Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

In this fashion we left Bialystok on February 13 by train and went to the Lapy [Łapy] Station.¹⁸⁷ From there we went by cart to various Catholic churches—Dombrovo [Dąbrowa Wielka], Sokoly [Sokoły], Mokiny [Małkinia]. From there we travelled to Warsaw by train. … From Warsaw we went to Lowicz [Łowicz], where my companion’s family lived. We spent sixteen months there; no one knew that I was a Jew. I worked as a nurse and had a large practice.

In May, 1944, we decided to move to Naleczów [Nałęczów], near the River Bug. … On July 26, 1944, Naleczów was liberated by the red Army, and on July 29 I set out east—partly on foot, and partly by automobile. I eventually made my way to my home town of Pruzhany.

Pruzhany had been liberated on July 16. Of the 2,700 Jews who had taken refuge in the forest only about twenty young people returned to the town; all the rest perished. The local people were very happy at my return and my friends, acquaintances, and patients literally made pilgrimages to me.
That Dr. Goldfein and Sister Dolorosa (Genowefa Czubak) remained on the best of terms with the Mother Superior of the convent in Prużana throughout this time, is borne out by the testimony of Joseph Elman, who returned to his hometown of Prużana after the liberation as part of the Soviet forces. (Interview with Joseph Elman, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, May 19, 1998, pp.67–68.)
The doctor, which I mentioned, the neighbor of mine, that Olga Goldfein, arrived in Proushinna [Prużana]. She was saved—from the station at night and she came to Proushinna to the—to that convent … And she was befriended with a nun and her name … is DellaRosa [Sister Dolorosa]. Because, she came with her in Proushinna, when I was in Proushinna [after the liberation]. … And she escaped from the wagons and she followed 10 kilometers and she came to Proushinna to the nun. The nun gave her … she got the clothes and she put a cross on her. But … she told me—this is after the liberation, now, she told me that … the Mother Superior … wasn’t satisfied, she says better take her and go away with her, deep in Poland, where nobody knows. She was afraid that—you know, sometimes … maybe somebody’ll discover. You can’t blame her, you know, they discover. So she took—you know, when she came in and the next day, you know, with the blessing with the Mother Superior, the blessing, she went the—she actually comes from the different town. She comes some—the towns near Lódz [Łódź]. And she—they travelled somehow with her—with the doctor. … So when … she came back, in Proushinna with this nun, … of course I will help. So, I tried … I was able to help this nun … even the whole convent to supply, make sure they have enough food. It was … still with the Russians. It’s still … 1944, still the war was going on and all that.¹⁸⁸
Lorka (Gizela) Waszkowitzer (Waschkowitzer) was in her mid-fifties and living in Kraków with her husband and daughter when the war broke out. Her husband, Józef Waschkowitzer, a Second Lieutenant in the Polish army, perished in 1940 at the hands of the Soviets in the mass murder of captured Polish officers in Katyn. Her daughter, Greta (Małgorzata), married a Polish Christian, Artur Woźniak, managed to secure Aryan papers and relocated to Warsaw. Lorka remained in Kraków living on her own. She had to be operated on when her eyesight started to fail and was hospitalized for six weeks. After a brief stay with her son-in-law’s mother, with the assistance of her son-in-law, she was placed in a shelter run by the Albertine Sisters. This was likely the shelter at 10 Koletek Street, which was primarily a nursery for children. She remained there until the nuns had to leave in May 1944 and relocated to Rymanów near Krosno. Lorka was transferred to Rymanów with the children and a group of women. She remained there until the liberation of that area.¹⁸⁹

Tamara (Tamar) Lubliner was about eight years old when she reached the convent of the Oblate Sisters of the Heart of Jesus on Zagórze in Tyniec, on the outskirts of Kraków. She has nothing but praise for the nuns who cared for her.¹⁹⁰ However, not all rescue efforts ended fortunately. A number of Jews found shelter at a convent in Kraków mistakenly identified as Benedictine (the Benedictine Sisters did not have a convent in that city), only to be seized by the Germans during a raid on the convent. This was likely a shelter on Krakowska Street run by the Albertine Sisters. Among those sheltered there were Anita Lobel (then known as Aneta Kempler), an eight-year-old girl with a noticeable Semitic appearance, and her six-year-old brother, who was disguised as a girl because the shelter accepted only girls. They lived there posing as the children of their Christian nanny. The story is told in Anita Lobel’s memoirs, No Pretty Pictures: A Child of War (New York: Greenwillow Books, 1998), at pages 54–56 and 74–77.

When Niania [nanny] came for us at the ghetto bridge, she had brought with her a piece of black cloth. As soon as we were out of danger, she made a makeshift bandage and wrapped it around my head, covering my right eye. “I have found a place to stay,” Niania said. “We will be safe.” She had found a shelter at a convent of Benedictine Sisters. The hospital across the street from the convent was run by the brothers of the same order. We needed to stay at the shelter so that I could see a doctor. I needed treatment for my eye, was the story Niania had told the nuns. I don’t know what else she told them. The Benedictines let us in. …

Life in the convent was good. The nuns were nice. … When we didn’t go to the litle Benedictine chapel for mass, we went to kościół Mariacki (Church of St. Mary), the big church in the main square. …

We were kneeling together with the nuns in the little chapel … Over the mix of our voices, singing a hymn, we heard, “Alles raus!” (“Everyone out!”) and then the heavy steps running up the stairs. “Juden! Wo sind die Juden?” (“Jews! Where are the Jews?”) Rifles in their arms, the Nazis came crashing in. “Schnell! Alles raus! Schnell!” (“Fast! Everyone out! Fast!”)

The mass had been interrupted just before the communion. The soldiers rushed up to my brother and me and Niania, guns pointing straight at us. “Raus! Raus!” Now they were behind us. I felt a rifle in my rib. The chapel stairs were not steep. There were only a few steps down. But I stumbled, almost fell. My brother was right behind me. And Niania was crying, “Nie, nie, nein! Moje dzieci! Sie sind … moje dzieci.” (“No, no, no! They are my children.”) She was mixing the few German words she knew with Polish. The Nazis, ignoring Niania, were shouting at the nuns. ‘Alle! Alle Juden hier.’ (‘All Jews over here.’) Demanding they hand over all Jews. The nuns protested, were shoved aside. In no time everyone Jewish had been flushed out. They had caught up with us at last. It was Christmas Day.

They lined us up facing the wall. … I was shaking and shivering. … I was freezing. I wasn’t scared. … Niania was here. In the convent, among holy sisters, the Nazis could shout, but the Holy Mother would protect us.

Except for Niania, everybody who was not a Jew had stayed in the chapel. She sobbed and pleaded with the Germans in Polish. Insisted that we were her daughters. One of the Nazis began to laugh. He pushed my brother into a corner. He made him lift up his skirt and pull down his underpants. For a moment my brother’s little circumcised penis flashed into view. “Und du, bist du auch ein Knab [Knabe]?” (“Are you a boy, too?”) …

I had never known that other Jewish people had been sheltered at the convent. There was a young man. A very pale, thin young woman I had never noticed before. A woman who walked with a limp. I had seen her on the soup line with her bowl and her cane. A woman and her teenaged son. I had seen them. Both of them had blond hair. I had never thought they were Jewish. The nuns had hidden us in broad daylight. We had all blended quietly into the life at the Benedictine shelter. A thought had time to cross my mind. I had never seen any of these people at mass. They were Juden. And I had become one of the Juden. …

With the rest of their catch, the Nazis shoved my brother and me toward a canvas-covered truck that they had parked in front of the entrance to the courtyard of the convent. … There were other people already in the truck. Both men and women. They must have been rounded up somewhere else. Shivering, silent, they stared with empty eyes at the newcomers.

Then we saw Niania running toward the truck with our coats and scarves. I was afraid the Nazis were going to shoot her. But they allowed her to throw our clothes into the truck. Still pleading and crying, she was shoved aside with the butt of a rifle. …

As if they were closing a curtain, the Nazis pulled a canvas covering over the back of the truck. The engine started. The truck began to move. I had no idea where they were taking us.
Anita Lobel and her brother were sent to Płaszów, a concentration camp outside of Kraków. After the war they were reunited with their parents, who also survived, in Sweden. In Płaszów, their nanny managed to get extra food to the children with the assistance of another Polish woman and her fiancé who was employed at the camp. Their story is also recounted in Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, at page 542.
Rozalia Natkaniec was a village girl who had worked in the home of the Gruenberg family in Cracow [Kraków] before the war. Immediately after the occupation, Natkaniec decided to remain with the Gruenberg family in order to repay them for their kind treatment and the concern they had shown for her while she worked for them. As the persecution of the Jews worsened, Natkaniec came to the assistance of her employers, but was only able to save their daughter, Ziuta, after the child’s parents were seized and murdered. Ziuta hid with Natkaniec for two years until the liberation, and after the war she immigrated to Israel. Natkaniec also saved Bernhard and Anita Kempler, Ziuta’s cousins [children?], who were hiding under an assumed identity in a monastery in Cracow [actually, a shelter on Krakowska Street run by the Albertine Sisters¹⁹¹]. Unfortunately, their identity was discovered [during a raid shortly before the city was liberated by the Soviet army] and the Gestapo transported them to the Plaszow [Płaszów] concentration camp. When Natkaniec learned of this, she risked her life and smuggled them out of the camp and then hid them in her home. The Kemplers survived …
The Jews sheltered in the Capuchin monastery in Kraków were more fortunate. The Capuchins had taken in hundreds of refugees including clergy expelled from western Poland, as well as the sick. Brother Baltazar Cekus was particularly active in the rescue efforts. Among their charges were several Jews including Helena Manaster Ramer, who took refuge in Kraków together with her husband, Norbert Ramer, a medical doctor and rabbi from Lwów. Warned of a threat of denunciation, Helena and her infant son were able to escape safely and find other hiding places. (Jafa Wallach, Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor [Schuylkill Have, Pennsylvania: Hermitage, 2006], pp.184–87.)
The Polish papers we had previously secured and hidden with us all the time now proved valuable. I [Helena Manaster Ramer] became Helena Dobrowski and Norbert, Tadeusz Dobrowski … When we arrived in Krakow [Kraków] I was lost, but my husband had studied mathematics there and had many acquaintances and friends. We went at once to the home of one of these, a bachelor, and he took us in. After all these years I’ve forgotten his name, but he kept us with him for three days. Norbert got in touch with other friends and we made contact with the underground. We also managed to get a little money so that we could get by.

We were no longer Jews, however. We lived in different skins. Someone urged me to smile more and I did my best. We had to smile all the time, to remain above suspicion. …

By this time it was February 1943 and I was pregnant. Still Norbert and I remained apart as much as possible to avoid suspicion. While I didn’t look Jewish, Norbert had a more difficult time and had to spend much of his time indoors when he could. We found places to sleep but it was always harder to find places to spend the days and in the spring and summer the days were so long. We walked in the parks and in the stores and banks. We spent hours in the churches. We generally went to the churches to meet. Sometimes, too, we met in the waiting rooms of local doctors. Some people knew who we were and were even helpful to us.

At that time there was an 8 o’clock curfew and you had to be off the streets after that hour. All our efforts in the days were at finding places for the night. Sometimes we even found places where we could stay in the daytime too. Then we could bathe and get some food. …

Then, one day I found myself in a difficult situation. I had an arrangement on that day to spend the following night with some people but I had nowhere to go that night. I couldn’t wait until the following evening so I went to the people who were supposed to take me in the next night …

They were having a party and I couldn’t go inside because I didn’t want to be seen by too many people so I sat in the hallway of the building … There were two apartments in that hallway, one occupied by a university professor who was a known anti-Semite and I was very worried. At that time, many Poles were being executed by the Nazis in the east and there were many orphans. The professor’s daughter, it tuned out, was the head nurse of an organization that was engaged in rescuing these children. While I was sitting there she came out and saw me, pregnant, in the chair, in the middle of the night. I told her my husband lived in Hungary and that I had nowhere to go. Her face softened and she offered to help me. … She took me to a monastery that night.

She took me to the Order of the Kaputzyn [Capuchins]. They had several buildings in Krakow and a vast garden. One of the buildings was being used to house refugees and the sick and they put me there. I stayed in that place for more than a year and that’s were my son, Arthur, was born. …

I arranged to go to the hospital when I was due to give birth and the manager of the refugees’ house, a pious young man named M. Detz, took me. My son, Arthur, was born in October there but he took sick soon after I returned with him to the monastery and I had to take him back to the hospital for care several times. … People at the monastery thought he might die and urged me to baptize him … finally, I did. … It was now July and I began to hope we would survive by remaining in the monastery. I got money from the underground but I spent very little and lived there for almost two years. …

Later a more serious incident occurred. I found something that looked like a crudely made mezuzah, the little ornamental box containing a prayer that is put on the doorways of Jewish homes. It had been placed in the night on my doorpost. Someone was telling me that they knew what I was. It was then May 1944 and I had been in Krakow since February 1943. One evening, Mr. Detz, the manager, came to see me and said, “You can’t stay here any longer. Two of our patients are going to denounce the Jews we are hiding here.”

This was the first time that I realized I was not the only Jew at the monastery. One of the older men there, a man who used to visit me quite often and tell me stories of how he always prayed to Jesus and the Virgin Mary and relied on their help for everything, was a Jew, too. Mr. Detz said I had to leave at once.

I had retained contact with the underground and one of them, a Miss Eiserle, took me in. Her father was a Polish officer in exile in England but her mother was a Jew in hiding. … I now took Arthur from place to place in the six months remaining until the liberation in January 1945. We were here a week, there a week, in places the underground arranged for us.
Witold Goldberger was sheltered in the Benedictine abbey in Tyniec, on the outskirts of Kraków, from the spring of 1942 until the end of the war, working as a gardener’s assistant. His ethnicity was known to the prior of the abbey, Father Karol van Oost, and to Father Kazimierz Ratkiewicz, who arranged a forged Kennkarte for Goldberger in the name of Florkowski. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, p.218.)
At the outbreak of the war, Franciszka Goldberger was on a training farm in Lwow [Lwów], which had been annexed to the Soviet Union. In 1941, after the Germans occupied the city, Goldberger was interned in the local ghetto and toward the end of the year transferred to the Janowska camp. In 1943, Goldberger fled from the camp and reached her native town, Cracow [Kraków], where her parents used to live. When she discovered that her entire family had perished, she made her way to the home of Bronislaw [Bronisław] and Maria Florek, family friends. The Floreks gave her a warm welcome and offered her food, but were unable to hide her in their apartment. Nevertheless, Maria Florek accompanied Goldberger to acquaintances of hers who lived in the nearby village of Wrasowice [Wrząsowice], where, despite the danger, she rented a room for her. The Floreks visited Goldberger each month, paid her rent, and saw to all her needs. Goldberger stayed in her hiding place until the area was liberated. After the war, she immigrated to Israel. Franciszka was not the only member of the Goldberger family whom the Floreks helped. Even before her arrival, the Floreks looked after Wincenty Goldberger, Franciszka’s uncle, after he escaped from the local ghetto. They hid him in their home throughout the winter of 1942 [1941] and later [after obtaining false papers for him through a priest, Father Kazimierz, a friend of theirs] arranged for him to stay with the Benedictine nuns [sic – in fact, monks] in Tyniec, near Cracow.¹⁹² The Floreks also helped other relatives of Goldberger, including Frania and Dolek Nichtberger who, after the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto, hid in the town of Mielec, where the Floreks sent them food and money until the liberation.
Available sanctuary was not always taken up by the Jews. In the summer of 1942, during the large round-ups in the Warsaw Ghetto, the three remaining rabbis—David Szapiro, Manachem Zemba and Shimshon Stockhamer—received an offer of asylum from senior members of the Catholic clergy of the Warsaw archdiocese. This offer was declined—the rabbis decided that they could not abandon their co-religionists in their hour of adversity,¹⁹³ as was an offer to shelter several hundred Jewish children in Church institutions.¹⁹⁴ A similar offer was rejected by Rabbi Y. Pinner from the bishop of Łódź.¹⁹⁵ The meeting between the three Warsaw rabbis is described in the American newspaper Forward of March 1, 1947.
It is not known how much time the silence lasted. Perhaps a minute; perhaps hours. Reb Dovid, who was the youngest of the three, broke the silence and said, “I am younger than both of you. My words do not obligate you. It is obvious to all of us that it is not in our hands to help these people in any way. Nevertheless, by the very fact that we are with them, that we did not leave them, there is some encouragement for them—the only encouragement. I do not have the strength to leave these people—and there is no place bereft of Him. Will we hide from the Almighty? The same God who is found there is found here.”

The words came forth from the youngest rabbi and the silence continued. Then it was replaced by crying. Not one word was said. Only crying gushed forth from within the three hearts. Then they left the room and Reb Menachem said, “we are not to conduct any debate in this matter”.
The bishop of Sandomierz, Jan Kanty Lorek, who had intervened on behalf of the Jews in September 1939, as well other priests from Sandomierz continued to provide assistance to Jews during the German occupation. Jews were hidden in the bell tower of the cathedral and in the cellars of the seminary. (Some of his activities on behalf of Jews were described earlier.) Some Jews also turned to him with a request to shelter the revered Ostrowiec rabbi Yehiel Halevi Halshtok, who lived in Sandomierz. Rev. Lorek willingly agreed to do so. However, the rabbi declined the offer. (Simon Zuker, The Unconquerable Spirit: Vignettes of the Jewish Religious Spirit the Nazis Could Not Destroy, Second revised edition [New York: Zachor Institute, 1980/1981], p.26.)
“My own father,” the survivor who told us this story recalled, “had contacted the bishop of Tzozmir (Sandomierz) and begged him to hide the rabbi of Ostrowiec. The bishop had actually agreed to remove the rabbi from the ghetto and to give him shelter for the duration of the war, but when my father informed the rabbi of the bishop’s offer, he said that he would not save his own skin while his community perished.”
Another Jewish source confirms this information and mentions the favourable attitude of a number of priests from Sandomierz. (Feldenkreiz-Grinbal, Eth Ezkera—Whenever I Remember, pp.542–43, 544–45, 553.)
In the Sandomierz Judenstadt there also lived the well known revered Ostrowiec Rabbi, Yehiel Halevi Halshtok. It was said that people pleaded with the Sandomierz Bishop Jan Lorek to hide him, and the bishop was willing to do so. But the Rabbi refused, saying that he belonged with all Jews and did not wish to save his own life only. …

Out of the gravestones pillaged by the local people and returned due to the intervention of Bishop Jan Lorek, together with thousands of broken gravestones lying around in the graveyard [destroyed by the Germans], a magnificent monument was erected in memory of the Holocaust victims and the Rabbi of Ostrowiec, murdered in the Sandomierz ghetto. …

In 1946, we were approached by a priest, formerly a teacher at the Teacher’s Seminary in Sandomierz … who told us that his housekeeper, a village woman, had placed a girl named Rozia [Rózia], daughter of the eldest of the Unger brothers, in the care of her farmer brother in order to save her from deportation. The girl was lucky that despite her semitic looks she was accepted by the farmer’s neighbours and all others in the vicinity as the illegal offspring of this housekeeper and her employer, the priest. The members of the family did not deny this gossip and the girl was called “The Bastard” by everybody. Rózia tended geese and later on cows. … The aunt took the eight-year old Rozia to her home in Bytom where she was brought up and went to school. She later finished her medical studies in Poland and emigrated to the United States. …