Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

They then approached the Nazi authorities offering them cooperation in finding out the Jews of Vilno [Wilno] who had infiltrated into Lida.

The Nazis chose a day in March 1942 for the betrayal of the Jews from Vilno. … all the Jews were driven from their homes and … were led to a square opposite the new post office. There they were lined up in the snow and cold and forced to enter a narrow passage so that the thieves could point them out. Fifty Jews were arrested and shot shortly thereafter in the courtyard of the prison. … All the children whose parents had left them at home due to the intense cold, and all the aged, the sick, and the dying who did not go out to the identification parade, were found lying in their own blood … In this manner, on that day, over 200 souls were murdered.

A week after the betrayal by the Jewish thieves, the heads of the Judenrat were arrested … These people were tortured and met a violent death.
Two Pallotine Sisters (Missionary Sisters of the Catholic Apostalate), who worked in the hospital in Nowogódek, Celina Bławat and Jadwiga Kaczykowska, sheltered five Jewish doctors, their co-workers, during the first large Aktion of December 8, 1941. Those doctors later escaped from Nowogródek and joined Soviet partisan groups operating in the vicinity. The head doctor, Dr. Zenon Limon, asked the nuns to shelter his wife, a Polish woman from Lida named Wanda (née Gierasimowicz), and their young son Henryk. They were transferred for safety to the order’s mother house in the nearby village of Rajca. They remained there until the spring of 1943, when they joined Dr. Limon. All three survived the war and relocated to the Gdańsk area.⁴⁵⁹ Herzl and Tina Bencjanowski (Benson) placed their one-year-old daughter in a convent, probably the Pallotine Sisters, with the help of Mrs. Bencjanowski’s sister, who was married to a Christian.⁴⁶⁰ Sister Irena Przybysz sheltered several Jewish children in the children’s home run by the Pallotine Sisters. The Pallotine Sisters also provided food to the ghetto from 1941 until its liquidation in 1943.⁴⁶¹
Scores of Jews jumped from trains headed to the Treblinka death camp and some managed to escape from the camp itself. These destitute fugitives received extensive assistance from Polish villagers.⁴⁶² Often they knocked

on the doors of parish rectories seeking assistance. As historian Philip Friedman has noted (Their Brothers’ Keepers, p.126):
A number of priests in the neighborhood of the death camp at Treblinka gave food and shelter to Jews escaping from transports on the way to the camp.
Among the priests who came to the assistance of Jews that escaped from Treblinka or jumped from trains headed there was Rev. Sergiusz Góralczuk. Rev. Góralczuk hid in the parish rectory in Ugoszcz near Kosów Lacki two young Jewish men who escaped during the August 1943 revolt and provided temporary shelter and food to several other Jews who moved on in order to leave the vicinity of the camp.⁴⁶³ Catholic priests are known to have stood up to malfeasants who harassed and robbed Jewish fugitives. (Gutman and Krakowski, Unequal Victims, p.245, based on the Czyżew Memorial Book.)
Jentel Kita [Kitaj] recounts the following incident which occurred in the village of Lachow [Łochów], Wysokie Mazowieckie county. Several villagers assaulted a rather well-dressed woman, trying to strip her of her clothes. A priest suddenly appeared, approaching the attackers and asking them why they were harassing a lone woman. They told him that she was a Jewess who had jumped out of a Treblinka-destined train. Upon hearing that, the priest demanded that they leave her alone: he told them that she had suffered enough. The victim of the assault took advantage of his intercession and of the ensuing argument to withdraw speedily. Then the priest also walked swiftly away.
The following account was recorded in Grynberg, Drohobycz, Drohobycz and Other Stories, at pages 151–52.
… they took him and his wife to Treblinka. They were ordered to throw all their valuables, jewellery, dollars onto a sheet—death if you didn’t. Everyone did, but Grandpa thought to himself, they’ll kill my anyway, but what if I survive? So he bent down as though he were throwing, and picked things up again and again. Then, they selected several stronger men, put them back in the train, and Grandpa was one of the chose. As they rode at night, they managed to push out the bars of the window. The German shot, but missed him. Cut and bruised, he dragged himself to a settlement where he saw a church. The priest gave him clothes and money for the train, because he couldn’t pay in dollars. When he got back to Warsaw, his friends said: “We’ll introduce you to Jędrek Korczak of the HA [Home Army] who is hiding in the Ujazdów [military] hospital.” In this way, Grandpa became one of General Horodyński’s charges. [Horodyński was head of the surgical department—M.P.] … the colonel on the officer’s ward is a Jew, a pharmacist who’d studied along with Horodyński. And the major is also a Jew, a music teacher. And the quiet, devout soldier with the bamboo walking-stick who wears a crucifix on top of his pajamas. And that rheumatic lady who claims that we’re suited to each other, Grandpa knew her well in Kraków. Even poor Lieutenant Doliński had a Jewish mother.
Joseph S. Kutrzeba, then known as Arie Fajwiszys, recalled the assistance he received from several priests and a bishop in the Łomża area. In particular, Rev. Stanisław Falkowski, who was awarded by Yad Vashem, played a key role in the rescue of this 14-year-old boy from the Warsaw ghetto who had jumped off a train headed for Treblinka. After wandering in the countryside for several months, hiding in forests, fields and barns, the boy asked farmers to give him work and shelter. In Hodyszewo, he turned to a priest, Rev. Józef Perkowski, to whom he disclosed his identity. The priest referred him to Rev. Falkowski, a young vicar who was posted in the off-the-beaten-track village of Piekuty Nowe, on whose door he knocked in the dead of the night. Rev. Falkowski gave him a warm reception and tended to his wounds. He arranged a hiding place in his courtyard near the church, where the boy stayed for four months. Later, Rev. Falkowski arranged for the boy to stay with several Polish farmers in the area. The pastor, Rev. Roch Modzelewski, was aware of the boy’s true identity and helped in the rescue all along. To allay suspicions, Rev. Falkowski arranged for Aryan papers under a new identity, which enabled the boy to register as a volunteer for work in Germany. Even there, while working in a factory, Rev. Falkowski kept in touch with the boy the whole time, writing him letters to keep up his spirits and sending him food parcels. Rev. Falkowski also helped other Jews, which the boy was not aware of at the time. Joseph Kutrzeba penned the following statement, which is the editor’s possession, in May 1994.⁴⁶⁴
During the first days of September 1942, at the age of 14, I jumped out of a moving train destined for Treblinka, through an opening (window) of a cattle car loaded to capacity with Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto.

Wandering over fields, forests and villages, at first in the vicinity of Wołomin, and later of Zambrów, I found myself, in late November, in the area of Hodyszewo (at the time district Łomża).

Throughout my wandering, the peasants for the most part were amenable to put me up for the night and to feed me—some either suspecting my origins or pressing me to admit it.

I am the son of the well-known musician, composer, professor and conductor, Izrael Fajwiszys, and of Malka Hakman, murdered by the German Nazis together with my sister Rela.

Generally, I was aiming to reach the forests of Lublin as I’d heard within the resistance movement in the Warsaw Ghetto, Hashomer Hatzair, to which I belonged (and whose leader was Mordechai Anielewicz) that a Jewish partisan unit of that movement was being formed there. The peasants were afraid to shelter me longer than overnight since an officially announced death penalty had been decreed by the German occupiers for any assistance rendered to Jewish escapees.

Several times I was advised to seek out “a priest” who, as the peasants believed, could baptize me and thus to “save” me. While still in the area of Wołomin, I looked up a pastor (whose name I don’t remember). He had handed me a prayer book advising me to somehow take care of myself and to learn the basic prayers etc., and to look him up again after I have mastered the prayers. Then “we’ll see,” he said. Because, as he stated, he was afraid to shelter me. I never saw him again.

But at the end of November 1942, when heavy snow covered the ground, I followed the advice of a peasant who suggested that I look up, as it turned out, the parish priest (canon) Józef Perkowski in the church at Hodyszewo (housing the Miraculous Image of the Virgin Mary), the post-war rector of the Catholic Seminary in Łomża, with whom I corresponded after the war. Rev. Perkowski, having fed me, suggested that I repair at night, over heavy snow, to find a young vicar, Rev. Stanisław Falkowski, in the village of Piekuty Nowe, near Szepietowo.

Rev. Perkowski maintained that German gendarmes were constantly milling about in Hodyszewo and thus it would be difficult for him to hide or shelter me. However, as he put it, Piekuty Nowe was a small village, out of the way (as it turned out, there was also a gendarmerie post there), and that Rev. Falkowski was a “young idealist” who might agree to help me.

Father Falkowski opened the door for me on a dark evening, asking me to come into his one-room dwelling unit where, as a young vicar, he’d found a locum with a family, since the parish house in Piekuty Nowe had been requisitioned by the Germans, and the parish priest, Father Roch Modzelewski, had had to move into the house of the organist.

At first, Father Falkowski had put me up in his only room where I slept on the sofa. I had been covered with lice and with sores over my body. Father Falkowski fed me, arranged to clean me up, boiled my clothes, somehow coming up with an ointment for my sores. At the same time, we held many conversations evenings, rising at five in the morning to attend dawn Mass during Advent (December 1942).

From the start, Father Falkowski’s superior, pastor Modzelewski, had been fully taken into confidence (I often visited him—a short walk) and fully cooperated in assisting me. Both priests resolved that it was most important that I learn the catechism and the basic Catholic teachings— that is because that, if they would eventually attempt to place me with a peasant as a “working hand,” or to tend the cows—due to my “good” appearance and Polish speech—I would not give myself away with regard to my origins.

Over time, as I learned later, the bishop of Łomża, Stanisław Łukomski, had been taken into confidence; also, when the time came, in the spring of 1943, he had also granted permission to Father Falkowski to baptize me. When I took ill with jaundice, Father Modzelewski took me by sleighs to another village where a well-known homeopathist-priest cured me with herbs.

Another young vicar [Father Janiecki], a friend of Father Falkowski, had also visited us several times; he’d brought over a violin which he and I both played. He, too, was taken into confidence. However, active assistance was rendered to me mainly by Father Falkowski and Father Modzelewski including the subsequent placements with several peasants, as a Catholic, and later even with the head of a cluster of villages (wójt).

Father Falkowski suggested a new last name for me—Kutrzeba (the first name remained as at my birth)—and that for two reasons: 1) it had a very “Polish” ring to it, and 2) to honor Gen. Kutrzeba who resisted the German invasion to the last moment.

When, during a particular stay with a peasant, things began to get “uncomfortable”—either owing to very hard work … or due to gradually emerging suspicions which I’d promptly report to Father Falkowski, the priests would move me to yet another peasant—usually located at an isolated homestead, away from the main village where I would not be regarded with suspicion by passers-by or by visitors.

Over time, steeped in prayers, I began to cling to them, as they became my only inner refuge and a spiritual nourishment, especially while co-existing with simple people with whom I shared very little, nor could I share anything about myself or about my past in order to alleviate some of my inner torment. Owing to much hard work and security reasons, I was allowed to visit Father Falkowski and Father Modzelewski solely after church on Sundays or holidays where I wouldn’t attract much attention among throngs of people. (After the war I learned that the housekeeper of Father Modzelewski whom I got to know well, was also a Jewess, and that Father Falkowski also helped to shelter several other Jews.)

These visits meant spiritual rescue for me. As time went by, Father Falkowski became my only source of survival and hope, spiritually and otherwise. When, at one point, he proposed baptism to me, I agreed. Now, recalling my mental state of the time, I believe that: 1) I came to believe in Christ in whose name Father Falkowski had extended to me an unequivocal love of one’s neighbor, constantly risking his life in the name of his ideals; 2) to a certain extent, I felt neither could I disappoint my benefactor whom I came to love; and 3) it seemed to offer a better chance for survival. In addition, I recall as how Father Falkowski expressing it with some levity perhaps, added the conversion of souls was not only a priest’s mission, but that it would also put him “in good stead” with his bishop (I remember also that I had to write a formal letter to Bishop Łukomski stating my reason for my desire to be baptized, in order to receive his permission therefor.) I felt that I could not disappoint him, although he’d assured me that even if I should eschew baptism, he would still care for me.

When, toward the end of summer, things started to get “hot” (as I was almost found out by a certain mason—a “wiseguy” from Warsaw who worked there), Father Falkowski took me in again and, together with the parish priests, put together the following scenario:

The plan was for me to report to the general population registration, then in progress in the German-occupied Białystok voivodship, where new identity cards were being issued; with the partial cooperation of the village elder (who had to verify my identity, based on the priest’s assurance—not being aware of my true origin), I was granted a new identity card (Polish Catholic).

With it in hand, I “volunteered” for civilian labor in East Prussia, as the Germans, in addition to forcibly deporting young people for labor, were also conducting a broad propaganda campaign to recruit volunteers.

With tears in my eyes, I took leave of Father Falkowski who felt that my only chance to survive would be “in the lion’s den,” since the Germans embarked on a wild hunt for Jewish escapees, and a death penalty—often on the spot—was meted out to those assisting them.