Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy

I was received by the German Amtskomissar in Szepietowo who dispatched me by train for labor in a factory in Insterburg, in East Prussia.

From September 1943 to January 1945 I worked there, all along corresponding with Father Falkowski. Because nourishment was very scarce, Father Falkowski would continuously provide me with packages containing bread loaves; inside the bread, in a hollowed-out cavity, I usually found a ring of kiełbasa [sausage], which, by the way, was strictly against the law (the remittance of meat products during the war-time food rationing). In the event that I would be found out (as four other Poles were employed in that same factory), without doubt it would have caused a tragic end for my friend.

Moved to Germany proper where I was liberated by the American Army (in the city of Erfurt), I reestablished contact with Father Falkowski. Since then, allowing for some interruptions, we’ve been in constant touch for over 50 years: twice I brought him to the United States for visits, and to Israel (where he received the highest honors); I visited him in Poland a number of times. Currently he is retired, following two heart surgeries, at age 78, residing in the village of Klukowo, district Łomża. … Throughout his entire life he displayed great dedication in restoring churches, in furthering education, especially among children (he was imprisoned for two years in Białystok under Stalin), and always leaving parishes behind in an improved state. … (As far as I know, he also assisted, and possibly sheltered, the well known deceased writer, Paweł Jasienica.)

Leaving him, en route to East Prussia, I had been asking him how I would ever repay him (taught by my parents that one should not take from others without intending to give). He replied, I remember, “don’t even try, only pass it on to others.” … Fifty years later, from a present perspective, I asked him, among others, whether he’d received any instructions from his Church superiors with regard to aiding or sheltering escapees or Jews. He answered: “I didn’t need any, for I had my instructions from Christ—‘Love thy neighbor’ or ‘I am my brother’s keeper.’”

In the course of our long conversations when I was under the care of Father Falkowski (1942–43), I was asking him, among others—as a 15-year-old boy, why were we being persecuted and murdered. His answer then, apparently the product of his state of mind at the time, or else his scope of “knowledge” acquired in the seminary, or in the environment, expressed itself thusly: “The Lord Christ told the Jews: ‘My blood will fall upon you and your offsprings.’ (I am not able to quote directly but such was the contents.) And this has to be fulfilled.” When I questioned that—“but why upon us, the innocent?” “Father, you have imbued me with the love of one’s neighbor as the foundation of Christianity, and the Germans are a Christian nation …” He would reply: “Certainly, every Christian has the duty to realize these principles of faith, but apparently, in order to fulfill the prophecy of Christ, the Lord, in ways incomprehensible to us, is using Hitler as His Attila’s whip.” In addition, he told me that one could attain salvation solely through Christ and through a belief in Him.

These days he does not recall having said the former, and as for the latter, he maintains that such an approach is undergoing changes in the philosophy of the modern-day Church—many roads can, apparently, lead to salvation.
In addition to helping Joseph Kutrzeba, Rev. Józef Perkowski, the aforementioned pastor of Hodyszewo, is known to have helped other Jews survive the war including Zofia Kamieniecka from Wilno and her young son, Unk. He sheltered Teresa, the 5-year-old daughter of Josl Tykocki, a merchant from Brańsk, in the parish rectory.⁴⁶⁵ Together with Maria Kuzin and the Franciscan Sisters, Rev. Perkowski provided shelter to Mina Charin (later Omer), whom he baptized as Maria Jadwiga and provided with material assistance.⁴⁶⁶ The following account is from Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous, volume 4: Poland, Part 1, at page 433.
Mina Charin, later called Omer, was 16 in 1942, when she escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and arrived in the town of Lapy [Łapy], in the Bialystok [Białystok] district, where her brother [Józef or Julian Charin] worked as a doctor in the local hospital. After meeting with her brother, Mina began working in one of the estates close to the town, until one day all the Jews of the vicinity were ordered to report to the nearby police station. The owner of the estate, considering it her lawful duty to obey the German order, decided to drive the [registered] Jewish worker to the Gestapo and hand her over. When they were on their way, Mina asked her employer to stop near the home of Maria Kuzin, a practical nurse who worked with her brother, so she could say goodbye to her. Kuzin, who knew very well what fate awaited Mina, asked the owner of the estate to continue on her way and promised she herself would accompany the Jewish woman to the Gestapo. Mina was hidden in a hiding place arranged for her in the yard of Kuzin’s home, where she remained for a few months. When the German searches of the houses in the vicinity became more frequent, Kuzin transferred the Jewish refugee to a nearby village, where she found shelter in the home of the local priest [Rev. Józef Perkowski], who looked after her with devotion and generosity. She remained there until her liberation in July 1944. Even while Mina was in the priest’s home, Kuzin continued to visit her, to provide her with her needs and to boost her morale.
Mina Charin’s brother, Dr. Józef (Julian) Charin, was assisted and sheltered by Rev. Henryk Bagiński, the pastor of Łapy, and Rev. Feliks Zalewski, the pastor of Topczewo.⁴⁶⁷ (Martin Dean, ed., Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 [Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Memorial Museum, 2012], volume II, Part A, p.917.)
Julian Charin, a prominent local physician and a member of the Polish Home Arm (AK), received assistance from many Poles, arranged mostly by Henryk Bagiński and Feliks Zalewski, the respective heads of Roman Catholic churches in Łapy and Topczewo village. However, after another Pole betrayed Charin’s hiding place, he was shot on March 18, 1943, outside of Topczewo, by members of the Topczewo [German] Gendarmerie post. The AK likely revenged his murder by executing the informant. Charin’s sister, Mina (later Omer), survived the war, sheltered first be Charin’s fiancée, Maria Kuzin, then by [Rev.] Zalewski, and finally by another priest in Hodyszewo village, most likely Józef Perkowski. In Łapy, [Rev.] Bagiński was determined to protect Kretowicz [Jadwiga Chinson], whose conversion to Christianity he had sponsored. He used his Sunday homilies to urge parishioners not to reveal the hiding places of Jews to authorities. She survived the war, as did the sisters Lea and Rivka Srebolov [Srebrolow], sheltered by the owner of a Łapy cycle shop.
Rev. Józef Perkowski also took in a young Jewish girl from Białystok who had been thrown out of a train headed for the Treblinka death camp. The girl survived the occupation and moved to Israel. (Luba Wrobel Goldberg, A Sparkle of Hope: An Autobiography [Melbourne: n.p., 1998], p.98.)
In a separate bunker near the village Hodiszewo [Hodyszewo] was hiding Chaim Wrobel, they called him kewlaker with a nine year old girl, Stella Szcrecranska [sic]. This is her story how she came to the Bransker [Brańsk] group. Stella was born in Bialystok [Białystok] at the polish [sic] end of town. Her father was a chemist and they talked only polish. She was on a train with her parents on the way to Treblinka gas chambers when her mother wrapped her in a towel and threw her out of a train window. Polish people were walking alongside the train where dead bodies of Jews were laying shot while jumping from ther [sic] trains. … In between the dead they found Stella alive. The people picked her up and took her to the priest in Hoduszewo [Hodyszewo]. Haim Kewlaker came to the priest for food, so the priest gave him lettle [sic] Stela [sic] and told him to take care of her. The priest helped Chaim with food and Chaim took Stella to his bunker.
There are several testimonies from the Sokoły area near Białystok that mention the help of the Catholic clergy, however, most of the do not provide the name of the priests or nuns who assisted Jews. A priest in Sokoły condemned those who preyed on Jewish fugitives.⁴⁶⁸ Joshua Olshin from Sokoły recalled (David Kranzler, Holocaust Hero: The Untold Story and Vignettes of Solomon Schonfeld, an Extraordinary British Orthodox Rabbi Who Rescued Four Thousand Jews During the Holocaust [Jersey City, New Jersey: KTAV, 2004], p.211):
I survived partly because I worked with the partisans and partly thanks to the help of a priest and a Franciscan nun. When the Russians came back to Bialystok [Białystok] in the summer of 1944, we Jewish survivors organized a Jewish Committee of sixty persons, of which I became the president. We searched the surrounding villages for Jewish children who had survived the war. By 1945, thanks to my contacts with the priest of our locality, we had gathered a total of forty-eight Jewish children.
Zalman Sukman from the village of Pietkowo near Łapy turned to priests when he and his two daughters hid in the countryside. (Zalman Sukman, “In the Village of Pietkowo,” Sokoly: In the Fight for Life, Internet: , translation of Shmuel Kalisher, ed., Sokoly: B’maavak l’hayim [Tel Aviv: Organization of Sokoly Emigrés in Israel, 1975], pp.221–23.)

Sometimes I would go to Christian friends, even priests who were among my friends, and [from them] I received bread and other food. Without this, we would have died of hunger.

In her Yad Vashem testimony (File O.03/2668) Mina Omer (Omar) identified Rev. Jan Idźkowski, the pastor of Poświętne near Łapy, as having helped her and several other Jews including Zalman Sukman and his two daughters from the nearby village of Pietkowo, and a 10-year boy from Bydgoszcz.

The Sokoły memorial book also refers to a priest from the village of Jabłonka, who “endangered his own life and property and hid a number of pregnant Jewish women in his home, who gave birth there.”⁴⁶⁹ It is not clear whether this refers to the parish priest of Jabłonka Kościelna (to the west west of Wysokie Mazowieckie) or perhaps the parish priest of Jabłoń Kościelna (to the east of Wysokie Mazowieckie). After her escape from a German execution, the destitute and wounded Zelda Kaczerewicz made her way to the village of Jabłoń Kościelna near her hometown of Wysokie Mazowieckie. She was nursed back to health by Rev. Adolf Kruszewski, who had given her assistance in the past. Several months later, after her wounds had healed, she was sheltered by Maria Drągowska and her husband in the nearby village of Jabłoń-Zarzeckie. Rev. Kruszewski entrusted a Jewish infant girl left on the doorstep of his rectory in December 1942 to the care of Antonina Jabłońska, his housekeeper, who cared for the child for more than two years. The teenaged sisters Janina and Stefania Jabłońska found a nine-month old Jewish boy, Józik Żółty from Sokoły, who was cared for by their mother and, afterwards, by Teresa Jabłońska. Rev. Kruszewski baptized the boy, who was given the name Józef, in order to provide him with a cover. These children survived the war and were sent to a Jewish children’s home in Chorzów.⁴⁷⁰ Another rescue account from Jabłoń-Zarzeeckie also doubtless refers to the attitude of Rev. Kruszewski towards the rescue of Jews. (Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, volumes 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, pp. 328–29.)
Pawel [Paweł] and Wladyslawa [Władysława] Kalisiewicz lived with their five children in the village of Jablon [Jabłoń] Zarzecka [Jabloń-Zarzeckie], in the county of Wysokie Mazowieckie, Bialystok [Białystok] district. In November 1942, five Jewish women—Perl Weisenberg, her daughters Yaffa and Nechama, and her two sisters, who had fled from the Wysokie Mazowieckie ghetto, arrived in the village. The Kalisiewczes were the only ones who agreed to shelter the five refugees. [This implies at least that others in the village were aware of their presence.—M.P.] For the 22 months until the liberation, the Kalisiewiczes, at great personal risk, hid the five refugees in a small storehouse. Despite their straitened circumstances, Wladyslawa came each day to the hiding place to bring the refugees food. In their subsequent testimony, the survivors described their saviors’ warm and humane attitude toward them throughout their stay, despite the terrible tragedies they were experiencing at the time: Their son Waclaw [Wacław] was murdered by the Germans during a raid in the village while another son died of an illness. In her anguish, Wladyslawa turned to the local priest, asking him if the tragedies were a punishment for hiding Jews in her home. The priest reassured her that, on the contrary, God would reward her and her family for saving Jews. The Kaliszewiczes’ adult sons, Jozef [Józef] and Waclaw, also took an active part in the rescue operation. During one of the raids, the Germans ordered their nine-year-old son, Mieczyslaw [Mieczysław], at gunpoint to reveal the Jews’ hiding place, but the little boy refused to be intimidated. Later, one of the survivors wrote: “Despite their great suffering, they did not abandon us, and we never heard a sharp word from them. They shared what little food they had with us, and watched out for our safety…” After the war, the survivors immigrated to Israel.
In his Yad Vashem testimony (File M.11/374), Alter Trus mentions the appeals for help for Jews by the pastor of Brańsk, Rev. Bolesław Czarkowski, and the assistance provided by his vicar, Rev. Józef Chwałko. The attitude of various priests in and around Brańsk, in the Podlasie region, is recorded in Eva Hoffman’s Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small Town and the World of Polish Jews (Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), at pages 205–208, 224, 232, and 235.⁴⁷¹

One night early that month [i.e., November 1942], someone jumped over the ghetto fence and ran into the pharmacy. It was Lejb Shapiro [Leon Szapiro], the pharmacy’s prewar owner. He told [Janina] Woińska that the ghetto was surrounded, and nobody knew what was going to happen. He wanted to hide with his wife, his two sons, and his brother’s fiancée in the basement of the pharmacy. Woińska, and the two other women living in the building, decided that this was a suicidal plan: the pharmacy was right in the ghetto, and frequented by Germans and Poles. Instead, it was agreed that the Shapiros should go to another building, close by but outside the ghetto area. There, Woińska made a hiding place behind the piles of lumber. Together with the two other women, she brought the fugitives food for the next few days. …

Her sense of danger was sharpened, however, after a close call with the Gestapo, who came to the pharmacy a few days later and ordered a search. By that time, with the help of a young priest [Rev. Józef Chwalko], the Shapiros had gone on to another, safer place outside Brańsk. The Gestapo found their suitcases, left behind in the pharmacy’s attic. …

… As it happened, the whole “aristocracy” of Brańsk had gathered in the pharmacy, including a doctor, a priest, and a teacher. They all knew about the hiding place. No one said a word.