Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy
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When he was released from prison, he was returned to the P.O.W. camp where he lived as a Catholic among the officers and men. The Nazis no longer hurt him as a Jew.
Karol Kewes, a 15-year-old Jewish boy from Łódź, was attending a course for baccalaureate candidates in a military training camp when the war broke out. Manoeuvring between the German and Soviet invaders, Kewes’s eye was injured by German fire just before his detachment was captured by the Germans on October 5 and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in Dęblin Fortress. Kewes was sent to a hospital in Radom where he was attentively cared for by Polish nuns, who kept silent about the Jewish origin of their charges. His experiences are described in K.S. Karol, Between Two Worlds: The Life of a Young Pole in Russia, 1939–46 (New York: A New Republic Book/Henry Holt and Company, 1986), at pages 19–23. At St. Casimir Hospital in Radom, where I was finally sent to have my eye attended to, the groans of the wounded seemed restful to my ears after the screams of Demblin [Dęblin]. The atmosphere of this hospital was tense and a little surrealistic: The Germans had taken charge of everything, from surgery to administration, but they had left the religious at their posts. The nuns were excellent nurses and especially strong Polish patriots, conspirators even. The sister who looked after me had a German-sounding first name, Kunegunda [actually this would have been an assumed religious name, that of Blessed Kinga or Kunegunda, the Hungarian-born wife of King Boleslaus V the Shy of Poland], but she would rather have had her tongue torn out that pronounce a word in that language. As with all the other religious, the occupiers had to speak to her through an interpreter. The German military doctors didn’t believe in talking to the wounded. I only learned the details of my operation from Sister Kunegunda. … Sister Kunegunda was very kind to me, perhaps in the hope of bringing me to religion, or more simply because of my relative youth. She sometimes brought me sweets and promised to contact my family with the help of another sister who happened to be traveling to Lodz [Łódź]. I wrote my parents a long letter, which ended by declaring my irrevocable decision to move to the provinces incorporated in the USSR, beyond the River Bug. … Then one morning the doctor announced the arrival of “eine Dame,” my mother. … He left us alone for a moment, then he returned to announce to my mother that she could take me home … At the home of some friends of Sister Kunegunda in Radom, my mother gave me a suitcase with all my things carefully arranged, and directions on the best way to cross the Bug. … Sister Kunegunda’s last piece of advice still resounded in my ears: “Badz Polakiem” [“Bądź Polakiem”] (“Be Polish”), with its unspoken implication: “Fight for Poland.” … [In Lwów] I managed to find a modest job in a chemist laboratory where I washed test tubes, and even more modest lodgings (a kitchen commode on which I stretched out at night, my feet dangling in the air) at the home of a retired Polish lady who was poor but very obliging; if I remember, correctly, she was an acquaintance of Sister Kunegunda. In Polish Pomerania (the so-called Polish corridor), in the fall of 1939, thousands of Poles, as well as some Jews, were rounded up and killed in mass executions in the forests near Piaśnica. One group of 300 prisoners, transported there in November from the jail in the nearby town of Wejherowo, included Jewish children. Sister Alicja, born Maria Jadwiga Kotowska, the superior of the convent of the Sisters of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Resurrectionist Sisters) in Wejherowo and school principal, took them into her care. She led them by their hands like Janusz Korczak would later lead his Jewish orphans from the Warsaw ghetto onto a train headed for Treblinka. (Lucyna Mistecka, Zmartwychwstanki w okupowanej Polsce [Warsaw: Ośrodek Dokumentacji i Studiów Społecznych, 1983], pp.94–96.) On the entry of the Wehrmacht into Wejherowo (September 9), the extermination action began. The jails were overcrowded, and prisoners occupied not only the cells but also the corridors and the chapel. There were over 3,000 of them …including members of the clergy … The Sisters were also blacklisted. They were placed in isolation in their convent which was occupied by the German army. … At 3:30 in the afternoon [of October 23]… during prayer the Gestapo burst into the convent, causing an uproar, with the aim of terrorizing the Sisters. They demanded that Sister Alicja leave. Upon leaving, they arrested her and took her to the courthouse. … The next day the Sisters … learned that Sister Alicja was in the local jail [where she remained despite numerous interventions] … Commencing November 5, every day six or more automobiles left the jail for Piaśnica … On November 11 a large transport counting 300 prisoners left for Piaśnica. Among them was Sister Alicja Kotowska. Before entering the automobiles they had to empty their pockets … Sister Alicja was the last member of the group to enter the courtyard of the building. She approached a group of Jewish children, took them by their hands and led them into the automobile. In Piaśnica forest the prisoners, stripped to their undergarments, were lined up in front of the graves that had been prepared. They were forced to kneel [before being shot] … Their bodies were covered over with a thick layer of lime and soil over which sod was placed. The Germans started to abuse the Jewish population as soon as they arrived in Żelechów near Garwolin. After a brief respite, matters came to a head again in November 1939, when hundreds of Jews were rounded up and were on the verge of being killed. A priest intervened with the Germans on behalf of the endangered Jews. (“Zelechow,” in Encyclopedia of the Jewish Communities in Poland, Volume VII, Internet: The Germans entered Zelechow [Żelechów] on 12 September 1939. Immediately upon their arrival, they seized Jews on the street, subjected them to harsh abuse, plundered their property, and set several of their houses on fire. The next day, the synagogue was set afire, and the blaze claimed the life of Hayyim Palhendler, who before the war had been a member of the municipal council. At the same time, the Germans seized Jewish and Polish public figures as hostages and imprisoned them for twenty-four hours. After a few days, the Germans gathered a group of Jews and sent them to Ostrow-Mazowiecka [Ostrów Mazowiecka]; on the way, they shot many of them to death. … In November 1939 … That month also saw a serious incident that jeopardized the lives of hundred of Jews in Zelechow. On a market day in town, a former Polish soldier shot at a German. The Germans immediately gathered hundreds of Jews and prepared to kill then, but through the lobbying of the priest, and after the actual culprit was captured, the Jews were set free. In early November 1939, the Gestapo in Łódź carried out mass arrests of the intelligentsia, Catholic clergymen (some 50 Catholic priests were arrested including Bishop Kazimerz Tomczak) and political and social activists, and interned them in a concentration camp created in nearby Radogoszcz. Józef (Josef) Saks, a Jewish prisoner who arrived at the camp on December 23, 1939, recalled the atmosphere of solidarity that prevailed among the prisoners:38 On December 23, 1939, I arrived with a group of 39 Jews and 40 Poles from the [Gestapo] prison on Sterling Street (also some people from the prison [police detention for arrests] on Kopernik Street). There were a few dozen women in the camp, including a few Jewish ones. … In the camp there were 4 big rooms. The Jews were in two rooms, but there were no special ghettos. The Poles’ attitude to the Jews, with the exception of particular individuals, was generally good. It should be pointed out that there were a few dozen priests in the camp. Most of the Poles were from the intelligentsia. The prisoners’ honesty toward each other is a characteristic feature worth emphasizing. I know of only one instance of something being misappropriated. During this period, the gendarmerie and auxiliary police treated the prisoners well. The Jewish prisoners and the Poles made an agreement that on Christmas Day, the Jews would do all the work in the camp. The next two days, however, the Jews were not called on to do any work at all. … The Polish prisoners, knowing that we wouldn’t get any meals, had left us their bread and had hidden coffee for us. From western Polish territories incorporated directly into the German Reich, Jews were deported en masse to the General Government. Many of them passed through the Franciscan friaries in Limanowa near Nowy Sącz and in Niepokalanów near Warsaw. On January 2, 1940, Emanuel Ringelblum wrote in his diary Kronika getta warszawskiego: Wrzesień 1939–styczeń 1943 (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1983), at page 68: In Limanowa, the behaviour of the Franciscans toward 1,300 Jewish refugees (500 from Kalisz, 500 from Lublin, and some 300 from Poznań) was very favourable. They gave them accommodations in their buildings and helped them [in various ways]… even giving them a calf to kill. In a biography entitled A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe, Saint of Auschwitz (New York: Harper & Row, 1982; reissued by Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division of Our Sunday Visitor, Inc., Huntington, Indiana, 1982), at pages 91–93, Patricia Treece writes about the extensive assistance provided to large numbers of Jewish refugees in Niepokalanów, Poland’s largest monastery, which was under the direction of Father Maximilian [Maksymilian] Kolbe.39 Truckloads (Brother Juventyn [Juwentyn] estimates as many as 1,500 Jews and 2,000 gentiles at one time) were dumped at the friary by the Nazis, displaced persons who had been forced from their homes as “undesirables” in territory annexed by the Reich.40 The first group (Jews and gentiles from the Poznań area), many times outnumbering the Franciscans, was practically waiting on the doorstep when Kolbe and his malnourished friars returned from imprisonment. … Kolbe and the Brothers somehow managed to feed their bedraggled guests until the Germans began allotting food for them. To do so, the friars begged in the neighborhood. … Kolbe not only provided housing (the guests were given about three-fourths of the friary) and food, but clothing and every other kind of assistance as well. Kolbe himself mentions in a letter the following services to refugees sheltered at Niepokalanow in May 1940: the infirmary was caring for sixty to seventy daily, the pharmacy was dispensing medicine to twenty daily, the little hospital for lay people was housing thirty daily, and the friary kitchen was feeding 1,500. … Even after the Germans began allotting rations to the displaced persons from the Poznan area, Kolbe, knowing firsthand the inadequacy of these official amounts, added to them. … Yüklə 7,11 Mb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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