Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

In the Polish village of Okopi [Okopy], some tens of Jews were saved thanks to two special individuals. They are worthy of being considered part of the Righteous of the world. They are: the Catholic priest [Rev. Ludwik Wrodarczyk] and the village teacher [Felicja Masojada]. The priest used to give sermons to his followers telling them not to be involved in the extermination of Jews. He asked them to help the Jews to survive until their redemption. At that time justice will prevail and the evil Nazis and their helpers will be wiped off the face of the earth. The village teacher also had compassion for the unfortunate Jews. Their suffering touched her heart and she helped in any way possible. She was killed by a Ukrainian gang on the way from the village of Rokitno while she was helping a Jewish family. The priest was burned alive in his church. The memory of these two saintly beings stands as a ray of light in the darkness of the Nazi rule.

The following account is from Yehuda Bauer, “Sarny and Rokitno in the Holocaust: A Case Study of Two Townships in Wolyn (Volhynia),” in Steven T. Katz, ed., The Shtetl: New Evaluations (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), at page 273.

Escapees from Rokitno went … to the area of the three Polish villages [Okopy, Budki Borowskie, and Dołhań] … The Polish peasants, who had been living there for generations, saw in the Jews poor creatures persecuted by the enemies of the Poles: the Ukrainian nationalists and the Germans. All of them were basically friendly to the Jews, especially the Catholic priest, Ludwik Wolodarczyk [Wrodarczyk], and the local schoolteacher, Felicja Masojada, who organized a Polish resistance group that established contact with the Soviet partisans ... The three villages (and the fourth, Netreba, which was part-Polish) were on the edge of the thick forests in that area, and many Jews hid there. They spent the nights in the makeshift dugouts in the forest and begged for food—and sometimes worked for it—during the day. … These Polish villagers were pro-Soviet for the simple reason that there was no one else who could save them from the Bulbovtsy [Ukrainian nationalist partisans]—and indeed, the Bulbovtsy in the end burned their villages and murdered many Poles; the rest fled into the forests and joined the Jews who were hiding there. During 1943, Ukrainian nationalists murdered tens of thousands of Poles in Wolyn [Wołyń] … The four Polish villages mentioned, and both Wolodarczyk and Masojada, were among the victims.
The rescue activities of Rev. Wrodarczyk—through his sermons, in private conversations with his parishioners, and by sheltering Jews in the parish rectory in Okopy near Rokitno, and feeding them in their forest hideouts—are also documented by Polish diarists.³⁹⁹ A little known eposide is the rescue of Benedykt Lusthaus, who was engaged as an organist at the parish church of Okopy until April 1943, and afterwards joined the Soviet partisans. Hanka Halicz, his future wife, assisted in his rescue. He eventually became a renowned botanist at the University of Łódź, and was known as Benedykt Halicz.⁴⁰⁰
Eleonora Kos, who, together with her parents, escaped from the ghetto in Rożyszcze, Volhynia, was sheltered by two Polish families. She recalled the assistance given by Rev. Stanisław Dąbrowski, the pastor of the village church in Wiszenki, to Jews and Soviet prisoners of war. Rev. Dąbrowski gathered abandoned Jewish children and, from the pulpit, urged his parishioners to take them in.⁴⁰¹ Esther Pop (née Tesler), who obtained a birth and baptismal certificate from a Catholic priest in the name of Janina Skalska, received assistance from various villagers in the vicinity of Rożyszcze.⁴⁰²
After escaping from the ghetto in Kowel with her young son, Bronia Echkaus first turned to Rev. Antoni Dąbrowski, the vicar at the local parish, who comforted her, fed her and provided her with guidance as where to go as it was too dangerous for her to remain in Kowel.⁴⁰³ She found shelter with Polish families in nearby rural settlements and was assisted by Józefa Wołoszyńska from Kowel. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, pp.533–34.)
During the war, Jozefa Woloszynska [Józefa Wołoszyńska] lived with her family in Kowel, Volhynia. The family had moved to Kowel in 1933 when Jozefa’s husband took a job in the local post office. During the occupation, the Woloszynskis’ house was close to the ghetto. In July 1942, when an Aktion began in the ghetto, Bronia Eckhaus, along with her one-year-old son, hid in a hideout on a roof together with a dozen or so other Jews. At nightfall, Bronia climbed down from the roof with her son and they hid for a few days in a ransacked, empty house. When she thought that the Aktion was over, she left the hideout. She went into a church where she met a priest who fed her and advised her to look for shelter in the neighboring villages. He even gave her names of Polish and Ukrainian villages. Bronia took his advice and wandered from village to village carrying the child in her arms until she arrived in the village of Elizarow [Elizarów or Olizarów]. There, she met a woman from Kowel, Josefa [sic] Woloszynska, who had come there to buy food. Jozefa immediately recognized that Bronia was Jewish. She gave Bronia her address in Kowel and Bronia came there a few times whenever her situation became desperate. She was warmly received and Jozefa always fed her and offered her advice. In March 1943 Jozefa had a heart to heart talk with Bronia and told her that the Germans were beginning to withdraw and that the Russians were getting closer. She advised her not to give up and return to the villages. She then gave her food and a coat for the child—taken from her own young child.
The wife of a Jewish mill owner left her two-year-old daughter in some shrubs near the parish rectory in Luboml, in Volhynia. She was found by the pastor’s housekeeper. Rev. Stefan Jastrzębski, the pastor, turned to three nuns from the Orders of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus to care for the child. The child was baptized and named Teresa. Since the child spoke only Yiddish, she had to be taught Polish and Catholic prayers in order to pass as a Polish child. On the suggestion of the local reeve, the child was officially registered as a foundling. After several months of living with the nuns, who shared just one room, the child was adopted by the wife of a forester. After the war, the child’s mother came to reclaim her daughter. Rev. Jastrzębski, the dean of Luboml, was known for his interventions on behalf of Jews, who feared roving bands of marauders during the turmoil occasioned by the entry of Bolshevik troops during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920 and the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939.⁴⁰⁴ The Sisters of St. Theresa of the Child Jesus also provided assistance to Jews in their convent in Włodzimierz Wołyński.⁴⁰⁵
Stanisław Wiczyk, and his wife, Barbara, both doctors who originally hailed from Częstochowa, survived the German occupation in Uściług on the Bug River near Włodzimierz Wołyński, in what has been called a conspiracy that involved several Poles including a priest, Rev. Stanisław Symon, the administrator of the local parish, who assisted and protected them as they passed as Catholic Poles. The Yad Vashem description of this rescue, as is very often the case, barely alludes to the extent of assistance the Wiczyks actually received along the way. (Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, pp.533–34.)
At the beginning of the war, two young Jewish doctors, the couple Stanisław and Barbara Wiczyk from Częstochowa, were fugitives in the city of Lwów … With the occupation of the city by the Germans in June 1941, which was accompanied by a cruel pogrom against the Jews [carried out by Ukrainians], Stanisław came to the conclusion that the way to survive was to be swallowed up in the Christian population. However, all his efforts to receive employment as a doctor in Lwów under a false Christian identity were unsuccessful because he was recognized as a Jew. A senior Ukrainian doctor [Panchyshyn], aware of his distress, advised him to try his luck in the outlying rural areas. He gave him a letter of recommendation, without mentioning that he was Jewish, and directed him to the town of Łuck (capital of Volhynia District) in the hope that he would find work there. Stanisław left his wife on Lwów and went to seek a safe haven for them both. In Łuck he stayed with a Polish family and by chance met there a relative of the housewife, a middle-aged woman called Maria Belszan. From the first instant, Maria demonstrated a wish to help him in his new locality. From Łuck he was directed to the county town, Włodzimierz Wołyński (called Ludmir by the Jews, today Volodimir-Volinski [Volodymr-Volynskyi], Ukraine), where it was possible that he might find employment. Belszan, who was from that town and was about to travel there, suggested that he accompany her so that she might help him if necessary. On the way there, she gained Stanisław’s trust and he revealed to her that he was Jewish and that he wished to settle somewhere and then send for his wife. It emerged that Maria Belszan has [sic] suspected from the outset that Stanisław was Jewish and when she saw his great need she had decided to help him survive. Maria Belszan was a devout Catholic, the wife of a Polish soldier who had been exiled to Siberia. When Staniław asked her what motivated her to help him, she replied that her religion commanded her to help people in need without reference to creed. She took him under her protection, and Stanisław was hired as a doctor in the nearby town of Uściług (today Ustilug [Ustyluh] in Ukraine). She presented him as a relative, and through her social relations she opened doors for him that allowed him to bring his wife from distant Lwów. Maria provided her with a forged identity document, and created around them a circle of loyal, influential people, who were able to protect them from the suspicions that abounded.
Additional information about the rescue was provided by the Wiczyks’ daughter, Janine, and her husband, Richard Dreyfus. (Dan Cooney, “Hidden in Plain View,” Faith, The Magazine of the Catholic Diocese of Erie, July/August 2011, pp.20 –23.)
Maria [Belszan] also recruited Frank [Franciszek] and Maria Jachimek, another devout Catholic family, to help with the operation. They went back to Lvov [Lwów] to get Barbara [Wiczyk], who had just finished medical school. … they put her in a cart and buried her in hay. … Maria [Jachimek] also got in touch with the village priest, Father Stanislaw [Stanisław] Symon, to enlist his help. He and Maria helped Stanislaw and Barbara get their all-important identification cards from the Nazis. …

Before getting the identification cards, Stanislaw and Father Symon had already struck a very close friendship. … Stanislaw’s Jewish identity was unknown to Father Symon until one day, while the two were walking together. He said, “Father Symon, I am a Jew.” … And Father Symon said, “It’s O.K. I love you. I will take care of you, I will be part of this conspiracy. I will vouch for your identity,” which periodically was questioned by the [sic] some of the townspeople.

During their tome hiding there out in the open, Stanislaw and Barbara stayed busy. He ran a medical clinic, while she worked at a post office and cleaned as a domestic. Barbara even played the organ at Sunday Mass, which was attended by Germans. She could not practice medicine … because it was felt that if a husband and wife were both doctors, they would be more likely to be discovered and sent to the concentration camps. …

In order to acknowledge the courage, love and humanity that they received from the rescuers, the Wiczyks tried to honor them through Yad Vashem … Yad Vashem only accepted Maria Belczan [sic] into its exclusive list in 2001. “We actually went to the Yad Vashem and we pleaded on behalf of all of them.” Richard [Dreyfus] says … But there is no doubt in the experiences, hearts and minds of the Wiczyk family that all of them were involved in the small “conspiracy” of Catholics who risked their lives to save a Jewish family during World War II were, indeed, righteous and heroic.
In his Shoah Foundation testimony, Stanisław Wiczyk disclosed that Maria Beszan passed him off as her husband’s relative and that Maria Jachimek vouched for his wife, Barbara Wiczyk, as her cousin in order to obtain an identification document (Kennkarte) for her. He also identified Jan Trywiański as another member of the conspiracy of rescuers. Stanisław Wiczyk joined the Home Army in mid-1943 and became head of the self-defence in Zosin to fend off attacks on Poles by Ukrainian nationalists.⁴⁰⁶
Eve Wagszul (Rich, later Blumberg), born in 1924, escaped from the ghetto in Kowel, in Volhynia, and made her way to a labour camp, from which she escaped to the safety of a convent in an unspecified location. The convent is said to be that of the Carmelites, though this information cannot be not verified. The Benedictine Missionary Sisters ran an orphanage in Kowel, so perhaps it was there that Eve was sheltered for several months along with a number of other Jews. After leaving the convent, she hid in the forest, was imprisoned in Majdanek concentration camp, and ended up as a farm worker in Bavaria. (Interview with Eve Wagszul Rich, dated August 23, 1990, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.)
And it didn’t take long before we were arrested, and we were taken to some … labor camp … it was very easy to walk out and to escape. And I remember walking away from the labor camp with some … at the time I called him older man because I was like fourteen or fourteen and a half years old, and they told us that not too far there’s some religious installation. It’s a convent and they are helping a lot of people and I walked to this … there was … a gate and cemetery, a big cemetery plot and then w noticed nuns dressed in habits and we waited until not too many people were around. There were like four of us I believe, and we walked in and we told them that we needed help, that we have no place to go and they asked us if we were Jews and we told them. … they told us they were crowded, that they had a lot of infants. They had a lot of sick people and they indeed did, but this Mother Superior … Theresa was her name, Mother Theresa. By the way, they were Carmelites … they took us in and they told us that we had to be very quiet and it was a basement where they put us and sometimes we did chores for them and they gave us some food and they really didn’t know how long we could stay because they were constantly being watched … we stayed there for several months and slowly they tried to explain to us that things are getting very bad and they are threatened they would kill them if they would find out how many Jews they had. They had quite a few later on we found out. We heard the babies cry at night. We saw corpses being taken out of very old people and finally they told us that we have to go.

Well, they gave us cross and a prayer book. … that prayer book that I still have … I memorized all the prayers and when we parted they gave me a peasant blouse to wear so I wouldn’t look suspicious. I would look like a peasant. And this was a very sad time to part with them because you had like a little security and I remember feeling good. They would take us into the chapel to pray, you know, and they would make us kneel and it just felt good after the prayer. You know, I kept saying to myself, God, there’s nobody Jewish to pray with me, therefore I have to pray with them and when we parted it was very sad and it was like dying and I even told … there was one nun that took a special liking to me and every time she looked at me she would cry and she wanted me so much to stay there because she kept saying that I looked less Jewish than the others … it was very hard for this nun to part with me. She wanted me to stay but they were afraid and they let us go … there’s no one that extended a hand anymore like the nuns did. … They were very, very good to me, to us and I want you all to know that they risked their own lives. They didn’t have much food and they shared it with us.
Rev. Władysław Bukowiński, the pastor of the cathedral parish in Łuck, Volhynia, sheltered Moshe Berezin in the diocesan seminary, after his escape from the Łuck ghetto. Afterwards, Berezin joined the 27^th Division of the Home Army where he was known by his nom de guerre “Michał.” Berezin was in charge of a special unit, which included ten other Jews (4 men and 6 women), that ran the kitchen and repaired shoes for the partisans. All of these Jews survived the war.⁴⁰⁷
After the Germans entered Łuck in the summer of 1941, Carolyn Feffer (née Safier) and her husband, Eugene Lebenstein, turned to the bishop of Łuck, Rev. Adolf Szelążek, an acquaintance of her husband’s, for documents as Catholics. The bishop was “extremely sympathetic” and gave them birth and baptismal certificates of deceased Poles. Although her husband was seized by the Germans in a street raid and executed, Carolyn Feffer continued to pass as a Pole and placed her young daughter, Halina (then Barbara Olenyk), in a Catholic convent. After she was recognized by some Ukrainians, Carolyn applied for work in the Reich and was taken to Austria with her daughter.⁴⁰⁸
A Polish rescuer from Ośnica near Łuck, in Volhynia, turned to her confessor, the aforesaid Rev. Bukowiński, for counsel when her family was sheltering David Pristal (Princental). (Gilbert, The Righteous, pp.10–12.)
He [Pristal] then decided to seek out the Bron family, whom he knew, and who lived in the village of Ozhenitsa [Ośnica]. … ‘my host and my rescuer agreed to let me stay in the house through the winter.’

There were times when the danger came very close. On one occasion a Jewish road-building contractor was caught in the house of a Polish woman, who was executed for the help she had extended to him. But other Christian families in Lutsk [Łuck] were hiding Jews; and this, David Pristal recalled, ‘undoubtedly encouraged the Bron family and raised their spirits considerably’. … Mrs Bron was so anxious at the continual presence of a Jew in her devout Roman Catholic home. But one day, after she had asked a priest to visit her, she told David Pristal, with tears in her eyes: ‘Now I am totally relaxed, as the priest, Bukovinsky [Rev. Władysław Bukowiński], said I was doing a great act of kindness in hiding a Jew in my house. Now I have regained my peace of mind.’

After being sheltered by two Polish sisters, Dora Chazan, who was born in 1929, was recognized as a Jew by a Ukrainian and arrested by the Germans in Łuck, Volhynia. She was eventually released after a Polish woman prisoner falsely claimed that she was her aunt. Dora Chazan then took refuge in a church. The priest recognized that she was a Jew and placed her in a convent where she remained until the arrival of the Soviet army in 1944.⁴⁰⁹
Credible Polish accounts describe other rescue efforts in Łuck. The Benedctine Missionary Sisters, under the direction of Sister Marta, ran a shelter for children and the elderly. One of their charges was an 11-year-old Jewish girl with Aryan documents who was known as Krysia. She was baptized after the Germans retreated from the area, and later left for western Poland with the sisters.⁴¹⁰ Sister Flawia (Helena Lipka) took charge of a two-year-old Jewish girl who was left at the orphanage by her mother. She turned to Leandra and Tadeusz Mirecki, who were assisting Jews, to find a home for the girl. The Mireckis entrusted her to Jan and Maria Brzechwa, who baptized the girl and gave her the name of Teresa. The child survived the occupation and, after the war, relocated with her adoptive parents to Kostrzyń on the Odra River.⁴¹¹
Five Franciscan Sisters of the Suffering (Siostry Franciszkanki od Cierpiących), who worked at the hospital in Łuck, provided food to Jews. Dr. K. From, a native of Łódź who had fled to Łuck in 1939, continued to work at the hospital during the German occupation. He escaped when German gendarmes came to arrest him and hid with a Polish woman for several days. Sisters Kazimiera Wirgowska and Wacława Mirota transported him secretly to the countryside. Unfortunately, he was killed in unclear circumstances shortly before the return of the Soviet army.⁴¹²
Peppy Rosenthal (née Naczycz), born in 1935 in Rożyszcze, Volhynia, was an only child. The family escaped as the ghetto was about to be liquidated and was sheltered successively by three Polish families. Peppy’s mother was separated from the family and was never seen again. After their Polish benefactor was killed, Peppy’s father took her to a Catholic convent in an unspecified location (perhaps in nearby Łuck where the Benedictine Missionary Sisters ran an orphanage) and joined a group of Jews in the forest. After some time the nuns placed Peppy with a Polish family, and her father reclaimed her after the area was liberated. (Testimony of Peppy Rosenthal, July 1, 2009, Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, University of Michigan at Dearborn, Internet: .)
My dad and his partner worked outside the, the ghetto, and they found out that the ghetto was going to be liquidated, and we couldn’t tell any of his relatives, my dad couldn’t. So he came back with his partner, and he must have paid off the guards. They let us cross the river, and my dad was carrying me on his shoulders, and the six of us escaped. And we went to stay with one of the people that worked for my dad’s bus company. Was a, was a Sunday. And they went to church, and we were looking out in the attic outside, and … my mother tried to keep me away from the windows, so I wouldn't see … And then we stayed there till the … they came back from church, and they wanted us to leave, because they were afraid, you know, that somebody’s gonna find out that they’re hiding us. So my father and his partner went to the country to see if he can find the, one of the conductors, and see if they’d let us stay there. And then my mother and my father’s partner’s wife and their son, the four of us, stayed there. And we went and we stayed with the … where the pigs were staying. So if somebody came, then he can say that he didn’t know we were there. So we stayed there, and he insisted that we leave. And my mother said she’ll leave, and go and see if she can find my father, but would he just keep me safe, you know, hide … for them to hide me some place. So she left, and I never saw her again. …

Then they put us in a wagon and covered us with straw, the three of us: my father’s partner’s wife, their son, and myself. And they were taking us to the country, where my father was. …So they left us there, and they dig out from under … there was like hay and straw against the barn. And we dug out an entryway, and made the straw and hay hollow, so five of us could get in there. … And we stayed with those people [Kowalczyk], I don’t know how long, but I know it was one winter for sure, and it was a summer … And they had children too. But he [Kowalczyk] was killed … He was riding his bicycle from Lutsk [Łuck] … we had to leave there … they also had a hiding place underneath some flooring inside the house. But we didn’t stay there very long, maybe sometimes in the wintertime, we would come in to warm up at night. One night, we came out of the hole, and they found a man from underneath the straw and there was a man in the barn hiding too. And my dad and his partner lied to him and told him that we were just there for the night, … because they didn’t want another person there. And I don’t know whatever happened to that man. …

When it was time for us—so they moved us in a wagon covered with straw. My father … we separated at that time. I don’t know what happened to the partner and his wife and son; they somehow survived. … But I know my father and they took me to this convent, and my father left me there, and he joined the Partisans. But everybody was whispering that he was dead, because he had this fur coat, and he gave it away so it would look, you know, that he died, and so people wouldn’t search for him, the Ukrainians. But he hid out someplace in the forest, with, with other Jews, and also with some Partisans. And I stayed in the convent for a while until they told, found me a place, and they told that I was an orphan. ...

They were very nice to me. I have special warm heart, … in my heart, you know, about how they treated me, and they took—New Year’s Eve, I remember them taking me to church. I didn’t have any shoes on, so they wrapped my feet with towels and stuff. … I wore a cross. … I was raised Catholic. … And you know, I remember when my Dad came back, and we moved into our house, my dad not once said, “Take off that cross,” or, “Don’t say that,” or, “Don’t go to church.” He never said a word. And then all by myself, you know, I stopped doing those things.

They knew that I was Jewish. So I, I don't remember how long it was that I stayed at the convent, but I know it was wintertime, because I was cold, and I remember not having warm things. And then they gave me to this family that lived way, way far away from the road …, so, and it was safe there. And if I saw a person walking towards the house, I would immediately hide. I had a special place where to hide. And I stayed there I know one winter, and a summer, not whole summer … and sometimes when it was nighttime I would go outside and play. Then one day I saw this man coming in the distance, and I went and I hid, and then, as he came closer, the woman recognized my dad. And she went and she got me … my dad came and, you know, that was the first time I saw him in a long time. And we stayed together.

And some of those Jews went and they stayed at our house. They went as, as we were being liberated from the Russians, Jews came out from hiding, and they came and they stayed in our house [in Rożyszcze]. … I remember that … we traveled to Lublin. And we stayed there for a while … then we went from there to Łódź. … from Łódź we went to Danzig [then Gdańsk, Poland]. … I didn’t know how to write, read or anything. Then when we came back to Poland, … I met some nuns, and they taught me the alphabet, and how to write, or read. … they didn’t push catechism on me, or any religion. … And the Russians were so sympathetic to me. … And the Catholics. …
Krystyna Niekrasz was born in Rożyszcze, Volhynia, in 1941 as Ewa Putter. Her parents perished in unknown circumstances. As an infant, Ewa was left in the garden of a home belonging to the Zalech family, with a note. Mr. Zalech had worked as a caretaker in the school where Ewa’s father was principal. The Zalech family took the child in. A Ukrainian neighbour denounced them to the Gestapo, but a Catholic priest came to Ewa’s rescue, swearing under oath that she was the child of a young unmarried woman from Rożyszcze whose identity he could not reveal. With the assistance of a Polish woman who worked as an interpreter for the Germans, her guardians obtained an official document stating that she was a Polish child who had been separated from her parents during the deportation of Poles to Germany for forced labour. Because their Ukrainian neighbours continued to harass them, the Zalechs moved to a village near Dęblin, on the Vistula River, and took Ewa with them. Ewa survived and continued to live with the Zalechs after the war.⁴¹³
In the Tarnopol region of Eastern Galicia, two Polish villages were wiped out because, with the encouragement of Catholic priests, their inhabitants offered refuge to Jews and Soviet partisans. (Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe [London: Paul Elek, 1974], pp.450–53.)
Fifteen Jews escaped from the Sasov [Sasów] labour camp at the end of June 1943 after learning that the Jews in the labour camps at Olesko and Brody had been exterminated and received food and shelter from peasants in the Polish village of Dzwonica. … The 70 to 80 Jews who had managed to get away [from Sasów] encountered in the forests an equal number of Jews who had escaped from other camps and ghettos, but despite their relatively large number they were able to survive thanks to the Polish peasants from Huta Pieniacka and Huta Wierchobuska [Werchobuska].

The two Polish villages were surrounded by hostile Ukrainian settlements and to defend themselves against the attacks of Ukrainian nationalists the Poles had organised in each village a defence body armed with a few rifles. Despite the dangers they were running, the Poles, encouraged by their Catholic priests, provided the Jews with food, for which the Jews paid if they had the means, and when the cold weather came they allowed them to sleep in their sheep-pens and barns. The Ukrainians from the neighbouring villages reported what was happening to the Germans and the Zolochev [Złoczów] Kreishauptmann (District Chief) warned the headmen of the two villages that unless they stopped sheltering the Jews, the inhabitants would meet with the same fate as other enemies of the German Reich. The Poles did not, however, change their attitude to the Jews and only asked them not to appear in the villages in daytime.

… the Polish underground learnt that the Germans were preparing a punitive expedition against the village. The Jews took the warning seriously and ceased sleeping in the village, but the Poles did not … But three days after the departure of Krutikov’s [Soviet] partisans a force of Germans and Ukrainians captured the village, crammed all the inhabitants into a barn and their cattle into stables, and burnt them all alive. …

Three weeks later, on 23 March, a force made up of Ukrainians from neighbouring villages attacked the village of Huta Wierchobuska. Warned of their approach, three-quarters of the peasants fled into the woods and forests. Those who stayed tried to defend themselves, but were quickly overpowered and met with the same end as the inhabitants of Huta Pieniacka.
At the urging of Rev. Canon Aleksander Chodyko, the dean of Białystok, Rev. Emil Kobierzyński, the pastor of Brody, joined in the rescue effort and actively encouraged his parishioners to assist Jews. (Mordecai Paldiel, The Righteous Among the Nations [Jerusalem: Yad Vashem; New York: HarperCollins, 2007], pp.173–76.)
In September 1939, at the start of the war, Avraham Itzhak Rivkind [Rywkind], his wife, Chaya, and their children, Menachem-Mendel and Raaya, all living in Bialystok [Białystok], fled eastward to Brody ahead of the advancing Germans. Brody was then occupied by the Russians and remained in their control until the German attack on the Soviet Union. When the Germans struck again, in June 1941, Menachem-Mendel, at the time in his thirties, was married to Lonia, the daughter of the chief rabbi of Bialystok, Rabbi Gedalia Rosenman. Acting swiftly to assist his son-in-law in Brody, Rosenman turned to the Catholic bishop [actually, the dean] in Bialystok, Aleksander Chodyko, and asked for his intercession. Chodyko in turn approached a number of clerics in the Brody region and appealed to them to make an effort to save the Rivkind family. However before any of the clerics could act on the bishop’s appeal, on November 2, 1942, the Germans and Ukrainians staged one of their murderous raids on the city’s Jews. Avraham Itzhak Rivkind and wife Chaya were among the victims as was their daughter, Raaya. Only their son, Menachem-Mendel, and his two cousins from the Cygielman family were able to escape by finding temporary shelter and survived the bloody raid. … Brody was one of the many Jewish communities in eastern Poland (today in Ukraine) that was totally obliterated by the Germans and their Ukrainian collaborators.

… when during 1942 Father Emil Kobiezyński [Kobierzyński], in Brody, in response to Bishop [Canon] Chodyko’s appeal, began to make inquiries among his parishioners to help the remaining member of the Rivkind family, Menachem Mendel, and his two cousins, Dr. Julian Cyguelman and his brother Avraham, he was able to persuade one of his church members, the Polish-born Marian Huzarski to consider the matter favourably. Huzarski lived on the outskirts of Brody, in the nearby village of Sydonowka [Sydonówka], a distance of three kilometres—a village containing a mixed Polish-Ukrainian population. After receiving the priest’s request, Marian Huzarski returned home and gathered his family for a serious discussion about how to respond.

There is no written record of this crucial family consultation attended by all the immediate members of the Huzarski family, including Marian, wife Alfreda, and their two sons, Fryderyk, aged 22, and Zbigniew, aged 19. … The family consultation ended in a unanimous decision to shelter the fleeing Jews, people whom they had never seen before.

After the war, Zbigniew wrote that on November 25, 1942, he or someone else in the family informed Rivkind of the family’s decision and set up a meeting for the next day in Brody. The two Huzarski brothers, Zbigniew and Fryderyk, arrived at dusk and took the three fugitive Jews to their village home through fields and side roads. The three new arrivals—Dr. Julian Cygielman, his brother Avraham, and Menachem-Mendel Rivkind—stayed there for a full 17 months, until the area’s liberation in July 1944.

The two Cygielmans and Rivkind were very religious and made an effort to strictly observe the Jewish rituals, even in the unfavourable conditions of their new setting. This included daily prayers, with the donning of the obligatory tefillin (phylacteries) and tallit (prayer shawl) for morning services and eating only kosher food as prescribed by Jewish religious law. … In consideration of their charges’ religious sensibilities, the Huzarskis, themselves religious, purchased special utensils and mother Alfreda cooked their wards’ food as prescribed by the Jewish religion. In fact, during prayers, which were at times uttered with intensity and raised voices, the Huzarskis were forced to ask the supplicants to lower their voices for fear that outsiders might overhear them, with al the risks involved for all. Not at all oblivious to their hosts’ own religious obligations, the three Orthodox Jews celebrated the Christian festivals with them.

The fall of 1943, a year after the arrival of the three Jews, … led to the burning of Polish homes in the region, including Huzarski’s village of Sydonowka. Many Polish inhabitants took to fleeing to the forest at night, returning to their homes only during daylight hours. Over time, the frequency of raids by Ukrainian nationalists in the village intensified, a situation that greatly concerned the Huzarskis—themselves Poles.

In light of this troublesome development, the Huzarskis prepared an underground shelter at the edge of the forest near their home, filling it with all the necessary items to accommodate their three charges. After transferring Rivkind and the Cygielman brothers to the new hiding place, the Huzarski family continued to supply them with all their needs on a daily basis, resolving not to abandon them even after the majority of the Polish peasant population of the village had deserted their homes.

In March 1944, the Red Army approached Brody. Out of fear of the Ukrainians, the Huzarskis advised the three Jews to flee toward the approaching Russian army. In June 1944, during the final German retreat, the Ukrainians set the Huzarski home on fire. The Huzarskis fled to neighbors in the forest, and on the following day the Red Army took over. The Huzarski family had escaped in good time and had headed westward to Lancut [Łańcut, a town in south-central Poland].

Rivkind and the two Cygielman brothers made their way back to liberated Bialystok. As a professional textile engineer, Menachem-Mendel Rivkind was inducted into the Red army with the rank of captain and appointed to manage the large textile firm in the city. Once he had located his rescuers, he invited them to Bialystok and ensured their employment in the factory that he managed. In 1946 when he decided to leave Bialystok, Rivkind transferred to his rescuers his big house, which had earlier been occupied by his father-in-law, Rabbi Rosenman, and left for Israel [Palestine]—as did the Cygielman brothers.
Initially, the refugees hid in a hiding place that was prepared for them in the stable with an emergency exit. As raids by gangs of nationalist Ukrainians in the village intensified and a growing number of Polish farms were being burned down, Huzarski and his sons prepared an underground shelter for their three charges at the edge of the forest. The brothers Fryderyk and Zbigniew Huzarski were active in the Home Army.⁴¹⁴
Józef and Józefa Marć hid at least twelve Jews in the attic of their house in Jedlicze near Krosno, among them many members of the Fries family. They also received assistance from the Zub family, especially from Rev. Stanisław Zub, who lived nearby and regularly provided them with food. Many inhabitants of the village were aware of this rescue but no one betrayed them. Ten members of Fries family declared in 1950: “We hid in the small town of Jedlicze, in the neighbourhood of the Zub family, and the entire Zub family, and Stanisław Zub in particular, assisted us at every turn, expecially by providing us with food.”⁴¹⁵
Rev. Jan Zawrzycki, a Home Army chaplain from Rymanów near Krosno, saved about a dozen Jews. He hid Jewish children in the church belfry and found shelters for them in private homes and convents. One such child was taken in by the Michaelite Sisters in nearby Miejsce Piastowe. Using the identity card of his deceased grandmother, he sent a woman from Krosno and her two daughters, Anna and Gizela Bodner, to Warsaw where all three survived the war.⁴¹⁶ The assistance of Rev. Zawrzycki is described with gratitude by a group of Jewish beneficiaries who settled in Israel. (Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, p.340.)
Father Zawrzycki … saved first of all the lives of Jewish children by hiding them in convents; often he personally went to the hideouts and Jewish bunkers and from there he took the children and put them in safe places, and it is thanks to this that those children lived and were delivered from Nazi satanism. Father Zawrzycki did this of his own accord, guided by the principle of unselfish love for his neighbour and fellow-man. As soon as he learned that a hiding place where Jews were concealed had no guarantee of safety, Father Zawrzycki, often at night and under great danger to his own person, came on his bicycle and took them away, especially children who he saved in this way. Here in Palestine there is a whole group of people who owe their lives solely and exclusively to Father Zawrzycki. Bronisława Fischbein from Krosno, Franciszka Leizer from Cracow [Kraków], Rubin from Korczyna, J. Szapira from Warsaw, Anna Majerans and her three sons from Łódź. Others in Palestine and in Poland owe their lives to the aforementioned Father Zawrzycki.
In 2007 Rev. Zawrzycki was recognized by Yad Vashem as a Righteous Gentile. According to Yad Vashem’s Database of Righteous Among the Nations (Jan Zawrzycki, Internet: ):
Local Jewish women, aware of his great character and his kind disposition towards Jews, brought him their children in the hope that he would save them. Zawrzycki hid the children in his church, and then relocated each of them to a neighboring monastery or into the care of trustworthy families.

Among those he saved were two young Jewish girls and their mother, who lived across the street from his house. He found the identification papers of a deceased Polish woman and gave them to the mother, and then used his driver to take them to the station, whence they made their way to Warsaw and survived the war. Other survivors aided by Zawrzycki included Bronisława Fiszbejn, Franciszek Lejzer and Anna Majerans.

Zawrzycki also collaborated with the Armia Krajowa, organizing a radio interception point in his attic. Together with his brother-in-law, he created caches for weapons and diversion supplies, including in the beehives by his house. He also secretly taught children in Rymanów.

In 1947, Zawrzycki was arrested for his wartime underground activity. The Jews he had saved during the war played an active part in liberating him the following year. 
Basia, the 10-year-old daughter of Majerowicz from Krosno, who was passing as Jerzy Krawczyk, was sheltered in a convent where she survived the war.⁴¹⁷
The Sisters of St. Michael the Archangel (Michaelite Sisters) sheltered Jewish children in several convents, among them Miejsce Piastowe near Krosno and Godowa near Strzyżów. (Elżbieta Rączy and Igor Witowicz, Poles Rescuing Jews in the Rzeszów Region in the Years 1939–1945 / Polacy ratujący Żydów na Rzeszowszczyźnie w latach 1939–1945 [Rzeszów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 2011], p.186.)
During the war the sisters hid several Jewish children among others, Lila Freiherter and Zofia Goltweld, in the monastery in Miejsce Piastowe. Michaelite Sisters hid a Jewish girl, Maria Kaleta (Alfreda Baruszyńska) from Kołaczyce in their filial house in Godowa near Strzyżów. Barbara Kraciuk, the mother superior of the monastic house within the years 1942–1945, took care of the baby. … Alfreda Baruszyńska survived the German occupation, she was baptized in Miejsce Piastowe and after the war she was given to her parents.
Zila Weinstein-Beer (later Cipora Re’em or Zippora Ram), born in 1939, was taken in Maria and Stanisław Dudek of the village of Odrzykoń near Krosno, and looked after as if she was their own child. She was able to pass with the assistance of the local pastor, Rev. Ernest Świątek, who baptized her, and the solidaity of the Dudeks’ neighbours. (The Righteous Database, Yad Vashem, Internet: .)
Born in Krosno in 1939, Zippora Ram was the daughter of a Jewish timber plant owner, who employed many of the Polish inhabitants of the nearby village of Odrzyków [Odrzykoń]. Zippora was very young when Stanisław Dudek took her into his home during the war. Most of the villagers knew where the little girl had come from, but kept silent, in part due to a sermon delivered by the local vicar, who preached the human duty of helping their neighbors.

Dudek and his wife Maria had no children of their own. They cared for the little girl with great devotion throughout the occupation. They looked out for her and did not let other children make fun of her or call her Jewish. Zippora was baptized by the vicar and raised as a Catholic.

At a certain point, the Krosno police ordered Dudek to bring the girl in to be checked. With tears in her eyes, Maria Dudek bid goodbye to her husband and adopted child, as the danger of discovery was immense. However, the German doctor conducting the "check-up" found the girl not to be Jewish.

After the war, Zippora was taken to Israel by a Jewish organization that took care of orphaned Jewish children. She was only eight or nine years old, and still wore a cross around her neck. She grew up with no recollection of the events of the war, or of her origins. It was only much later that her family decided to investigate her past. After a prolonged search, it was established that she had been saved in Odrzyków. Zippora made a trip to Poland in search of her roots.

When she saw the village and some of the people who still remembered her, many memories came flooding back. With the aid of the villagers, she pieced together the story of her survival and the Dudeks’ dedicated help. Unfortunately, neither Maria nor Stanisław were still alive at that time.
The following account by Zippora Ram comes from a brochure, Righteous Among the Nations, published for the award ceremony honorouring rescuers in Warsaw on June 14, 2010.
As early as fall 1940 my mother’s father, Suessman Katz, who owned a sawmill, approached one of his employees and asked him to hide me until the war ended. This employee was not able to assist, but he knew Stanislaw [Stanisław] and Maria Dudek and helped my grandfather contact them. Sometime during the winter of 1940, a rendezvous was organized in the forest near Odrzykon [Odrzykoń]. I was handed over to the Dudeks, who raised me as their own daughter and baptized me as Cecilia [Cecylia] Dudek. I was nicknamed Cesia. It may be that my Jewish name was Zirl or Zila after my father’s mother and Cecilia was similar sounding.

I was born on 7.5.1939, or at least so I was told years later by my late half-brother who survived the war. In my childhood memories I live in a rural area with a Christian Polish family. I knew nothing about my Jewish origin or anything about the war that was going on, but I do remember that food was scarce and it was mostly potatoes that filled my hunger. I would shepherd the family’s geese during the day and sleep on the kitchen floor at night.

I have very vivid memories of two traumatic events. In the first a gun is aimed at my face and my command of church prayers is being tested. Only recently did I learn this was during a Gestapo interrogation to which I was taken with my Polish father, Stanislaw Dudek. In the second memory it is winter and I am attempting to cross a river, but the strong current carries me away and I nearly freeze to death in the icy cold water. A moment before I die, I am pulled out of the water. Last year I realized this was not just an old vague memory, as I had the opportunity to meet Aleksander Blicharczyk, whose mother was the one who rescued me.

After the war was over I remember being taken away from my family to an orphanage in Krosno. I did not want to leave my Polish mother, who I now know was Maria Dudek, and we secretly decided that I will run away from the orphanage and she will pick me up and take me back to the village. This is why I remembered for years that Krosno was not far from the village, which in May 2009 turned out to be the lovely village of Odrzykon. The escape plan worked out well, but I was taken a second time, never to see my Polish mother again.

I was sent to an orphanage in Krakow [Kraków] and later travelled with a group of similar children to Israel in 1948, where I grew up without having knowledge of my biological family or a reason for being called Cesia Beer.

In 1956 my half-brother arrived in Israel and, for the first time, I was told all about my biological family. Up until May 2009, that was all I knew, but then, prompted by my children, I travelled back to Poland to look for traces of both my families. With the help of God and many good people I discovered numerous new details about my parents, siblings, and the wonderful Dudek family who took care of me during the war, while risking their own lives.
Rev. Lesław Kędra-Chodorski was a priest of the Polish Catholic Church (Kościół Polskokatolicki), which was not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, in Łęki Dukielskie near Krosno, and a member of the Home Army underground. He brought Nelly (Aniela) Arluk and another Jewish woman from Łódź to the village. These women were sheltered by Rev. Aleksander Piec, the parish administrator. Rev. Piec entered into a fictitious marriage with Nelly Arluk for the sake of her cover; the other woman posed as her mother-in-law. Rev. Kędra-Chodorski also rescued Dr. Stefan Stiefel, whom he arranged to bring to the village from Krosno. Dr. Stiefel dressed in a cassock and was passed off as an ill priest. He was given false identity documents in the name of Stefan Szymański. He survived the war with the help of a number of villagers who were in on the ruse, among them members of the priest’s family and Jadwiga Niepokój.⁴¹⁸ Alicja Heiler (née Stiefel, born in 1918) recalled the story of her brother, Dr. Stefan Stiefel (Testimony of Alicja Heiler, Yad Vashem Archives, file O.3/3421):
My brother, Dr. Stefan Stiefel …, who currently lives in Austria, hid from the round-ups at the house of the Sochański family. Immediately after the operation, he turned to his friend Father [Lesław] Chodorski-Kędra, a relative of the pianist Władysław Kędra. Chodorski belonged to the National Church. He agreed to give my brother a shelter at his house. What’s more, he sent him a priestly robe to make his departure from Krosno to the countryside easier. And so, my brother left Krosno, at bright noon, dressed as a priest, accompanied by Jadwiga Niepokój and another friend named Cichocka. As they were walking down the street, women approached my brother to kiss his hand, a common gesture, unaware who that priest was! As it is customary in small villages that the newly arrived priest celebrates masses, Father Chodorski had to think how to get my brother and himself out of trouble. He explained that my brother was a priest, a refugee from Poznań, who suffered a nervous breakdown after Nazi persecution. My brother lived with Father Chodorski and his friends for some time. Later, given Aryan papers, he moved to Kraków.
Other clergymen of the Polish Catholic Church or the Old Catholic Church (Kościół Starokatolicki) also came to assistance of Jews. Rev. Antoni Ptaszek and his son, Rev. Kazimierz Ptaszek, were particularly active in Kraków. A number of Jewish testimonies—Celina Herstein, Ludwika Silber, Franciszka Berestyńska, Zofia Irena Müller, and Helena Fedorowicz—attest to the fact that they provided false identity documents to numerous Jews and sheltered Jews.⁴¹⁹
When some Jews arrived at the cottage of a Polish woman in Chobrzany near Sandomierz, having been brought there temporarily by her brother, who had sheltered them in Zwierzyniec near Szczebrzeszyn, the entire hamlet was alarmed by the attendant danger. Luba Krugman Gurdus describes the calming effect of the stance taken by a priest, unknown to them, in The Death Train: A Personal Account of a Holocaust Survivor (New York: Holocaust Library, 1978), at pages 105–106.
In order to throw off suspicions about our being Jewish, we accompanied Marysia [their hostess] to Sunday services. The compassionate, young priest sensed our problem and added a few words to his sermon on our behalf. He advised his congregation to respect their fellow men and not to condemn them too hastily for their beliefs and convictions. His effort proved beneficial, and the strained atmosphere around us eased.
No one betrayed the Jews for the duration of their stay there.
Zofia Zusman survived the war thanks to the assistance she received from Rev. Ignacy Życiński, the pastor of Trójca near Zawichost, in the diocese of Sandomierz. Rev. Życiński 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, pp.646–47.)
During the war, Maria Przysiecka and her son, Jozef [Józef], were living in Sandomierz. One day, Jozef met an old school friend, Zofia Zusman, in the street. Zofia had arrived in Sandomierz from the neighboring town of Ozarow [Ożarów]. Jozef invited Zofia to come with him to his house. Zofia followed Jozef to his house, where she was warmly welcomed by Maria. At the Przysieckis, Zofia also met her prewar friend Itka. … Itka was being sheltered in the Przysieckis’ home and Zofia joined her. One evening in October 1943, when Zofia and Itka were climbing down to the cellar, they heard dogs barking outside followed by the clatter of Polish security officers pounding on the Przysieckis’ front door. ... The intruders subsequently made an extensive search of the property, turning everything upside down, but discovered nothing. Nevertheless, following this incident, Przysiecka and her son came to the conclusion that it was too dangerous to continue hiding Zofia and Itka. Maria then turned to the priest Ignacy Zyczynski [Życiński], who knew that she was harbouring Jews. He told her to bring them to his house, where they could live in a garret. Under the cover of darkness, the fugitive Jewish girls moved to the rectory. In the meantime, Jozef prepared a new hideaway for them—in the woodshed. Zofia and Itka stayed there for the entire winter, lying huddled together and keeping absolutely still. … In June 1944, Zofia and Itka were once more taken to Zyczynski’s home while Jozef began to construct a new shelter for them, this time in his garden. When it was complete, he ushered the girls into it. This was the last hideout used by Zofia and Itka on the Przysieckis’ property because at the end of September 1944 the Przysieckis were ordered to evacuate their home. When they did Zofia and Itka had to look for a new shelter. They parted cordially with their courageous hosts and moved to Ozarow, where they found a new hideout. Itka later relocated to Zawichost, where the Germans caught and killed her. Zofia survived the war.
Michael (Marjan) Rosenberg was assisted by a priest in Tczów near Radom, in central Poland. (“In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Six people whose lives were greatly affected by the Holocaust recently met at the Star to discuss their experiences,” The Toronto Star, December 3, 1992; and accounts of Michael Rosenberg dated May 26, 1993 and August 10, 1993.)
When I was 17, I walked into a German police station and asked for papers … I couldn’t work without them. They called in a Catholic priest and he asked me to say a prayer. I still remember it in Polish. “Our Father, who art in heaven …” The priest said, “Yes, he is Roman Catholic.” They then took a photograph and gave me identification papers. It was a miracle that they didn’t ask me to drop my pants and see if I was circumcised. If they had, I would have been put against the wall of the church and shot.

… Prior to escaping from the concentration camp, I had learned how to cross myself. But after passing myself off as a Catholic, it became necessary for me to go to confession. I was in fear. Not knowing how to make confession, I walked into the confessional box and said to the priest: “Father, I don’t know what to do—I am a Jew.”

The priest opened the confessional window, looked at me, and said: “Son, don’t be afraid. I won’t betray you.” Then we prayed together. I still remember what we said together: “God bless Poland … please help the oppressed.” … [Michael Rosenberg’s visits not only helped him pass as a Catholic, but also provided him with much needed solace.]

I wrote to the priest [Rev. Władysław Paciak] … Then in 1953, a letter came back to Toronto: Address unknown. I haven’t heard anything since. [The interruption came at the height of the Stalinist terror against the Catholic clergy.]
Michael Rosenberg expanded on his story in Abram, The Light After the Dark, at pages 194–99.