Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

None of the nuns ever tried to set me against Jews. God forbid. The nuns did not talk on this subject.

I liked the Christian religion because it is attractive to a child. The sisters sent me to First Communion, they dressed me in white—a child is influence by these things. Besides, I was growing up among Polish children, I had a lot of friends—even before the war. I had Polish girlfriends. I came from an assimilated family. My parents were Polish in their sensibilities—that I remember. I always loved Christmas and Christmas trees. As a child, I used to visit families that celebrated Christmas. I also went to church with my girlfriends, though, of course, I went to the synagogue with my parents.

   But all this was before the war.

   When I found myself in the convent, among the nuns, in that Catholic environment, I liked it a lot. Besides, I considered it a miracle that I was alive. I was a very religious child. I observed Lent and fasted, I went through the Way of the Cross. I read the Old and New Testament, and cried at the suffering of Christ. By the way, I never had the feeling that the Jews were bad because they were responsible for His death. That attitude was not present in the convent.

   The reason I chose to stay with the nuns was, above all, that I liked Christianity. …

   Also, I have to admit, I chose to stay because of fear. I thought it was a miracle that I knew how to pray, that my parents had taught me how to pray before we parted. So I thought that God had managed things in such a way to save me. That is, I thought, that it was a sign from God that I should remain among Christians, for they had saved me. I felt I owed it to the Christian religion to stay with it.

   I did not want to return to something that had been so tragic for me.

   Being a part of Christianity, of Poland, gave me a sense of safety.  … In the convent I felt safe, although I also saw Poles die. …

But to return to the convent—I felt at home there. I treated the nuns—particularly Sister Roberta—as my mothers.
There was more to the rescue story that Rachela Gross was not aware of. Indeed, one of the serious shortcomings of the literature on Holocaust survivors is the general tendency to ignore the perspective of the rescuers, who often have an equally compelling story to relate. The following account is that of Sister Roberta Sutkowska. (Kurek, Your Life Is Worth Mine, pp.166–69.)
During the war I worked in [Trzęsówka], which is near Kolbuszow [Kolbuszowa]. On April 12, 1942, Palm Sunday, a girl came to us. The weather was horrible, the child was poorly dressed—shabby boots, a crumpled dress of shepherd’s cloth, a coat made from a blanket. She said she came to work for us, and would do whatever we liked, if we would only keep her. …

She came to us between ten and eleven in the morning—tired and dirty. We took pity on her. Before the war, we ran a nursery in the village. We couldn’t do that during the war. Older sisters arrived from Lwow [Lwów] to be with us, so there was a good number of nuns, from ten to twelve. I went to seek the advice of Father Dunajewski [actually, Rev. Antoni Dunajecki] in Kolbuszow. The priest advised me to go to Bishop Lisowski [actually, Bishop Edward Komar] in Tarnow [Tarnów], who said: “You are not the first person to show up here on such a matter. It is good that you took this child in. God will take care of this, so that nothing will happen and no one will interfere. One has to gradually learn from this child her history, and then later we will have to deal with the issue—for it’s possible that we will have to baptize the child. In the future the child has to go to school. But let’s take things a step at a time. Somehow everything will work itself out. One just has to make certain that the girl does not contact anyone and talk. Of someone takes an interest in the child, tell them she has been accepted into the convent, and that’s that.”