New pioneering work examines the largely unknown role of the Polish church in saving Jews during the Holocaust

Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy: The Testimony of Survivors and Rescuers, Volumes 1 and 2, is a pioneering study by Ryszard Tyndorf and Zygmunt Zieliński of the mostly unknown rescue activities carried out by the Polish Catholic Church and its clergy in German-occupied Poland during the Second World War. It is extensively sourced and relies primarily on the testimonies of Jewish survivors and Polish rescuers, supplemented by Church records, and can be downloaded at this link. Informative and compelling excerpts follow below.

Volume 1, Introduction, page 17:

“Clergy rescuers fell into three main groups: (1) women who belonged to religious orders, i.e., nuns or sisters; (2) priests, monks and brothers belonging to religious orders; and (3) priests who were members of the diocesan clergy.â€

“Nuns most commonly rescued by sheltering Jews, especially children, in their convents, orphanages, hospitals, and boarding schools. They also supported the Jewish underground in Warsaw and Wilno. Only a few male religious orders operated boarding schools, but they too sheltered Jewish boys. The German occupiers allowed priests to continue their interwar function of issuing birth and baptismal certificates, a privilege that greatly facilitated the acquisition of official German identity documents. In addition to the immense contribution made by certificates that falsely established the Polish identity of innumerable Jews, parish priests were well positioned to place Jews in safe houses as well as to support, by other means, both fugitive Jews and their Christian rescuers.â€

“Current research affirms that nuns from 66 orders conducted rescue activities through some 450 institutions, as did male religious and monastics from 25 orders in 85 establishments. The present study identifies more than 700 priests as rescuers in at least 580 distinct localities.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 1, “An Overview of Rescue by the Catholic Clergy: 1939-1945â€, Page 19:

“In his pioneering work on rescue, Their Brothers’ Keepers, which was first published in 1957, Holocaust historian Philip Friedman described various forms of assistance provided to Jews by the Catholic clergy in a number of German-occupied countries. The following is his brief overview of the situation in Poland. Monasteries and convents opened their doors to Jews.â€

“In Otwock, Pludy [Płudy], and certain other places, the convents of the Sisters of Maria’s Family were outstanding in their rescue activities. No less effective was the work performed by the Ursuline Sisters (in Warsaw-Powisle [Powiśle] and the provincial convents); the Franciscan Sisters in Laski; the Sisters of the Order of the Lady Immaculate (Niepokalanki) in Warsaw, Szymanow [Szymanów], and Niepokalanow [Niepokalanów]; the Sisters Szarytki of the municipal hospitals in Warsaw; and in Otwock, by the Catholic personnel of the orphanages and hostels of the RGO (Polish Relief Council). Although a strong missionary zeal influenced their work, the aid these groups extended saved countless Jewish lives. In Lwow [Lwów], after the Nazis occupied the city [in June 1941], according to the collaborationist [German-sponsored] Gazeta Lwowska, no less than 4,000 Jews attempted to evade the German net by baptism, (Lwow had a Jewish population of 170,000). Gazeta Lwowska violently castigated the Catholic Church for accepting the applications. A particularly vicious attack was directed at one of the priests of the Church of St. Vincent a Paolo [de Paul] who had approved of the conversions and defended the baptized Jews in his church sermons.

“In Warsaw, more than 6,000 baptized Jews were ordered by the Nazis to move into the ghetto, where they established their own churches. Food parcels were sent them by the Caritas Catholics, and several priests moved in among them to minister to their needs.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 1, Page 21.

“Historian WÅ‚adysÅ‚aw Bartoszewski, a prominent member of Å»egota, the wartime Council for Aid to Jews (Rada Pomocy Å»ydom), provided the following overview in his book ‘The Blood Shed Unites Us’, published in 1970.â€

“There was hardly a monastic congregation in Poland during the occupation that did not come in contact with the problem of help to the hiding Jews, chiefly to women and children— despite strong pressure from the Gestapo and constant surveillance of the monasteries, and the forced resettlement of congregations, arrests and deportations to concentration camps, thus rendering underground work more difficult. Some orders carried on work on a particularly large scale: the Congregation of Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary who concealed several hundred Jewish children in their homes throughout Poland; the figure of Mother [Matylda] Getter, Provincial Superior of that Congregation, has already gone down in history. The Ursuline Sisters [of the Roman Union] played a similar role in Warsaw, Lublin, Cracow [Kraków] and Cracow Voivodship, Lvov [Lwów], StanisÅ‚awów and KoÅ‚omyja; the nuns of the Order of the Immaculate Conception did the same in their convents; the Discalced Carmelites gave shelter to the especially endangered leaders of Jewish underground organizations. In their home at 27 Wolska Street in Warsaw, situated near the ghetto walls, help was given to refugees in various forms; this was one of the places where false documents were delivered to Jews; there, too, liaison men of the Jewish underground on the ‘Aryan’ side—Arie Wilner, Tuwie Szejngut, and others—had their secret premises. In 1942 and 1943, the seventeen sisters lived under permanent danger of [death] but never declined their cooperation even in the most hazardous undertakings. The Benedictine Samaritan Order of the Holy Cross concealed children and adults at Pruszków, Henryków and Samaria [Niegów] in the voivodship of Warsaw; Sisters of the Order of the Resurrection [of Our Lord Jesus Christ] hid Jews in all their convents throughout Poland; the Franciscan Sisters [Servants of the Cross] in Laski near Warsaw many a time gave refuge and help to a great number of these persecuted when all other efforts had failed; the Sacré-Coeur Congregation took care of Jews in Lvov [Lwów] at the time of most intensified Nazi terror there. …â€

“Equally splendid was the record of many orders of monks, and in particular the St Vincent [de Paul] Congregation of Missionary Fathers, the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, the Salesian Society, the Catholic Apostleship Association, the Congregation of Marist Fathers, the Franciscans, the Capuchins, and the Dominicans.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 2, “The Plight of the Polish Catholic Clergyâ€, p. 31

“From the very outset of the German occupation, the Catholic Church in Poland and its clergy, especially in the western territories incorporated into the Reich, were subjected to persecution on a scale unlike anything experienced elsewhere under German occupation in the Second World War. In other occupied countries, the Germans did not interfere much with the functioning of Christian religious institutions or with the clergy’s routine affairs.

Volume 1, Chapter 2, p. 48

“… in the years 1939–1945, 2,801 members of the clergy lost their lives; they were either murdered during the occupation or killed in military maneuvers. Among them were 6 bishops, 1,926 diocesan priests and clerics, 375 priests and clerics from monastic orders, 205 brothers, and 289 sisters. 599 diocesan priests and clerics were killed in executions, as well as 281 members of the monastic clergy (priests, brothers and sisters). Of the 1,345 members of the clergy murdered in concentration camps, 798 perished in Dachau, 167 in Auschwitz, 90 in DziaÅ‚dowo [Soldau], 85 in Sachsenhausen, 71 in Gusen, 40 in Stutthof, and the rest in camps such as Buchenwald, Gross-Rosen, Mauthausen, Majdanek, Bojanowo, and others.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 2, p. 49

“Of the 20,000 Polish nuns, 289 were killed and more than 1,100 were imprisoned in camps. Of the 38 bishops and archbishops in Poland at the outbreak of the war, thirteen were exiled or arrested and sent to concentration camps; six of them were killed.â€

“The conditions suffered by the Catholic Church in occupied Poland were incomparably worse than those in other countries occupied by the Germans, especially in Western Europe, where church institutions were scarcely interfered with. The vast majority of Christian clergy persecuted by the Nazis were Polish. Nowhere else in German-occupied Europe did the Church hierarchy come under direct assault. According to Church historians, 4,618 Christian clergymen were imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps, 2,796 of them in Dachau, the principal camp for clergy from all of Europe. Almost 95 per cent of the clergymen in Dachau were Roman Catholic, and almost 65 per cent were Polish. The 1,807 Polish clergymen interned in Dachau included 1,413 diocesan priests, 360 members of religious orders, and 34 clergymen of other Christian faiths. Of the 947 clergymen put to death in Dachau, 866—over 91 per cent—were Polish: 747 diocesan priests, 110 members of religious orders, and 9 clergymen of other faiths. Thus, Poles constituted almost two thirds of the clergy imprisoned in Dachau, and nine out of ten clergymen put to death there were Polish. Of all the Christian clergy in Dachau, Polish priests were undoubtedly the most ill-treated. Together with Jews, they were used as guinea pigs in medical experiments involving hypothermia and malaria.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 2, p. 52

“Moreover, the Polish Catholic clergy also suffered significant losses at the hands of the Soviet invaders. The Soviet Union occupied Eastern Poland from September 1939 until June 1941, and re-occupied and incorporated pre-war eastern Polish territories in 1944. Approximately 240 priests and 30 seminarians were murdered, deported to the Gulag, or arrested during the first period of occupation, and several hundred more were arrested and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in Soviet camps between 1945 and 1951.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 3, The First Years of the German Occupation: September 1939–June 1941, p. 66

“The synagogue in Cieszyn was torched on September 13, 1939, as were the synagogues in Bielsko and Å»elechów. In Mielec, on September 13, 1939, the Germans set fire to the synagogue and burned dozens of Jews alive in the slaughter house. On September 14, 1939, the synagogue in Biala was set on fire and then dynamited. After staging a pogrom in Dynów in which some 200 Jews were killed, the Germans burned the synagogue to the ground on September 15, 1939, incinerating about 50 Jews. The Great Synagogue in JasÅ‚o was set on fire by the Germans on September 15, 1939, but was saved by Polish firefighters who came and extinguished the flames. Five days later, the Germans responded by gathering the local Jews, along with the firefighters, and forcing them at gunpoint to set the building ablaze again, destroying it once and for all.â€

“Poles were also being burned alive by the Germans—sometimes alone, other times together with Jews. On September 10, 1939, 22 Poles were incinerated in a barn in Badków, near Leczyca Some 40 Poles and 12 Jews perished in a barn set ablaze in the village of Cecylówka, near Kozienice, on September 13, 1939â€.

Volume 1, Chapter 3, p. 67

When they entered the city [Gorlice], the Germans took several hostages, both Poles and Jews. The Wehrmacht soldiers began taking Jews for forced labor, stealing their property and abusing them (cutting off their beards). The Jews received permission from the [new] administration to hold prayers in the synagogue on the Jewish New Year, but the local priest warned them that the Germans were planning a trap for them in the synagogue, so they didn’t go there to pray. A group of Germans did arrive at the synagogue on the holiday, but when they found no Jews praying there they settled for destroying the interior of the synagogue. Around that time the Wehrmacht soldiers caught several Jews (5 or 7), took them out of the city and murdered them.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 3, p. 70

“Large numbers of Jews as well as Poles fled eastward before the advancing German army. Refugees, regardless of their origin, met with widespread sympathy and support on the part of Poles. As we shall see, they were well received at convents and monasteries too. A Jewish refugee from Aleksandrów wrote in 1940: ‘I want to raise here one more issue how the [local] population through which we passed [in our flight] treated us, the refugees. One must admit that regardless of our Jewishness they did whatever they could—and sometimes even more—to ease our distress. … People we didn’t even know literally dragged us to their home [saying] that they could not allow Jews to be left in the streets in those days.’â€

Volume 1, Chapter 3, p. 87

“The accounts attesting to widespread sympathy on the part of Poles toward persecuted Jews are borne out by a report filed by Wehrmacht General Johannes Blaskowitz. On February 6, 1940, he wrote to General Walther von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, ‘The acts of violence carried out in public against Jews are arousing in religious Poles [literally, ‘in the Polish population, which is fundamentally pious (or God-fearing)’] not only the deepest disgust but also a great sense of pity for the Jewish population.’â€

Volume 1, Chapter 3, p. 89

“In a biography entitled A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe, Saint of Auschwitz, Patricia Treece has documented the extensive assistance provided to Jewish refugees in Niepokalanów. ‘Truckloads (Brother Juwentyn estimates as many as 1,500 Jews and 2,000 Poles 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. The first group (Jews and gentiles from the PoznaÅ„ area), many times outnumbering the Franciscans, was practically waiting on the doorstep when Kolbe and his malnourished friars returned from [their first] 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.’â€

“Brother Mansuetus Marczewski had noticed that Father Maximilian had an especially tender love for the Jews. This love was reciprocated. Early in the new year (1940), the Poznan deportees were resettled away from the monastery. Before leaving, the Jewish leaders sought out Father Maximilian. According to Brother Juwentyn, a spokesperson (Mrs. ZajÄ…c) said: ‘Tomorrow we leave Niepokalanow. We’ve been treated here with much loving concern. … We’ve always felt someone close to us was sympathetic with us. For the blessing of this all-around kindness, in the name of all the Jews present here, we want to express our warm and sincere thanks to you, Father Maximilian, and to all the Brothers. But words are inadequate for what our hearts desire to say.’ … “In a loving gesture to Kolbe and his Franciscans, she concluded by asking that a Mass of thanksgiving be celebrated to thank God for his protection of the Jews and the friary. Another Polish Jew added, “If God permits us to live through this war, we will repay Niepokalanow a hundredfold. And, as for the benevolence shown here to the Jewish refugees from PoznaÅ„, we shall never forget it. We will praise it everywhere in the foreign press.’â€

Volume 1, Chapter 3, pp. 105-106

“In the early months of 1940, Eta Chajt Wrobel, who was part of the nascent [Jewish] underground movement in Åuków, undertook a mission to Åódź, where she had lived previously and, with the help of a Pole, managed to steal some guns from German officers. On the way back, she had an encounter with an unknown Polish nun—a chance meeting that saved her life.†Her testimony follows:

“In the meantime, I decided that it would be prudent to go back to Lodz [Lódz] and get the guns that Janek was still hiding for me. And this time I didn’t wear any yellow stars; I wore instead the crucifix [her Polish girlfriend] Lola’s mother had given me. … At Janek’s house, I knocked, and he answered the door. When he saw me, he pulled me into his apartment. I told him I’d come for the guns. He gave me two guns wrapped in women’s clothing and put them in my handbag. We decided it would be best for me to make several trips to pick up the rest … taking only two guns at a time. On my way back to Luków, as we pulled into one station, I noticed Gestapo agents surrounding the train. I was terrified. I had no papers and if they searched my bag, I would have been shot on the spot. Though I tried to keep my demeanor cool and calm, something must have shown in my face. A nun sitting across the aisle noticed me and looked into my eyes. I still remember how beautiful her young face was underneath the cowl of her habit. Suddenly, she got up and ordered me to take her suitcase. I obeyed without saying a word. She pushed her way past the Germans as I followed behind her like a maidservant. The Gestapo agents had no time to react to her leaving the train so quickly and never asked her or me for our papers—after all, she was obviously not Jewish, and I was wearing a crucifix. I walked with her for at least two blocks before she stopped, turned, and looked straight at me. “What are you up to?†she asked. “I can see death in your eyes.†She also saw the cross I was wearing, blessed me, and sent me on my way. She knew exactly what I was up to, and must have guessed I was a Jew, but yet didn’t give me up. That woman, whoever she was, saved my life. The second trip I took for guns was uneventful; the third trip was something else again.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 3, p. 117

“Jewish sources also attest to the widespread practice of Catholic institutions providing Jews with false documents. For example, many false baptismal certificates were produced at the Carmelite monastery in Kraków for the benefit of Jews and other endangered persons. The ‘factory’ was eventually discovered.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 4, Germany Attacks the Soviet Union: June 1941, p. 121

“The Soviet occupation of Eastern Poland proved to be as repressive as the German occupation of Western Poland. Incited by Soviet propaganda, members of the country’s minorities murdered several thousand ethnic Poles in the latter part of September 1939…†[Supporting footnote 208] “Although almost all the actual killing was done by Ukrainians and Belorussians, Jews were also among those who turned on their Polish neighbours. The legendary Polish courier Jan Karski, who was honoured by Israel for his efforts to inform the West about the Holocaust, paints a stark and alarming picture of what he had witnessed, in a report filed in February 1940, before the Holocaust got underway: ‘The Jews have taken over the majority of the political and administrative positions. But what is worse, they are denouncing Poles, especially students and politicians (to the secret police), are directing the work of the (communist) militia from behind the scenes, are unjustly denigrating conditions in Poland before the war. Unfortunately, one must say that these incidents are very frequent, and more common than incidents which demonstrate loyalty toward Poles or sentiment toward Poland.’ For the full report, see Norman Davies and Antony Polonsky, eds., Jews in Eastern Poland and the USSR, 1939–46 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 260–71.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 5, The Holocaust Intensifies: 1942-1945, p. 141

“Priests and nuns throughout Poland responded to the increasingly harsh conditions faced by Jews by giving various forms of assistance to Jews who fled from the ghettos. The most widespread way of extending help was the issuance by priests of birth and baptismal (metryka urodzenia i chrztu). Genuine certificates were based on actual entries recorded in the parish register. (In the interwar period, parishes functioned as civil registry offices. A small fee was usually charged to issue the certificate.) These identity documents are variously referred to in rescue accounts and the literature simply as baptismal certificates The safest birth and baptismal certificates were those of a deceased person whose death entry was removed from the parish register. Another document considered to be safe was a birth and baptismal certificate from a parish whose records had been destroyed during the war. These certificates were presented to the local authorities in order to obtain an identity card, known as a Kennkarte, bearing the person’s photograph. All persons 18 years of age and older were required to possess a Kennkarte. Forged identity documents were also produced by the Polish underground, usually pro bono, and by independent manufacturers (both Polish and Jewish), who charged a premium for work that was often of poor quality.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 5, pp. 143-144

“Convents played an important role in the rescue of Jewish children. Jan DobraczyÅ„ski, a prewar member of the nationalist National Party (“Endekâ€), used his offices in the Department of Social Welfare of the Warsaw municipal corporation to place some 500 Jewish children in Catholic convents. This was a daunting task. Many of the children had Semitic features, spoke Polish poorly or with a Yiddish accent, and most of them had little if any knowledge of Catholic prayers and rituals; it would not have been easy for them to blend in. (Even when the children had learned Catholic rituals, there was a tendency to overdo them, e.g., by making the sign of the cross multiple times rather than just once before a meal.)

Dobraczyński belonged to a large network of persons dedicated to the rescue operation which involved Zegota, the Council for Aid to Jews attached to the Delegates Office of the Polish government in exile. Prominent participants included Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and two nuns—Mother Matylda Getter, the provincial superior of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, and Sister Wanda Garczyńska, the superior of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Dobraczyński recalled those times in an interview published shortly before his death.

‘I was afraid to place [Jewish] children in just any institution; I relied only on convents. I was well known to all of the Sisters and they trusted me. I gathered the Sisters and told them: “Dear Sisters, we will be hiding Jewish children. If a child is sent with my signature, that will be an indication that the child is Jewish, and you will have to know how to act on this.†I also told them that we would not be sending more children to any institution than we agreed to …… our social workers searched for [Jewish] children. Sometimes they were found on the street, or in some primitive hiding place. Once we were informed that two boys were hidden in a cubbyhole in [the suburb of] Praga. One of them was running a high fever and it was imperative to move them. A nun took the sick boy on a streetcar and he started to scream out something in Yiddish. The driver was astute enough to sense the danger and yelled out: “This streetcar is going to the depot. Everyone out.†At the same time, he signaled to the nun that she and the boy should remain. Each of the children was taken for a few days to the home of a social worker. There they were taught their new names and prayers, and how to make the sign of the cross. The children were after all being taken to Catholic institutions and couldn’t differ outwardly from the Polish orphans residing there. All but one of the children survived the war. (The one boy who didn’t survive was killed by Ukrainians in Turkowice, where he was sheltered in a convent.) … a few of the children remained Christians, but the rest reverted to the faith of their forefathers.’â€

“The rescue efforts of the Catholic Church were not always welcomed by the Jews themselves. Some Jews claimed that conversion was the primary, or at least a very important, factor in the decision of the Catholic clergy to extend assistance to Jews. In fact, this was one of the reasons given by Warsaw’s Jewish leaders for turning down an offer to place several hundred Jewish children in convents and monasteries even though a register would be kept to ensure the children’s return after the war.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 5, pp. 144-145

“Moreover, there was considerable reluctance on the part of many Jews to give their children over to Poles, especially the Catholic clergy, for safekeeping. One survivor records the following conversation:

“‘I gave my little son to a Polish family and I hope to God he’ll survive,’ a young father said with relief. ‘Oh no,’ I heard Mr. Blum exclaim. ‘I’d never give my children to a Christian family. Who knows if my wife and I will survive to claim them after the war? And if not,’ he continued in a voice charged with emotion, ‘they’ll grow up to be good Christians, God forbid. Oh no!’ he repeated passionately. ‘It’s better that they should die as Jews. Let them go together with their people; let us perish together. I couldn’t entrust my children to the gentiles,’ he concluded with determination.’â€

“Zegota activist Irena Sendler (also known as Sendlerowa in Polish, née Krzyzanowska) recalled that sometimes Jews asked her for ‘guarantees’ that their children would survive the war. Sendler explained to them that she could not even assure the children’s safe passage out of the ghetto. This too discouraged Jews from seeking placements for their children with Christians. As noted by Jadwiga Piotrowska, a Warsaw social welfare worker active in rescuing scores of Jewish children, the nuns were not sheltering Jewish children in order to convert them. Rather, they were at pains to ensure the seamless integration of Jewish children into orphanages where the appearance of religious assimilation as Polish Catholics was crucial not only for the success of the rescue effort but for their own survival. The children who were being rescued not only had to have documents made for them, and an ‘Aryan past’ created, but they needed another place to survive. It was also necessary to instill in them an awareness that they were not worse in any way, that they did not differ from their native Polish brothers, that they were also Poles. The Germans frequently visited the orphanages run by religious orders, checked the children’s documents and also their religious knowledge, ordering them to pray or recite the catechism. Any inaccuracy on the children’s part could have led to the deaths of many people, including the children. What is more, it could have endangered the entire rescue operation. … Therefore, it was out of necessity that the Jewish children were baptized and taught religion. The nightmarish memories of their past were carefully erased, so that they would not differ in any way from the Polish children. In truth this was no conversion, no augmenting of adherents of Catholicism, but only a fight for life, in which no error could be made.

Nonetheless, some Holocaust scholars have imputed a vile, underlying nature to the rescue efforts. Jean-Charles Szurek has argued that what the nuns were actually doing was subjecting the children to ‘deculturation,’ a form of violence. Viewed from this distorted angle, rescuers metamorphose into victimizers.â€

Volume 1, Chapter 5, p. 160

“Hania Ajzner (later Strosberg, b. 1934), an only child, lived with her parents in the Warsaw ghetto. Jan Zakoscielny, a former employee of her father’s, obtained the birth and baptismal certificates of deceased family members for them, and then he arranged for Kennkarten. After escaping from the ghetto with her mother in late January 1943, they first stayed with Mrs. Maciejewska and then with the Jankowskis, prewar school teachers. Afterwards, Hania was placed in a boarding school in the suburb of Żoliborz run by the Sisters of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. There she became Anna Zakoscielna. Hania’s true identity was known to the nuns and the chaplain, but she was never questioned as to whether she had been baptized. She recalls an episode that occurred when a revolt broke out in the Warsaw ghetto.

‘One night, Sister Wawrzyna [Motyczynska] came into the dormitory after the girls had already settled down. “Get up, girls, come up to the windows,†and she drew aside the black-out curtains. They could all see a red glow over the fields to the South. “That is the Ghetto, burning,†she said. “There was an uprising in the Ghetto. You must all pray, girls, for there are heroes fighting and dying there.†Ania stood there in silence. … It was a long time before they went back to their beds. It was the 19th April, 1943.’â€

Appendix H, p. 1099

“Yosef Haezrahi-Bürger—one of those operatives of Jewish organizations that, after the war, tracked down Jewish children sheltered by Christian Poles—described the fate of two Jewish teenagers who had managed to escape from a train on its arrival in Treblinka and were sheltered in a village near the camp.

‘[I]n one of the transports, two siblings—a boy and a girl—were among the Jews in the wagons that reached the Treblinka village railroad station before they could be moved to the extermination camp. While they were waiting, the people in the wagon broke through the wooden floor and several escaped. The guards chased and fired at them but the two children managed to reach a house in the village and hide there, terrifying the owner, whose own children were playing in the yard. When she saw the guards pursuing them, the woman directed the guards to her own house. The guards shot the woman’s children, assuming that they were the fugitive Jewish youngsters who were hiding in the house. The terrified woman regained her composure quickly and decided that if this was her fate, she had no choice but to raise the Jewish youngsters. The operative did not know the source of the information about these children after the war but was told that emissaries had been sent to remove them several times, failing each time. In 1947, when he was asked to deal with their removal, the children were sixteen and seventeen years old. They knew they were Jewish but refused to leave their “mother,†as they called their rescuer, since she had lost her own children and had saved them. The mother left the decision up to them: both persisted in their refusal and remained in the village.’â€

Excerpts complied by Gene Sokolowski