Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

Gorajek said he quieted the local townspeople after hearing rumblings that protecting was dangerous.

He said he took in other Jews during the war, placing them in convents and religious orders, and issued Christian birth certificates to Jewish babies he had never seen.

“I knew I could be executed, along with the entire village, without any question,” Gorajek said. “I only meditated for a moment: Did I have a right to affect so many people?”

Rev. Aleksander Zalski, the pastor of Sobieszyn parish in Lublin voivodship, sheltered a Jewish girl, Rachela Zonszajn, who had false identity documents in the name of Marianna Tymińska.⁴⁴² The story is related by Zofia S. Kubar, a Jewish woman who passed as a Catholic Pole working as a teacher, in Double Identity: A Memoir (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989), at pages 154–58.
To be safe and inconspicuous, we decided to teach not in the school building in Ryki but in a nearby hamlet, Sobieszyn. …

The first Sunday after our course began, all the teachers were invited to the parish priest’s house for afternoon tea. Although most of us were atheists, we accepted the invitation; it was customary for newcomers in small parishes to visit the local priest. For myself, the visit had a special meaning. For the first time in my life, I was going to meet a priest socially.

The Reverend Alexander [Aleksander] Zalski was a tall, somewhat bulky man in his forties. Although he was kind, good-humored, and hospitable, my fellow teachers—young intellectuals— immediately attacked his theological beliefs, taking full advantage of his lack of argumentative skills. …

Suddenly we heard a child crying, “Father! Father!” A girl, about four or five years old, ran into the room. I had rarely seen a child of such beauty and natural grace. Her curly hair and eyes were raven-black. Her complexion was dark. There could be no doubt that she was Jewish. I was startled by her presence in the priest’s home.

The next moment she was in his arms. Still sobbing and out of breath, she reminded him to tell the story he always told her at mealtimes. “Father” is the term by which people usually address a priest, but I felt that this child actually considered him her protector, as she would have looked on her own father. Later I would see how he fed her, comforted her, and stayed by her bedside until she fell asleep.

During our first visit, Father Zalski seemed slightly embarrassed by the little intruder, but he did not reprove her. Solemnly he promised to tell the story later, and Marianna, happy and reassured, left the room. Afterward, he mumbled a few words of apology. Although as a priest he had no experience in raising children, he said, he had undertaken to care for this child because her parents, both dead, had been distantly related to him.

Did he realize that we knew the girl was Jewish? Was he alarmed because we had seen her? I do not think so. It seemed inconceivable that he would fear that we would denounce him. Besides, her presence at the parish must have been widely knows; one could not keep such a secret in a small village. …

I deeply admired Father Zalski’s devotion to the Jewish child and his courage in harboring her. His risk was great, for the punishment meted out by the Nazis was merciless. I personally knew of seven Sisters of Charity at the orphanage of Saint Stanislaus in Warsaw who were executed for hiding Jewish children. … The Polish priests were widely engaged in helping Jews. This was but a part of their activities in the Resistance for which they were subsequently persecuted by the Nazis. More than 4,400 Catholic priests and brothers were put into concentration camps, where half of them were killed. Of 1,100 nuns imprisoned in concentration camps, about 240 perished.

I regretted that I never had the opportunity to express my feelings to Father Zalski, but the Jewish child was not a topic to be discussed then. …

Only recently I learned about the fate of Father Zalski and the child. Father Zalski stayed in his parish until his death in the 1960s. Little Marianna, whose real name was Rachela, survived. Her mother had taken poison in Siedlce during the deportation. An old school friend of her mother’s had rescued the child. Later, after being passed from hand to hand, she was entrusted to Father Zalski’s care. In 1946, with the help of Mrs. [Zofia] Glazer-Olszakowska, Marianna was sent to an uncle in Israel and was brought up in a kibbutz there. Eventually, she studied economics, married, and has two children. Mrs. Glazer-Olszakowska visited her in Israel and reported that she had become a highly respected civil servant. I never saw her after that early spring of 1944 in Father Zalski’s parish house in Sobieszyn.
References to the activities of Rev. Zalski can also be found in other rescue stories. (Gutman, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust: Supplementary Volumes (2000–2005), volume II, p.563.)
During the German occupation, Irena Janicka (née Życka) ran her family estate in Ułęż Górny (Garwolin County, Lublin District). In 1941, Irena was contacted by a friend who had had considerable business dealings before the war with David Springer, from the city of Ryki. Through the initiative of David’s son, Israel, who was later murdered, and with the assistance of the local priest [likely Rev. Aleksander Zalski of Sobieszyn], his sister, Leah (later, Fein), received a birth certificate under the name of Helen Wiśniewska. Irena Janicka was contacted by her friend, who told her that Leah was Jewish, and decided to employ her, providing her with the board, food, and clothes. Irena informed other members of her staff that Leah, who spoke impeccable Polish and regularly attended services at the church, was a young orphan girl. Irena Janicka also sheltered on her estate an elderly Jewish couple who used the name of Wójcicki during the war and, for shorter periods of time, other Jews from the nearby village of Żabianka. She took no financial payment for the assistance she gave to the Jews and, according to her dughter, was motivated by her desire to help people in need. After the liberation, Leah Springer left the estate and immigrated to Australia.
Rev. Jan Poddębniak of Krężnica Jara near Lublin, was the chancellor of the diocesan curia. He helped many Jewish youths from Lublin, among them Lea Bass, Sara Bass-Frenkel, and Manfred Frenkel. With his assistance the Bass sisters were able to register for labour in Germany. Rev. Poddębniak corresponded with the sisters so as to allay suspicion as to their identity, but their lack of discretion could have cost him his life. He was awarded by Yad Vashem. Rev. Paweł Dziubiński, a prelate from Lublin, provided baptismal certificates to the Bass sisters. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, pp.296–97.)
In September 1942, during the liquidation of the Lublin ghetto, 20-year-old Sara Bas [Bass] and her 13-year-old sister, Lea, escaped from the ghetto after their entire family had perished. Since none of their Polish acquaintances were prepared to take them in, they roamed from village to village for about a month vainly trying to find shelter. At night they hid in abandoned ruins and in Lublin’s old cemetery. In early November 1942, when they were on the verge of despair, Wladyslaw [Władysław] Janczarek, an old acquaintance of their father’s, noticed them and approached them cautiously, offering them help. Since Janczarek was unable to put the two girls up in his home, he arranged to meet with them the next day and bring them two Aryan birth certificates of relatives of the same age, so that they could register for work in Germany. The two sisters, however, continued wandering around Lublin for several months until they found work in the home of a Polish woman. Since they were well known in their hometown, the sisters feared discovery and therefore decided to ask the nuns who worked in the local hospital for help. The nuns [Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, one of whom was Sister Maria Gulbin⁴⁴³] put them in touch with Jan Poddebniak [Poddębniak], a priest, who advised them to register for work in Germany. Enlisting the help of the Chief Recruitment Officer, Father Poddebniak arranged for the two sisters to be sent to Germany, where they worked in a hospital for foreign workers until the area was liberated. Father Poddebniak made a point of sending them letters to allay suspicion as to their identity.
Rev. Jan Gosek, the pastor of Kanie near Chełm, provided false documents which enabled a Jewish woman to pass as a Pole and survive the war. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volume 5: Poland, Part 2, p.649.)
Until the war broke out, the five members of the Wagner family lived in the village of Wolka Kanska [Wólka Kańska] near the city of Chelm [Chełm], in the Lublin district, and had been friends of the Puch family. During the occupation, after the Germans began liquidating the Jews, the Wagner family tried unsuccessfully to find a place to hide in the area. By 1942, of the entire family, only the 15-year-old daughter, Gita Wagner (later Stanislawa [Stanisława] Konopka), remained alive. In her despair, she arrived at the home of Antoni and Maria Puch, who, although unable to take her into their own home, did not wish to abandon her to her fate. With the help of the local priest [Rev. Jan Gosek, the pastor of Kanie⁴⁴⁴], they arranged to have a Christian birth certificate issued to her with their own surname. Their daughter, Danuta, who was a young woman at the time, took responsibility for the care of Gita upon herself and tried to find a safer place for her to hide. Despite her young age, Danuta set out on her own at her parents’ behest to distant Warsaw to the home of Janina Wroblewska [Wróblewska], an acquaintance of Jewish extraction who was living there under an assumed identity. After Wroblewska agreed to take Gita under her wing, Danuta traveled with her by train to the capital and got her a job with a dentist. Gita Wagner stayed with Wroblewska until the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944 and survived. After the war, Gita Wagner remained in Poland.
Diana Topiel, a native of Warsaw, was deported to Majdanek concentration camp. After she succeeded in escaping, she was taken in and cared for by Rev. Świetlik, in the village of Urzędów near Kraśnik, posing as his relative.⁴⁴⁵
Irena Sznycer (later Rina Feinmesser) was just two years old when the war broke out. Before being arrested in Kraków, Irena’s mother managed to send her daughter to Warsaw, to stay with her aunt’s family who were hiding on the Aryan side. Because of Irena’s Semitic features, the aunt placed her in an orphanage run by nuns. Conditions there were not favourable so the aunt took her back and asked her acquaintance, Ksawera Brogowska, who was working as a housekeeper in Warsaw, to help find a safe hideout. With the assistance of Maria Leszczyńska, Brogowska took the child to her brother’s home in the village of Bełżec near Tomaszów Lubelski. Irena remained with Maciej and Cecylia Brogowski, who had three children of their own, for over three years. They treated her like a daughter. Irena lived openly and many of the villagers were aware of her Jewish origin. In order for the child to pass as a Pole in the event of a German inspection, they turned to Father Ireneusz (Kazimierz) Kmiecik, the administrator of the local parish and member of the Reformed Franciscan order, to have her baptized. After liberation, Irena was placed in a Jewish orphanage and later settled in Israel.⁴⁴⁶ Remarkably, another child also survived in Bełżec, within view of the notorious death camp. Julia Pępiak agreed to shelter Bronia Helman, the young daughter of her former neighbour and friend, Salomea Helman, something that became widely known in the village. The child remained with Pępiak and was reclaimed by her mother after liberation.⁴⁴⁷ Similar rescues in the environs of concentration camps in Germany and Austria were unheard of.
During the liquidation of the ghetto in Opole Lubelskie in October 1942 two young Jews escaped and arrived unexpectedly at the home of the vicar, Rev. Władysław Krawczyk. His account, “Żydzi zwracali się ku kościołowi,” is found in Opoka, London, no. 11 (July 1975), at page 83.
When the ghetto in Opole Lubelskie, in the county of Puławy, was being finished off in 1942, I had the misfortune of seeing from the church tower the market square of the ghetto which was covered with corpses and blood. They [the Jews] had all turned toward the church when they were being shot at. A few days earlier some had visited the church and said that this was their nemesis for having once called out: “His blood be on us, and on our children.” [Matthew, 27:25]. The Schupo, dressed in green, shot them. Our police, dressed in navy, refused to do so. The dean, who had also ascended the tower, almost fainted. I held on to the frame of the window. We descended quickly but awkwardly since I had to hold up the dean. It is difficult not to have a great deal of sympathy for that nation and it is entirely understandable that one would have wanted to protect them from that historical nemesis and hatred. That day, the 23^rd of October 1942, when they were being liquidated, two young Jews managed to arrive at my home. I had only one room. The office of the Gestapo was next door and a [German] commander occupied the dwelling above mine. The buidling was well guarded. The punishment for hiding a Jew was death. Despite this, I fed them, gave them provisions, and around midnight led them across some fields to a forest about three kilometres away. There there already were [Polish] partisans and among them the son of the local rabbi.
A similar eyewitness’s testimony—that of Maria Bill-Bajorkowa—is recorded in Shmuel Meiri, ed., The Jewish Community of Wieliczka: A Memorial Book (Tel Aviv: The Wieliczka Association in Israel, 1980), at page 75.
Beaten, kicked, shot, fainting, the Jews fall to the ground. They cry, they scream, we hear their voices: “Jesus Christ, since our Jehovah has forsaken us, take pity on me and I will convert to Your faith.” Others cry out: “If there was a Jehovah he would not have allowed what they are doing to us happen. There is no Jehovah, there is no God. We perish and no one helps us. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.”
The theological ramifications of accepting the tragedy that befell the Jews as the will of God—something that strikes one as particularly harsh and glaring in retrospect—are explained by Leon Wells, a Jewish survivor from Lwów, from the traditional Judeo-Christian vantage point. (Harry James Cargas, Voices from the Holocaust [Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1993], pp.91–92.)
I read the Lubavitch in ’43, ‘44—it’s not proper to mention—Soloveitchik and all the others, they said the Holocaust was sent from heaven and did good because it is the time of the coming of the Messiah. Even the Lubavitch in ’43, I have here the document where he said enjoy, enjoy, because the Messiah is coming. And he said that Haman does not come by himself. He’s sent by God. I said to a major Jewish theologian recently, “Why are you only condemning the Pope? Or about what Cardinal O’Connor in New York said about the Holocaust?” I said, “Didn’t the Lubavitch and others say the same, that it’s God’s will and we should believe it? It is only cleansing, because of our sins. God threw us out from our land because of our sins.” And he said, “Yes, if you are a religious man and if I would be the Pope, I couldn’t behave differently because I cannot say it’s not God’s will because he can stop everything.” I said, “Fine. So why don’t you as a leading Jewish theologian come out and ask why are we jumping so much about the Pope and all?” He said, “What should I do? It is the people, it is their will. They know what they want to hear and I know what I want.” And I said to myself, it is theological, they have no other choice. There is no other choice. If you believe in a God, then it’s the will of God. We’d have to change the whole religious outlook in order to see it differently. But as of the moment, we believe in God’s will.
Rabbis throughout Poland were inclined to attribute the calamities that befell the Jews to divine presence in terms of Divine punishment: “it was the process of the abandonment of religion that had caused all the current disasters of the Jews. Some rabbis explicitly claimed that the wartime reality was punishment for the community’s sins, while many others believed that the Jewish community’s return to and strengthening of religion would lead directly to an improvement in the situation.”⁴⁴⁸
When the Jews of Brańsk were being rounded up on November 7, 1942 to be transported to Treblinka, that town’s chief rabbi, Itzhak Zev Cukerman, addressed the crowds in the following words: “The judgment was passed in Heaven. We have to die. But I believe that those who survive will inform the world of our suffering.”⁴⁴⁹ Similarly, in the face of imminent annihilation, Rabbi Shimon Rozovsky was reported to have said to the Jewish community leaders of Ejszyszki: “Jews, you see our end is approaching rapidly … God did not want us to be saved. Our destiny has been decided, and we must accept this.”⁴⁵⁰ Another observation by a Jewish survivor, now an American sociologist, is also worth noting. (Samuel P. Oliner, Restless Memories: Recollections of the Holocaust Years [Berkeley, California: Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1986], p.98.)
During the tragic moments in the Bobowa ghetto [near Gorlice], the rabbis had one standard answer. All the rabbis I ever met or saw said the same thing: “Children, go and pray because the day will come when the Messiah will appear and he will protect us. The Lord knows what he is doing. He will help us.” There wasn’t one rabbi or other leader I know of who said to his people: “Children, let’s take up arms. Let’s train ourselves. Let’s fight. Let’s barricade ourselves and save our lives. Let’s not obey the German laws any longer.”
As one scholar has observed, “There are many such stories in the literature, describing rabbis who encouraged their followers on the way to execution by singing, reciting psalms, even dancing, so as to prepare themselves spiritually for the great honour and privilege that God had given them—to die for kidush hashem.”⁴⁵¹ Rabbi Kalonymos Kalmish Shapira, a prominent Hasidic leader, wrote in the Warsaw ghetto: “We must persist in our belief that whatever God does is exactly what must be done.”⁴⁵²
While confined in the Wilno ghetto, Zelig Kalmanovich, the wartime voice of the Orthodox community, kept a diary that is replete with scriptural and rabbinical quotations. Why, Kalmanovich asks, did God allow the Jews of Wilno to be destroyed? Because the destruction would serve as a sign (1) that what was once a proud Jewish community was already rotting, crumbling from within, and (2) that future generations—unaware of this decay and left only with the detritus of the external destruction—would have something useful, even inspiring, to remember. According to David G. Roskies, “Jewish Cultural Life in the Vilna Ghetto,” in Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, Lithuania and the Jews: The Holocaust Chapter. Symposium Presentations (Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2004), at pages 36–38:
God’s purpose in destroying the community of Vilna [Wilno] was perhaps to hasten the redemption, to alert whomsoever might still be alerted that there is neither refuge nor hope for life in the Exile. …

But if we take a hard look we can see that it was necessary for the destruction to come from without. The fortress had already been destroyed and laid waste from within. Vilna had put up no resistance to the assimilation and the obliteration of the Jewish character, had not stood up to the spiritual destruction decreed by the Red conquerors. …

And these undesecrated stones will serve as a memorial to our Exile, for their merit was not to have been desecrated through the hands of their own children, by those who had once built the walls, but rather, through the hands of a savage nation, acting as the emissary of God.
Similar views were expressed by Rabbi Hirsh Melekh Talmud of Lublin, in endeavouring to comprehend how God could allow His “Chosen People” to be punished to the point of destruction.⁴⁵³ The late Satmarer Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Moshe Teitelbaum (Bernhard H. Rosenberg and Fred Heuman, eds., Theological and Halakhic Reflections on the Holocaust [Hoboken, New Jersey: KTAV, 1992], p.121),
is clear and unambiguous. … he decides that the Zionists were responsible for the tragedy of the six million. The arrogance of nationalistic self-determination in trying to build a Jewish state caused the great destruction. The fact that so many Zionists were secularists, nonbelievers, only made matters worse. They violated the injunction to remain passive, refrain from interfering in the divinely preordained plans of redemption, and to await the miraculous coming of the Messiah. Hence, the Zionists were guilty, and all the Jewish people suffered because of their sins.
Rabbi Avigdor Miller suggested that the large-scale self-atheization of Jews in Poland was not only a reality, but also one that had provoked God’s anger, bringing on the Holocaust. Rabbi Avigdor Miller wrote (ibid., p.122):
Because of the upsurge of the greatest defection from Torah in history, which was expressed in Poland by materialism, virulent anti-nationalism, and Bundism (radical anti-religious socialism), God’s plan finally relieved them of all freewill and sent Hitler’s demons to end the existence of the communities.
Such views are still held by some Jewish religious leaders today (Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky, Jewish Fundamentalism in Israel, New edition [London and Ann Arbor, Michigan: Pluto Press, 2004], p.31):
Many Haredi rabbis, for example, assert that the Holocaust, including most particularly the deaths of one-and-a-half million Jewish children, was a well-deserved divine punishment, not only for all the sins of modernity and faith renunciation by many Jews, but also for the decline of Talmudic study in Europe. The Haredim and their traditional Jewish followers attribute the death of every Jew, including each innocent child, not to natural causes but to direct action of God. The Haredim believe that God punishes each Jew for his or her sins and sometimes punishes the entire Jewish community, including many who are innocent, because of the sins committed by other Jews.
Some religious Jews also continue to share those views. Writing in 1962, an Orthodox rabbi asserted that Polish Jews were punished, through the Holocaust, for their apostasy and self-atheization (Avigdor Miller, Rejoice o Youth! An Integrated Jewish Ideology [New York: n.p., 1962], p.279.)
The Polish Jewry, which had a greater number of loyal Jews, were given two decades more after World War I. But on the upsurge of the greatest defection from the Torah in history, which was expressed in Poland by materialism, virulent anti-Torah nationalism, and Bundism (radical anti-religious socialism), G-d’s plan finally relieved them of all Free Will and sent Hitler’s demons to end the existence of these communities before they deteriorated entirely.
Many commentators misunderstand the collective nature of Divine punishment, asking, for instance, why God would punish a religious Jew alongside an atheist Jew for the apostasy of the latter. Miller clarifies this, “When the destroyer is let loose, he does not discriminate between the righteous and the sinners (Mechilta, Shmos 12:22).” (Ibid., p. 263).
A woman who was rescued by Poles in Volhynia described the following experience (Testimony of Peppy Rosenthal, July 1, 2009, Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive, University of Michigan at Dearborn, Internet: ):
I have two boys. One lives in New York, he’s a religious Jew, very religious. … their idea about the Holocaust is enough to … upset you. … My grandson in New York called and asked me if it would be too hard for him to tell him some things. He had to write it for one of his yeshiva classes. And I was really surprised that … they believe the Holocaust … happened because we didn’t follow God.
Religious Poles, who witnessed this cataclysm, also endeavoured to find an explanation for the horrific and unimaginable events occuring around them. As historian Andrzej Bryk explains, their “rationalization” had little, if anything, to do with actual malice toward the Jewish victims. According to Andrzej Bryk, “The Struggles for Poland,” Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies, 1989), volume 4, at page 378:
For the average Polish peasant, Jews were an integral part of the landscape, like the things of nature, the sky above, and himself. He might not have liked them, might have maintained only the most superficial trading relations with them, but their disappearance was unimaginable. They were part of God’s universe, even if an inferior part, viewed with suspicion. [This was, essentially, the mirror image of traditional Jewish attitudes toward Christian Poles—M.P.] The complete extermination of his neighbours in a small town or village was for that peasant not only a crime in human terms but a fundamental violation of the universal order, of God’s order. It was such a monstrous and absurd deed, that it could have been possible only through the will of God himself. Had he not, after all, been taught that Jews were guilty for the death of Jesus, the death of God? So, perhaps, this was the sentence for that deed? Hence the fatalism in perceiving the Holocaust, a certain self-defence through rationalisation against the madness of a deed equal only to the anger of God. Of a deed which must have been inspired by some hidden logic. The extermination was so terrible, surpassing human imagination to such an extent, that there had to be some hidden meaning in it.
Some Poles embraced the same sort of theological explanations to rationalize their own fate. A Jewish woman recalled the response she received from an elderly peasant woman when asked “Are the Germans giving you much trouble?” The Polish woman replied, “It’s the Anti-Christ! He’s come to punish us for our sins.”⁴⁵⁴ In the final days or hours before their execution condemned priests often spoke of their acceptance of the will of God. The conservative Catholic author Zofia Kossak, a co-founder of Żegota, the wartime Council for Aid to Jews, wrote in her postwar diary that the suffering and humiliation of Polish women she witnessed as a prisoner in Auschwitz was God’s punishment for having enjoyed themselves before the war, for wearing lipstick and silk stockings.⁴⁵⁵
Occasionally one encounters charges that priests urged the faithful not to provide assistance to Jews or even incited the populace against them. These charges are based on second or third-hand accounts. Priests in rural areas were ordered by German officials to read—at Sunday masses—official notices regarding matters such as the delivery of mandatory agricultural produce and animal quotas imposed on farmers and warnings not to assist partisans and Jews under penalty of death. Not to do so would not only have put the delinquent priest personally at risk, but also would have subjected him to the moral dilemma of withholding from his parishioners information about the serious risks that such activities could entail for them and their families. An example of such a notice is the circular issued to local pastors by the reeve of the village of Zakrzówek near Kraśnik, pursuant to instructions from the Kreishauptmann (German county head), dated December 4, 1942, which is reproduced in Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Polacy i Żydzi 1918–1955: Współistnienie, Zagłada, komunizm (Warsaw: Fronda, 2000), at page 185. The circular reads: “In accordance with the orders of the Kreishauptmann of October 10, 1942, … all residents and their neighbours will be punished by death for sheltering Jews, providing them with food or assisting them in escaping, in particular anyone who allows Jews to use their carts.” In some regions of Poland, however, there was widespread resistance on the part of priests to reading German notices in church.⁴⁵⁶ Hearsay accounts regarding these announcements have led uninformed Jews, including Holocaust historians, to accuse the clergy of preaching against the Jews. It is telling that no authentic, first-hand accounts of “sermons” that allegedly incited Poles against the Jews are known, even though hundreds of Jews who passed as Christians attended church services throughout occupied Poland. In some Jewish accounts, readings from the New Testament during Holy Week in Polish, and even prayers and intercessions said in Latin (especially on Palm Sunday and Good Friday), which were part of the universal Catholic liturgy mandated by Rome, are also represented as “sermons” delivered by priests to incite Poles against the Jews. (Given the length of the Good Friday liturgy, the afternoon service that day generally did not have a sermon.) Priests had to tread very cautiously, as the singing of patriotic hymns in church and the preaching of sermons making reference to politics were strictly forbidden.
Fifteen members of the extended family of Isaac and Leah Gamss were hidden from 1942 to 1944 in the attic of a farmhouse belonging to Stanisław and Maria Grocholski in the vicinity of Urzejowice near Przeworsk. The villagers knew the Grocholskis were hiding Jews because some of these Jews called on a number of villagers to ask for food and, tellingly, it was the only house that in the winter did not have snow on the roof. A priest urged a villager who had accepted some property from Jews for safekeeping to return it to them. Leslie Gilbert-Lurie, the daughter of one of the hidden Jews, states: “I would say it took a whole village of people for my mother’s family to survive.” (Leslie Gilbert-Lurie with Rita Lurie, Bending Toward the Sun: A Mother and Daughter Memoir [New York: HarperCollins, 2009], pp.46–47, 58, 293.
At the earliest opportunity, on the next moonless night, Aunt Tsivia and Uncle Libish snuck back to their neighbor’s home, several miles away, to retrieve the leather coat. They tapped on her rear window, and when she appeared, they explained their plight. But she did not take pity on them. To their shock, she said no. The war was not over, so they could not have their coat. Thinking on her feet, Aunt Tsivia said that without the coat, our family would be killed and the blood would be on this neighbour’s hands. As my aunt had hoped, this troubled the neighbour, a devout Catholic, and she went to talk to her priest the following day. He encouraged her to give up the coat and whatever else she could. When Tsivia and Libish returned a few nights later, the coat was left for them, along with milk and bread. …

My father [Isaac Gamss] and uncles began taking turns sneaking out at night in search of food. In the summer, they stole plums, apples, and pears from neighbors’ gardens. And they went into fields to gather carrots, radishes, tomatoes, and onions—vegetables that could be eaten raw.

Besides what they picked outside, they also gathered food that sympathetic neighbors left out for them on doorsteps. Because they knew that as Jews we kept kosher, neighbors mostly set out potatoes, beans, or bread. From time to time, my father and uncles chanced knocking on the doors of casual acquaintances. Often they were turned away with angry replies, which was not surprising. Even if they were not anti-Semitic, Poles were terrified of being caught helping a Jew. …

“I had many friends in our village,” Uncle Max said proudly, “including Stashik [Staszek] Grajolski [Grocholski]. While we had grown up near each other, we became good friends in the army. That’s why, when he agreed to hide my brother’s and sister’s families, he asked me to come as well, to act as a liaison.” …

“I spent my days and nights in the attic worrying about how to feed my beautiful family … You and I are the only ones who know the gentiles in the community,” Uncle Max told his eldest brother, Isaac. “Since I am single, I should be the one to sneak out.”

To avoid being seen, Uncle Max picked the darkest nights, with the worst weather. From time to time, neighbors prepared small bundles of food that they either left out for him on their doorstep, or handed him when he tapped on the door.

“Here’s some beans and bread,” a kind neighbor would whisper, opening the door just wide enough to pass the package through.

“This is for the children,” another villager told Uncle Max, handing him a bag with bread and fruit. “We pray for you each night,” he added.

“Once, a friend gave me a ham sandwich, but I couldn’t eat it because it was not kosher,” Uncle Max said.

The attitude of Rev. Józef Michałowski, a priest in Olsztyn near Częstochowa where several Jewish families survived the war passing as Poles, was described by Frank Morgens, whose family the villagers suspected of being Jewish, in his memoirs Years at the Edge of Existence: War Memoirs, 1939–1945 (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1996), at pages 97 and 99.
Mrs. Michalska, a young woman with a boy of about seven. … He had a light complexion, his features were Semitic and our suspicion that they were Jews in hiding proved later to be correct. … When the war ended, we learned through the grapevine that Mrs. Michalska’s husband had also survived in Olsztyn and that the entire family had emigrated to America. …

The name of Judge Horski was uttered with respect, but always with a sort of knowing look which we did not comprehend at first. … It was obvious he, too, was Jewish. His wife and daughter were Semitic-looking as well. The Horskis had moved to Olsztyn from Cracow [Kraków] at the beginning of 1941, a fact that was vastly reassuring to us. That a man with such a face could pass for a Pole and not be denounced to the Germans by those who suspected him of being Jewish, made us feel much safer.

The village of Olsztyn, only 8 miles from Czestochowa [Częstochowa], and having a population of under 2,000, could not possibly sustain a dentist, and yet there was one. The minute we opened the door of Dr. Nawrot’s office on Villa Row, we knew that we were with one of our own. Dr. Nawrot was of medium height, his hair was dark, his face though not typically Jewish, was not Slavic either. His short, plump, dark-complexioned wife would never have survived a confrontation with the Gestapo, and neither would their young son. Yet Dr. Nawrot had been practicing in town for about two years without incident. This, too, reinforced our belief that we had settled in the right place. So far, I could count four Jewish families casting their lot with the Poles of Olsztyn.

But the greatest influence on the people and the tranquility of the village was exerted by the parish priest, Father Jozef Michalowski [Józef Michałowski]. About 60 years old, of medium height, slim and bespectacled, he evoked reverence when walking in the street and gently greeting his parishioners. His sermons preached love and humaneness, and during the crucial period of 1942–1944 his urging to save lives and not to betray fellow citizens gave us fortitude and courage to go on with our fight for survival. A denunciation to the Gestapo about this kind of sermon would have meant deportation, at least, for Father Michalowski, but he was fearless and steadfast in his activities, as dictated by his conscience and his faith.
The misconduct of one person could not only frustrate a rescue action supported by the actions of many, but also unfold a chain of disaster and fear, as in the case of Yehudis Pshenitse, a young girl from Nowy Dwór Mazowiecki near Warsaw, who turned to the local priest for assistance. Her testimony, found in the Nowy Dwór Memorial book, is reproduced in From A Ruined Garden: The Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin, eds., (New York: Schoken Books, 1983); Second, expanded edition (Bloomington and Indianopolis: Indiana University Press, 1998), at pages 177–78.
I went to see the priest, who had known me as a small child, when I used to go into the church with our Christian maid. I wept and begged the priest to save me. I told him what had happened to my parents. He calmed me and promised me that he would give me as much help as he could. He hid me in his cellar. Every day I went to church with him, and I became one of the best singers in the church choir. After a time he gave me false papers, with my name listed as Kristina Pavlovna [sic]. I began to feel like a genuine, born Christian.

That didn’t last long, however. One day, when I was walking to church, a Christian stopped me on the street and said, “What are you doing here?” I ran away in terror. When I told the priest, he calmed me, telling me to go back into the cellar and be as quiet as possible.

The same day two Germans went to the priest, demanding that he surrender the Jewish girl whom he had hidden. He denied that there was anyone in his house. They threatened to shoot him, but he continued to insist that he was hiding no one.

The Germans tortured him in various ways, but he continued to refuse to give me up until he fell to the ground covered with blood. His body was pierced in several places, and his face was unrecognizable. Then the Germans left him as he was and went away. Before he died, the priest asked his housekeeper to take me out of my hiding place and bring me to him because he wanted to bless me.

When she led me to him, all I saw was a pool of blood and the priest’s body, torn into pieces. I fainted. When I came to, he raised his crushed and broken hand and caressed me. Finally he told his housekeeper to give me over to trustworthy people, to behave toward me like a mother so that no one would suspect I was Jewish. Thus, leaning against him, I felt his body grow cold.