Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

She accounts their stories in her book “Stories Told”.

“Every war,” she says, “brings out either the heroes or the beasts in people. And people are the same, no matter the nation.”

Samuel Gruber, a Jewish partisan leader, described the attitude of a village priest in Pryszczowa Góra near Lublin, in his memoirs, I Chose Life (New York: Shengold Publishers, 1978), at pages 83–84.
The [Jewish] partisans, the priest told the assembled mourners, were not robbers but fighting men, regardless of whether they were Christians or Jews. They were human beings who wanted to live and not be caught by the Germans. Accordingly, the priest warned his congregants, if a band of partisans came to your farmstead you should give them food and shelter for the night and not tip off the Germans, at least not immediately. You could always make the report the next morning after the partisans had left. Just be sure you don’t inform the Germans while the partisans are still in your house, because if you do, you will end up having trouble from both sides, from the Germans for having taken in partisans, and from other underground fighters for having reported their friends.

It seems that the villagers took the words of their priest to heart, for the next day they treated us with unusual deference and hospitality. They gave us food, clothing, and even shoes, “so you can march better,” they said. However, this was not enough for some of our men. They went out on their own and, instead of asking peasants for what they wanted, acted the part of thieves and holdup men.
Tema Rotman-Weinstock, who was born to a poor family in a small town in the province of Lublin, had only four years of schooling, but her Polish was fluent and she was familiar with village customs. She too encountered the protective support of a priest when she hid in the village of Kajetanówka. Her story is recounted in Nechama Tec, Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), at pages 227–29.
From the beginning of the Nazi occupation, Tema, dressed as a peasant, smuggled food from the countryside to the town to help support her family. During the last stage of the war she roamed the familiar countryside. She worked hard and had to move from employer to employer, most of whom were hungry themselves and found it hard to feed her. Constantly exposed to raids, cold, and hunger, Tema fought against her feelings of hopelessness.

One winter, while searching in vain for shelter, she suffered frostbite in three of her toes. A peasant woman who could hardly support herself and her retarded daughter took pity on Tema and kept her for three months. But the days when peasants were willing to keep her were [because of their fear—M.P.] coming to an end. Tema’s frostbitten toes continued to hurt her, and hunger made her grow thin. Finding solace in prayers, she persevered. For a while she hid out with a few meager provisions in the attic of a small roadside chapel. But hunger drove her out, and she went on until she found a hut. There she met a cousin who had come in from the forest to buy provisions. He told her that he and his wife lived in a bunker in the forest. Tema begged him to let her join them. He refused. She continued to roam the countryside, sick and often starving. When she was on the verge of collapse, kind peasants took her into their home. She describes her stay.

“I could not regain my health. I stopped feeling hunger, vomited a lot, and suffered from headaches. I was hardly able to work. And after a month, afraid to keep me, this peasant, Popko, directed me to a woman who lived on a farm with her daughter. This woman had a hard time running the farm, yet she was too poor to hire a farmhand. The village was called Kajtanówka [Kajetanówka], and the name of the peasant woman was Niedźwiedzka. Her hut was far from the main road, and the Germans were unlikely to come there … She was not [visibly—M.P.] afraid to take me in; and I worked for her as much as I could. …”

The year 1944 brought the Russian front closer. Tema’s health continued to deteriorate. She could barely eat, yet she had to work hard. Her employer seemed pleased with her; then somehow the word spread that Tema was Jewish. Fortunately, no bad consequences followed because she found a powerful protector in the local priest. He baptized Tema and defended her against those who still saw her as a Jew. “The priest stood up for me, arguing that conversion was a wonderful Christian deed … Slowly, I began to feel better, my health improved, and the wounds on my toes healed … Then a miracle happened. I saw my mother, dressed the way she had been when we parted. She entered the hut, smiling, and said that we wouldn’t be suffering much longer because on the 23^rd of July the Soviets would come to liberate us.” When Tema reported this vision to her employer and neighbors, they laughed at her. She herself began to doubt her dream or vision. But “the miracle happened—on July 23, 1944, the first Soviet soldiers came to our village and to the next one.”

After the Soviets came, a group of women rushed into Tema’s house, calling her Santa Teresa. Each wanted her to come and stay. Each brought delicious food, insisting that Tema eat it. Like the people around her, Tema believed in miracles and saw herself as a saint. Eventually, however, Tema decided to return to her Jewish faith. She settled in Haifa, Israel … Tema stayed in touch with the peasants who were kind to her.
Krystyna Modrzewska (Mendelbaum), a twenty-year-old Jewish woman who had converted to Catholicism before the war, and her mother, Maria Mendelbaum, survived with assistance of nuns and a priest from Lublin, Rev. Paweł Dziubiński, a prelate of the Lublin chapter. Rev. Dziubiński provided temporary shelter and other assistance to his former neighbours, the Mendelbaums. Through his housekeeper, Sister Pelagia, the mother superior of the Sisters of the Family of Bethany, Krystyna Modrzewska was put in contact with a convent of that order in Mełgiew near Lublin, whereas Krystyna’s mother was sheltered in a convent in Międzylesie near Warsaw, probably of the Sisters of the Family of Mary.⁴⁴⁰ Rev. Dziubiński also provided baptismal and birth certificates to the Bass sisters, whose account is found later on. (Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, pp.277–80.)
(At the beginning of March 1941 the landlady of the flat found out that the Jews were to be deported the following day.)

She was afraid to share this news with anybody, but she simply had to tell us, her lodgers. … Unfortunately, I have no illusions. We began nervously to pack our suitcases, but that of course was no answer. What were we to do with ourselves? My mother and I were invited for lunch on the same day by a priest (Father Dziubiński), our former neighbour, who throughout had been taking a genuine interest in our welfare and assisted us whenever he could and as much as he could. Mother was very upset and told him about our new trouble. He said not to worry at all for we could simply stay with him and wait until the deportation was over—if it really did happen—and we would see later what could be done. He said this in a matter-of-fact voice, as if it were quite obvious and needed no comment, though sheltering a Jew was punishable by death then. We stayed at his parsonage.

Our fellow lodger was promised a new place. Should her new flat prove too big for her, we could move in. But only my mother went to live with her, since I, following the priest’s advice, got out my hidden ‘Aryan’ documents and from 15 March 1941 began the life of a new person. The priest recommended me to Sisters [of the Family of Bethany] from a convent (in Mełgiew, near Lublin).

Winter passed. The spring of 1942 began grimly. One of the Sisters returned one day from Lublin with hair-raising news. Piles of bodies lay in the streets following several days’ massacres of Jews in that town. Blood was flowing in the gutters. Ukrainian soldiers of the SS were breaking into homes, killing whole families, throwing children out of windows, ordering sons to hang their parents, husbands their wives. Terrible manhunts were taking place in the streets. ‘Your mother is probably no longer alive,’ the Sister concluded her story. It was quite probable. I prepared myself for the worst, and in the evening held council with Marysia (a clerk the author got to know in the Village Council, where she was working). She kept vital statistics records and promised to help me should anything happen. She already knew about the massacre in Lublin. They had talked about it in the Council. Marysia promised to search the archives for the necessary documents: somebody’s birth and marriage certificates and to issue a provisional identity card in that name. I was to give it to my mother and perhaps with the help of friends she would be able to find a hiding place somewhere. But there was a great deal of work in the office the next day and Marysia could not spare the time. The next day was Sunday. Thus it was Monday by the time we set off for Lublin. Marysia did not want me to walk about the town in those terrible days all by myself. She dressed me in a big country-style scarf, and I took a basket and we went by train to Lublin.

In Lublin, I went first to the priest who was in touch with my mother but he said he knew nothing about her. In the Jewish quarter terrible things were happening; it was impossible to go there. The four of us: the priests, Sister Pelagia (his housekeeper and at the same time Mother Superior of a convent), Marysia and I held council as to what should be done. The bell suddenly rang and my mother entered. She had come to say good-bye to the priest and ask him to take care of me. She brought a letter for me and her wedding ring. She was to report to Majdanek the same day at noon. All Jews with names beginning with the letter M were to go there. The priest ripped off the band from her arm.

‘You’ll stay here,’ he said quietly. And mother stayed at the parsonage. She was rapidly coached on how to be an ‘Aryan’. Sister Pelagia taught her to pray and after a few days sent her in the company of another Sister to Międzylesie near Warsaw, where the nuns had a small place. It was really of no importance, just two attached houses in a garden, looked after by one Sister. There was peace and genuine, literal poverty. Mother went to live there as an elderly lonely woman, a resettled widow. For the time being I could stop worrying about her. But I was filled by apprehension, by a nagging fear. …

I escaped again to my village but, afraid to appear with my suitcases, went first to Marysia. She was really glad to see me and told me at once that the head of the village was sorry that I had left, that they were about to offer me a permanent position, and that I should not be afraid, everything would be all right! She would defend me if I were suspected, but I should keep up a bold front and on no condition admit who I was. Naturally! I went to the Sisters after I had arranged for a job at the Village Council, and though they were not particularly enthusiastic, they took me back—as a Village Council employee—into their uninviting home. There followed long days of dull office work. Marysia stood guard over my life, she constantly watched everything and everybody. When she saw through the window that strangers were approaching the office, she prudently hid me in the archives. Later she would come to inform me: ‘It’s all right. You can go back to the office, it’s a local girl dressed in town clothes.’ Or sometimes: ‘Stay here. It’s some woman from Lublin. I’ll come again when she’s gone.’

Several times I had to hide with a beating heart among dusty volumes of old documents waiting for some ‘suspicious’ person to go.

Another Jew recalls some of the Jewish survivors, who had received help from priests and nuns, whom he met in Lublin just after the war. (David Zabludovsky, “Horrors, Death and Destruction (Experiences of a Holocaust Survivor),” Chosen Pages From the Zabludow Yiskor Book, Internet: , translation of Nechama Shmueli-Schmusch, ed., Zabludow: Dapim mi-tokh yisker-bukh [Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Zabludow in Israel, 1987].)

I meet with remnants of the survivors of our nation. … I speak with a few sisters that wandered in the forests and the priest of the village provided them in secret food and clothing; he consoled them and foresaw for them “God tells me that you’ll remain among the living.”

Everyone has the miracle of their staying alive and their experience: A Jew in mid-life, hidden in an attic in a house outside the city by a priest. On the day of liberation when the Russian forces entered the city, he wanted to greet the liberators, full of happiness and enthusiasm. To his misfortune, the priest removed the ladder from which he would descend on the same day. The Jew fell and broke his spine and limbs. …

The kitchen manager of the Jewish town representatives in the branch where I got my meals, was a Jewish woman with Aryan features. Her husband, a well-known surgeon, was cremated with all the Jews. She wandered as a Christian; they said that only recently she left a cloister but still wears a crucifix on her neck It’s impossible to convince her that there is no reason to fear that as a Jew nothing bad will happen to her. But no reason would help. She has a fear complex and cannot escape it.
Assistance was provided by the pastor of Wąwolnica parish near Lublin. Rev. Józef Gorajek extended protection to Danuta Winnik and her seven-year-old son, Eugeniusz, who escaped from the Warsaw ghetto in 1942. Rev. Gorajek was awarded by Yad Vashem. At a Holocaust remembrance ceremony in Los Angeles on April 14, 1988, Rev. Gorajek stated:
In Wąwolnica, where I am living, before the war the Jews constituted fifty percent of the entire population. … From the very beginning of the occupation, the Polish residents, being motivated by feelings of compassion and love of their fellow man, helped the Jews, even though helping Jews was punished with death without judicial process. At the beginning of the occupation, an organization called Ruch Oporu or the Opposition Movement, consisting of partisans to oppose the enemy, was created. I belonged to this organization as a chaplain. I did not use arms. At the organizational meetings, we decided on the type of warfare and assistance for the persecuted and this included the Jews. In order to save Jews, I issued [baptismal] certificates at the parish attesting they were Catholics, and thus enabling them to secure identity documents. Many of the Jews were placed with religious communities, for others we found jobs with a certain amount of security. … There was real solidarity, solidarity and mutual aid between the Jews and the Poles …

I recall from those days a rescued Jewish girl who, as a child, was found on the property of the Polkowski family. I advised them to help save this child since her parents had been killed. At night I baptized the child, recording another name for her in order to safeguard these good people who together with me, were risking their lives in the performance of this good deed. The Jewish girl now lives in London, England, under the name of Barbara Tennis. I am in contact with the Polkowski family, for whom a tree was planted in Jerusalem.
One of those assisted by Rev. Gorajek was Eugene Winnik, who gave the following testimony:
I was born in 1933 into an affluent Jewish family in Warsaw. My father was a dentist and my early years were spent in a large home with servants and a nanny. When we were relocated to the Warsaw Ghetto, it was apparent to my father, David Winnik, that the only chance my mother and I had for survival was to escape. My mother was an elegant, beautiful woman who spoke perfect Polish without any identifiable accent and whose face revealed no specific nationality. … A Christian family from Warsaw had friends in a town called Niezabitów. They did not inform these friends that my mother and I were Jews, and, one night we escaped from the Ghetto and went to live with this family. I never saw my father again.

I was expected to attend the small church in Wąwolnica. Father Józef Gorajek was the priest and he was aware that my mother and I were Jews. I attended church daily. When it came time to receive my First Communion, it was given to me by Father Gorajek. A group of villagers had begun to suspect that we were Jews and they went to the priest and said that he must not under any circumstances give me Communion because I was a Jew. The priest was very angry with the villagers. He told them that I was a Catholic, that I would continue to receive Communion and that they were never again to say such a thing. The villagers, having respect for the word of the Father, were silent throughout the years.

During the entire war, Józef Gorajek continued to protect me. My mother was deeply involved in the Polish underground and had formed a strong friendship with Stanisław Witek, the leader of the partisans in the village area. Together they spent much time away from the village and I was alone, under the protection of Father Gorajek. [Father Gorajek arranged for the young boy to care for the village’s herd of cattle.] At no time did this courageous priest, who risked so much, ever encourage me to leave my faith or my people.
A further account appeared in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner on April 15, 1988, under the heading “Priest’s ‘deed of love’ remembered.”⁴⁴¹
“The entire village could have been destroyed were it known he offered us protection.”