Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

I came out of the dream with the strange feeling that someone was hovering over me. I opened my eyes. A priest was kneeling down, speaking to me in Latin. In nomine domine et filio et spiritu sanctu…words linked themselves together in a singsong drone. For a moment I thought I was hallucinating. Then I realized the priest was flesh and blood and he wasn’t speaking to me, but was giving me last rites. When he saw my eyes were opened he looked at me sorrowfully and made the sign of the cross.

A priest making a cross in the air over me was the last thing I expected. I was drowning in my own misery and sorrow, in pain, and a priest wasn’t someone I wanted to see at that moment. I wondered if I was really so near death that I needed the last rites? I raised my hand and motioned for him to stop. The priest looked at me, his eyes widening slightly, surprised that I would interrupt him in the process of saving my eternal soul.

“What’s the matter, my son?” he asked, putting his ear down near my mouth. “Are you in great pain?”

“No, Father.”

“Then what’s wrong, my child?”

“I’m Jewish, Father.”

He looked into my blue eyes. “You’re Jewish, my son?”

“Yes, Father.”

“I’m truly sorry, my son.”

“I understand, Father.”

Then he stood up and walked away.
Mendel (Martin) Helicher, a Jew from Tarnopol who served as an officer in the 54^th battalion of the Polish army, was taken captive by the Germans in September 1939 and sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in Gorlice. After a medical examination, Helicher was identified as a Jew and imprisoned. He was protected by his division commander, Zygmunt Bryszewski, and other Poles including a priest, Rev. Józef Czach, the batallion’s chaplain. The chaplain maintained that Helicher was a Catholic who had been circumcised as a result of an operation, and they were thus was able to secure his release. An article by Y. Shmuelevich about Helicher’s experiences published in Forward on January 17, 1966 is reproduced in the Mikulińce memorial book, Mikulince: Sefer yizkor, edited by Haim Preshel (Israel: Organization of Mikulincean Survivors in Israel and in the United States of America, 1985), at pages 104–113.
The Hitlerists never stopped looking for Jews among the prisoners. … One night in September 1939, at midnight, a gang of Hitlerists stormed into the hut and demanded a medical examination of every prisoner. They were looking for Jews. Everyone who passed the examination and was found to be Gentile received a tag entitling him to receive food. “I, too, stood, in the long line,” Helicher said, “completely naked. My heart trembled. In a matter of minutes, the German murderers would know that I was a Jew.” At that point, a miracle happened. A man named Bigada, formerly a judge in Tarnopol, came over to the Jew. He had already passed the physical. The judge, a lieutenant, held out his tag to the Jew. Slowly, the Jew moved out of the line. The Polish judge, who passed the exam a second time and got a new tag, was a close friend of Zigmund Brishevski [Zygmunt Bryszewski]. If the Nazis had ever found out, Bigada would have been shot.

Danger was not over for Martin—Mendel Helicher and waited for him anew around every bend. Once, when Helicher was standing in line for food, a Ukrainian named Olenik recognized him. They had served together in the Polish army and Olenik knew Helicher was Jewish. The Ukrainian went to the Nazis and informed on Helicher. The Nazis examined him and when they found that he had been circumcised they branded a Jewish star on his left hand so that everyone would know that he was Jewish. They incarcerated him in the Garliz [Gorlice] prison. But his good and kind-hearted friend did not desert him. He made sure his Jewish friend got out of danger.

Among the Polish officers at Garliz was the judge from Tarnopol Pisterer. He was a “volksdeutsche” (literally a son of the German people) and served as an interpreter for the Nazis who liked him very much. He even wore a German uniform. “Judge Pisterer went to the judge I mentioned previously, Bogada,” Helicher explained, “together with the clergyman Tsach [Rev. Józef Czach] who had been the chaplain of the 54^th battalion in Tarnopol. The three of them went to see the Nazis in charge of the camp. The chaplain said that I had been a Catholic all my life and belonged to his church. My circumcision, he explained, was the result of an operation. I was released on the strength of his testimony.” To this day, he bears the Jewish star on his left hand and survived the Nazis as a devout Catholic.