewish children. As Irena Sendler, who was responsible for the saving of children in Żegota, later testified, the Baudouin Home was one of a network of homes serving not only as an orphanage, but also as a transition point for children while Aryan papers were being created for them. Once the documents were ready, Wierzbowska would contact one of the neighboring monasteries, letting the nuns know it was time to come and collect the children. One of the monasteries was in Turkowice, next to Lublin, where over 30 children from Baudouin found shelter and thus survived. Sendler wrote: “Upon their arrival at the Baudouin Home the children were often ill, starved, terrified, after horrible experiences. They found in the staff of the Home support and total care: medical, material and parental. For some of them, the Home was a place of temporary yet safe refuge; for some war orphans it became their own home; but to all it was salvation from the death to which the occupants had sentenced them.” Among the children taken in by Maria Wierzbowska and her staff were Michał Głowiński, Katarzyna Meloch-Jackl (both of whom were transferred to Turkowice), and Barbara Guz-Schmid, who survived there until the end of the war. On July 19, 2006, Yad Vashem recognized [Walerian] and Anastazja Sobolewski and Maria Wierzbowska as Righteous Among the Nations.
The following accounts, which describe the activities of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in various institutions in Warsaw, are from Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, at pages 427–28, 430, 435, 435–36, 459, 494; Part 2, at pages 606, 645, 820. Although some of the summaries claim the nuns did not know about their charges’ Jewish origin, that information is not very credible as the nuns likely suspected as much, if only because of the children’s lack of knowledge of religious practices.
[1] In 1938, soon after Eleonora Hopfenstand gave birth to her daughter, Juliana, Marianna Bronik [Kurkowska-Bronik] began working in her Warsaw home as a nursemaid, remaining there until the city’s Jews were interned in the local ghetto. Bronik would often go into the ghetto, taking great risks, to bring Hopfenstand various foodstuffs. In July 1942, during the large-scale Aktion in the ghetto, Hopfenstand succeeded in smuggling Juliana out to the Aryan side of the city, where, as they had agreed in advance, Kurkowska-Bronik received her. From that day on, Kurkowska looked after Juliana as if she were her own daughter, telling anyone who asked that she was a relative whose parents had been deported to Germany. In Kurkowska’s home, the child was given loving care, until one of the neighbors began to suspect that she was Jewish. It turned out afterwards that the neighbor was an agent of the Gestapo, who was later executed in her apartment by members of the Polish underground. But Kurkowska, whose experience had made her wary, preferred to place Juliana in an institution for children [on Czerniakowska Street¹⁷⁰] run by nuns (Siostry Szartyki), without revealing that she was Jewish. The Jewish child remained there even after the children of the institution were deported with all the city’s residents after the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944, and it was there that her mother found her after the liberation in January 1945.
[2] In 1943, after countless ordeals, Zuzanna Ronen and her four-year-old daughter, Wera, arrived in Warsaw from one of the neighboring towns. Exhausted and hungry, lacking shelter or any means of livelihood, the two walked around the city streets until Boguslaw Jan Kurylowicz [Bogusław Jan Kuryłowicz] suddenly came up to them. Before the war, Kurylowicz had managed a business together with Ronen’s husband and had become friends with him and his family. Kurylowicz realized how desperate the two Jewish refugees were and, despite the risk to his life, invited them to his spacious home in the center of the city, where he lived with his wife, Zofia. Ronen and her daughter were warmly welcomed into the Kurylowiczes’ home. After the two rested for a few days and received devoted care, Zofia succeeded in placing Wera in a home for children run by nuns, where she passed her off as a relative. At the same time, Boguslaw Jan took steps to save Ronen, soon obtaining for her Aryan papers, a room to live in, and employment as a clerk. After the Warsaw Uprising was suppressed in October 1944, Ronen managed to move to nearby Milanowek [Milanówek], with Kurylowicz’s help, while her daughter Wera was transferred, along with all the other girls in the institution where she had been placed, to a location far from Warsaw. Ronen and her daughter were liberated in January 1945 and after the war immigrated to Israel. Deeply grateful, they never forgot the Kurylowiczes, who saved their lives without receiving anything in return, motivated solely their human compassion.
[3] When the Warsaw ghetto was sealed, Maria Kwiatkowska came to the aid of Jews interned in it. She smuggled foodstuffs and medications to them, and also helped some of her acquaintances to flee to the Aryan side of the city. In December 1942, when Zegota [Żegota] was established, Kwiatkowska became active in the organization. Without asking for anything in return, simply because she felt it was her moral duty to help Jews persecuted by a common enemy, Kwiatkowska became one of Zegota’s most courageous and outstanding couriers. Risking her own life, Kwiatkowska helped Dr. Jozef [Józef] Fuswerk and his wife, Maria née Adler (who perished in the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944), escape from the ghetto and housed them in her mother’s apartment until she was able to find a permanent shelter for them. With Kwiatkowska’s active assistance, Stefania Staszewska also fled the ghetto. Kwiatkowska obtained Aryan papers for her and employed her as a housekeeper in her home. After the outbreak of the Warsaw Uprising, Kwiatkowska transferred Staszewska to Zakopane, where she was liberated in January 1945. Kwiatkowska also saved Jewish children by taking them to Christian orphanages, in particular to the Father Boduen children’s home, where she was known and her activity was greatly valued. [She placed Elżbieta, the daughter of Barbara P. there, with the assistance of her cousin, Helena Michalak, a nun who worked there.¹⁷¹] Kwiatkowska’s apartment in the center of Warsaw was an address for Jews who fled from the ghetto and those seeking shelter on the Aryan side. Among the Jews whose lives were saved thanks to Kwiatkowska’s help were Hipolit Bajer and Zygmunt Rukalski, who left Poland after the war.
[4] While still a youngster, Wanda Kwiatkowska was active in the PPS [Polish Socialist Party] in Warsaw. In 1940, Kwiatkowska met Jonas Benon in the home of a party activist who was married to a Jewish woman. In the summer of 1942, during the large-scale deportations from the Warsaw ghetto, Benon turned to Kwiatkowska, asking her to help him and his family find a hiding place on the Aryan side of the city. Kwiatkowska did as requested and managed to get Aryan papers and accommodations in Warsaw for Jonas, his wife, Bronislawa [Bronisława], and their two sons, nine-year-old Andrzej and two-year-old Stanislaw [Stanisław]. After a while, Barbara Palatynska [Palatyńska], Bronislawa’s sister, also escaped with her two-year-old daughter, Elzbieta [Elżbieta]. Palatynska paid a Polish woman to look after her daughter while she herself moved in with her sister. Jonas, who found separate accommodations, worked to provide for the family. When, in the spring of 1943, neighbors became suspicious of the two sisters, they were forced to separate. Once again Kwiatkowska came to the rescue. She arranged for the Benons’ older boy to move in with acquaintances, where he stayed until the end of the war, while Kwiatkowska arranged for Bronislawa to move in with her cousin, Zofia Prager, who lived in Ozarow [Ożarów] Mazowiecki, near Warsaw. Although Prager realized that Bronislawa was Jewish, she agreed to let her stay for about a year and a half, until January 1945, when the area was liberated by the Red Army, after which she was reunited with her family. Palatynska, who, thanks to her Aryan looks, managed to survive numerous hardships after leaving her sister, found work but was unable to find a long-term arrangement for her little girl. Kwiatkowska once again came to the rescue and with the help of a relative who was a nun working in Father Boduen’s orphanage in Warsaw arranged for Elzbieta to be admitted to the orphanage, where she remained until the end of the war.
[5] Daniela Szylkret was four years old in 1942, when a Polish acquaintance of her parents took her out of the Warsaw ghetto and handed her over to a family of Jewish refugees who were living outside the ghetto under false identities. Later, when someone informed on them to the authorities, the family that adopted Daniela was arrested and executed. Daniela was saved thanks to the intervention of Wladyslaw [Władysław] and Stefania Lipski, who despite the danger to their lives testified that Daniela was not Jewish. They placed her, as a Christian, in an orphanage run by nuns (Siostry Szarytki), where she remained until the end of the war, after which she immigrated to Israel … The Lipskis continued to save Jewish children and early in 1943 sheltered Lola Lew, a Jewish girl who had escaped from the ghetto, in their apartment and passed her off as a relative whose parents had been arrested by the Germans. Although Lola looked Jewish, Danuta, the Lipskis’ daughter, would take walks with her in the street to cheer her up and dispel her feelings of loneliness. Lola remained in the Lipskis’ home, although they received no payment from her, and all the members of the family, out of purely humanitarian feelings, treated her with great devotion. After they were expelled from the city following the Warsaw Uprising in late summer 1944, the Lipskis continued to look after the girl they were sheltering and did not part from her until their liberation in January 1945. After the war, Lola emigrated from Poland to France …
[6] During the occupation, Wladyslawa [Władysława] Marynowska worked as a children’s nursemaid in an orphanage for abandoned children named after the priest Boduen. Active in the underground and working in close cooperation with Irena Schultz, an underground activist who worked in the social affairs department of the city of Warsaw, Marynowska took advantage of her position in the orphanage to take in Jewish children in need of asylum under assumed identities, most of whom were sent from CENTOS children’s institution in the ghetto. Despite the constant danger to her life and the life of her young son, Marynowska did everything she could to safeguard the young children from the constant checks conducted by the Gestapo, who would periodically visit the orphanage and search for hidden Jewish children. Most of the charges left the orphanage after shelter was found for them with foster families in the city and outside it, in an operation that Marynowska participated in using her connections in the underground. The number of children who were saved thanks to Marynowska’s efforts is unknown, both because records were not kept and because the children who were saved left Poland after the war for localities all over the world.
[7] Shmuel Kenigswein, a well-known boxer, met Zygmunt Pietak [Piętak] when both were involved in the smuggling of food into the Warsaw ghetto. In the summer of 1942, during the large-scale deportation of the Jews of Warsaw to Treblinka, Kenigswein asked Pietak to help him escape together with his family and find a place to hide on the Aryan side of the city. Pietak immediately agreed to help his friend despite the great danger involved, and demonstrating considerable resourcefulness smuggled Shmuel and Regina Kenigswein and their three young children [Mosze or Miecio, Sara or Stefcia, and Szmulik or Szulik] out of the ghetto. Pietak placed the youngest child [Szmulik or Szulik, born in 1942], still a baby, in the foundling home run by Father Boduen and hid the other four members of the family in a hiding place in an apartment which he had prepared for them ahead of time and where they hid until late 1943. Throughout that entire period, Pietak was the Jewish family’s only contact with the outside world, visiting them frequently and bringing them provisions and other necessities. When the hiding place became too dangerous and it was feared that they would be discovered, Pietak moved the four fugitives to the care of Jan Zabinski [Żabiński], the manager of a zoo, who hid them in the zoo for two months. After that, the Kenigswein family hid with Feliks Cywinski [Cywiński], and until the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944, Pietak kept in constant touch with them, giving them moral support and caring for all their needs. Kenigswein participated in the Warsaw Uprising as a platoon commander and all five members of the Kenigswein family were saved.¹⁷²
[8] Before the war, Apolonia Przybojewska lived in Warsaw in the same apartment house as the Guz and Szarfsztejn families and they became good friends. After the occupation of the city and the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto, the two Jewish families moved to Minsk [Mińsk] Mazowiecki. Przybojewska kept in touch with them and helped them transfer funds and keep in touch with their relatives imprisoned in other ghettos. One evening in November 1942, Sura Guz suddenly appeared on Przybojewska’s doorstep holding the baby girl she had given birth to just days before outside the forced labor camp in which she had been imprisoned together with her husband. Guz asked Przybojewska to find a way to save the baby, and the very next day Przybojewska staged the discovery of an abandoned baby on her doorstep for her neighbors. This enabled her to hand the baby over to the orphanage run by Father Boduen in Warsaw. After she brought the baby to the orphanage, she continued to visit her frequently and maintained contact between her and her mother, who was hiding on the Aryan side of the city. In late 1942, Przybojewska’s other Jewish friends, who were imprisoned in a forced labor camp near Minsk Mazowiecki, asked her to help the live on the Aryan side of Warsaw. … Przybojewska arranged Ayran papers for them and rented a suitable apartment for them. … The seven Jewish fugitives and the Guz family’s infant daughter were saved thanks to Przybojewska’s devoted help and courageous resourcefulness, whose efforts to save them were motivated by her humanitarian principles, for which she never asked for or received anything in return.
[9] Genowefa and Jozef [Józef] Tomczyk lived in Wlochy [Włochy], near Warsaw, during the war. In the summer of 1942, they accepted Anna Jasinska [Jasińska] as a domestic worker after she was sent to them by an employment agency. Anna had managed to leave the Warsaw ghetto with her 15-month-old baby girl. When she was on the Aryan side of the city it occurred to her that she would not be able to find work if she was burdened with a child. She managed to place the child in an orphanage on Nowogrodzka Street [the Father Boduen Home] and then began to look for work. She found the Tomczyks through the employment agency and soon afterwards began working for them. Almost immediately, the Tomczyks’ neighbors accused them of hiding a Jew. Genowefa asked Anna about her origins and Anna answered that she was a Jew. She also offered to leave if the Tomczyks preferred her to do so. After consulting with her husband, Genowefa decided to let Anna stay. The neighbors were told that Anna was a prewar friend of the family. Jozef arranged a Kennkarte for Anna and the neighbors seemed satisfied with the Tomczyk’s story. “The Tomczyks lived in difficult circumstances … despite that, I received from them food, medicine, and even money for travel, since every Sunday I visited my daughter, who had been taken to a monastery [run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul] in Klarysew, near Warsaw. … The food and medicine I brought saved my daughter’s life and helped many sick children in the monastery,” wrote Anna in her testimony to Yad Vashem. After the war, Anna brought her daughter to the Tomczyks and they stayed there until both families were able to organize their new lives.
Leon Weinstein, a survivor from Radzymin, described how he left his 18-month-old daughter, Natasha Leya (later Natalie Gold-Lumer), who was born in 1940, on the doorsteps of a childless Christian lawyer and his wife in Warsaw with a note saying the child’s name was Natalia Jasińska, and that her mother, a widow, could no longer take care of her. The sudden appearance of a child at this apartment would not have gone unnoticed by neighbours, and without a compelling alibi and a baptismal and birth certificate, this was a clear indication that the child was Jewish. It is not surprising, therefore, that the child was delivered to a police station. (Only someone who has a proven track record of performing a life-threatening, humanitarian act for others is in a moral position to condemn this couple. However, it is unlikely in the extreme that such a person would do so.) A police officer at the station took the child to an undisclosed convent. After the war, Leon Weinstein was able to recover the child and identify her by a distinctive birthmark. She had been transferred from one convent to another when the residents of Warsaw were evacuated after the August 1944 uprising, and finally made her way back to a convent in Warsaw. Apparently, no effort has been made to identify these nuns and to thank them for their selfless deeds. This state of affairs is, regrettably, rather characteristic of most children rescued by nuns in Poland.¹⁷³
In her memoir, Leokadia Schmidt describes the assistance she and her husband Maniek received from Rev. Edward Święcki, the prewar prefect of secondary schools in Warsaw. Rev. Święcki was himself wanted by the Gestapo for his connections with the Polish underground and was living under an assumed name. He encouraged his cousin Maria Michalski and her family to provide shelter for the fugitives from the Warsaw ghetto, arranged for false identity documents for them, and helped Maniek financially after he was apprehended by the police and had to pay a large bribe for his release. Rev. Święcki placed their young son in the care of the Father Boduen home for foundlings, where Rev. Święcki was the confessor of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who worked at that the institution. When the boy fell ill, Rev. Święcki and his cousin cared for him.¹⁷⁴
Vera Frister, born in Lwów in 1937 as Vera Hefter, described her stay at an orphanage (Zakład Wychowaczy Najświętszej Maryi Panny Loretańskiej) run by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul located at 47 Czerniakowska Street, where nine Jewish children were sheltered. Vera was known as Janka Michalska and was cared for lovingly by Sister Teresa, which she describes in her account of May 27, 2006, titled “My Guardian Angel.”¹⁷⁵ After the Warsaw Uprising of August 1944, the Sisters and their charges were forced to leave Warsaw along with the rest of the population. After several days’ journey in the countryside, marching from village to village with large numbers of evacuees, Vera’s mother found her. Vera spent the rest of the war hiding with her mother. Mrs. Kuryłowicz, a devout Catholic, believed that it was her duty to help those in need, regardless of their religion.
Ilonka Fajnberg (Ilona Feinberg, later Róża Maria Górska), born in 1939, was one of several Jewish children sheltered by the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in the Warsaw suburb of Kamionek, where she went under the name of Marysia Kołakowska. The superior of the convent, Sister Maria Pietkiewicz, has been recognized by Yad Vashem. (Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, p.604.)
Sister Maria Pietkiewicz belonged to the order of “Sisters of Charity” (Szarytki) in Warsaw. In the 1930s she established the children’s convent at 365 Grochowski [Grochowska] Street [in east bank Praga], which housed a kindergarten, elementary school, and boarding school. She served as the institution’s Mother Superior until 1956. In 1942–1943, a girl named Roza Gorska [Róża Górska] was brought to the convent and was received by Maria. The girl’s real name was Ilona Feinberg. Her mother, Blima Chaja Feinberg, had removed her from the ghetto and placed her in the custody of a Polish woman. However, the woman was afraid of the consequences of being discovered hiding a Jewish child and brought Ilona to the convent. Only Maria knew that she was Jewish, a secret she kept until the day of her death. Roza recalls her with great love. In her testimony Roza notes that Maria was an educator who loved children and that she was particularly attached to her and protected her, as she was an orphan and no one from her family ever visted her. Roza herself did not discover that she was Jewish until the 1980s. She wanted to show her gratitude for Maria’s compassion in rescuing her by having her recognized as Righteous Among the Nations.
In her account, “I Found My Roots,” Ilonka Fajnberg (born in 1939, passing as Marysia Kołakowska), recalled (Jakub Gutenbaum and Agnieszka Latała, eds., The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak, volume 2 [Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2005], p.40):
In the spring of 1943 I found myself in the Sisters of Charity convent in Kamionek. From that time on, my guardian was the mother superior in this convent, Sister Maria Pietkiewicz, a woman of great heart, which she, however, tried not to show. She was stiff and unapproachable and aroused fear and respect, not only among the girls in her care.

At the convent I was the only fully orphaned child, left without even an extended family. It was very sad for me when families took the other children on Sundays and holidays, and I had to remain alone. When I grew up a bit, I complained about this to Mother Superior, and she became angry, “What do you mean you have no family; we’re your family!”

And that’s how it was left.
The situation for children, especially Jewish ones, was particularly tragic after the failed Warsaw Uprising of August 1944. Hena Kuczer, who assumed the name Krystyna Budnicka, recalls her experience as an 11-year-old girl. After being rescued by Poles from the ruins of the ghetto, she was sheltered by a Polish family. Soon they too found themselves homeless and dispossessed. In the transit camp in Pruszków they turned to the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, who themselves were being evacuated along with a group of children from their orphanage. Budnicka recalled, “They accepted me, although not even for a moment did they have and doubts about my orogins, especially since I was unable to produce any documents.”¹⁷⁶ (Testimony of Krystyna Budnicka, August 2003, Internet: .)
My name is Krystyna Budnicka, my true family name is Kuczer, Hena Kuczer. I first used my Polish name when Mr. Budnicki, a Pole, who had been looking after me, handed me over to some nuns who ran an orphanage as we were leaving a burning Warsaw after the Uprising in October 1944. When the nuns asked my name I didn’t hesitate for long. Krystyna Budnicka, I said. And it stuck. …

I couldn’t show my face in public because I looked very Semitic. The next day a female liaison came in the morning, put a bandage around my head and took me by tram to Dobra Street. And that’s how I found myself at the Budnickis’. Anka [her sister-in-law] was already there.

The Budnickis helped Jews; they were a middle-aged childless couple. I know that when the summer holidays started, Mrs. Budnicka went to a summer vacation spot with some Jewish children, somewhere in the Otwock area. When the Uprising broke out, she wasn’t in Dobra Street. Anka cooked there. I recall that the Poles captured a heating plant somewhere nearby and there was great joy, euphoria. During the Uprising we would go down with everybody else to the cellar, the shelter. At that time I didn’t hear a bad word directed at us. You could say that people felt a stronger solidarity with one another, all felt the same danger. We walked out of Warsaw on 6th September with the Budnickis. We crossed Warsaw, which was ablaze. I parted with Anka in Wola [a district of Warsaw]. First, there was a night stopover under the open sky, and in the morning selection for work duties.

Mr. Budnicki noticed some nuns, Grey Nuns [a mistranslation of “szarytki”— actually, Sisters of Charity, from the French “charité”] from Warsaw, from Ordynacka Street. He went up to the Mother Superior and told her that he had an orphan, that he wasn’t her father. She said, ‘You will come to get her after the war?’ ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Budnicki. When the nun saw me, she asked, ‘My child, what’s your name?’ I said, ‘Krysia Budnicka’. I went with the children from the orphanage to the Pruszkow [Pruszków] transit camp. Later it turned out that out of eighteen children, six were Jewish. …

At Pruszkow we spent only one night. I remember I was given an empty food can, with which I went to get soup. From Pruszkow the whole children’s home was moved to Bobrowce near Mszczonow [Mszczonów]. The trek took several days. We were billeted in a school. A few of the girls were Jewish, but of course I knew nothing of that. We were all very poor, we had left Warsaw after the Uprising with nothing. The nuns scoured the villages and brought us bits of food and old clothes. I got a moth-eaten coat, I remember that was a luxury; the other children envied me. My looks were a big problem and the nuns protected me. When the other children went into the village to dig potatoes, the nuns kept me back. They told the other children that I had a wounded finger. I don’t think I was very popular. Nobody taunted me for being Jewish, but the other children used to call me a creep because I was very obliging—probably because after the hell I’d been through I wanted to show my gratitude for being taken care of. We were in Bobrowce when the liberation came [the Russians entered Warsaw on January 17, 1945], and in February we were moved to Osuchow [Osuchów], to the abandoned palace of the Plater family. There I started going to school. I was 13. In May 1945 we were taken to a village called Szczaki Zlotoklos [Złotokłos], where we continued to go to school.

The nuns wanted to baptize me right away, in October 1944, but a priest said that he couldn’t approve, that baptism could take place only in the event of a life-threatening emergency. ‘We shall wait, the war will end soon, she is a big girl and she must decide for herself,’ he said. I was baptized in Szczaki Zlotoklos. That was something I really wanted. I was very keen to fulfill all my religious duties conscientiously. Some men came to Szczaki Zlotoklos looking for Jewish children. The nuns brought them to me and I told them everything I remembered about my family. They said they would start looking, and that perhaps someone might have survived. I don’t know what organization they can have been from. Six of us girls were Jewish. One was found by her father. I remember the tears. Another one was taken to Israel. She was very small, seven years old. First she was taken to the Jewish children’s home, then to Cracow [Kraków], and today she lives in Israel. They tried to persuade me to go as well, but I didn’t want to, and I was old enough that they could hardly have forced me. The same people came to the children’s home several times, and they carried on coming when we were back in Warsaw, too. [Editor’s note: The children’s home returned to Warsaw in 1946, and was located on Czerniakowska Street.] Once a man came to visit me claiming to be my cousin and telling me he was going to take me to Palestine. But I knew he was no relative of mine. I was very hurt that he tried to deceive me.