Your Life Is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-Occupied Poland, 1939-1945 by Ewa Kurek

(For high school students, teachers, and adults) Only in Poland did the Germans maintain a standing order that anyone aiding Jews would be executed together with immediate family. By defying the German death penalty, thousands of Poles saved Jewish lives. Among the most effective were the female Catholic religious orders. Without Vatican leadership, Polish nuns saved hundreds of Jewish children in nearly 200 religious institutions, schools, and orphanages. Jewish children came to the nuns in different ways; some were brought by desperate relatives or members of the underground; some were found wandering the streets; others were abandoned at doorsteps. When taking in Jewish children, the nuns had to weigh the risk to themselves and the other children – to decide that the lives of the children were worth their own.