Notes on Polish Towns, Villages, and Districts that aided Jews

Source: Mark Paul, editor and compiler. Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy: The Testimony of Survivors. Polish Educational Foundation in North America, Toronto, 2009. [Downloaded from http://www.savingjews.org/docs/clergy_rescue.pdf on 10/31/2021.]

“It should be remembered that Catholic priests and nuns constituted only a small but representative portion of Polish rescuers and the several thousand Poles who were burned alive, executed or died from torture because they befriended Jews. In total, several thousand Christian Poles—men, women and children, entire families and even whole communities—were tortured to death, summarily executed, or burned alive for rendering assistance to Jews. Hundreds of cases of Poles being put to death for helping Jews have been documented though the list is still far from complete (the author is aware of scores of additional cases).

“See the following publications on this topic: Philip Friedman, Their Brothers’ Keepers (New York: Holocaust Library, 1978), pp.184–85

“Wacław Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity: Christian and Jewish Response to the Holocaust, Part One (Washington, D.C.: St. Maximilian Kolbe Foundation, 1987), Part One; Wacław Bielawski, Zbrodnie na Polakach dokonane przez hitlerowców za pomoc udzielaną Żydom (Warsaw: Główna Komisja Badania Zbrodni Hitlerowskich w Polsce–Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, 1987)

“The Main Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against the Polish Nation–The Institute of National Memory and The Polish Society For the Righteous Among Nations, Those Who Helped: Polish Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust, Part One (Warsaw, 1993), Part Two (Warsaw, 1996), and Part Three (Warsaw, 1997). A portion of the last of these publications is reproduced in Appendix B in Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939–1944, Second revised edition (New York: Hippocrene, 1997), and an extensive list of Polish victims also appears in Tadeusz Piotrowski, Poland’s Holocaust: Ethnic Strife, Collaboration with Occupying Forces and Genocide in the Second Republic, 1918–1947 (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland, 1998), pp.119–23.

"Some Holocaust historians who deprecate Polish rescue efforts, such as Lucy S. Dawidowicz, have attemptedSome Holocaust historians who deprecate Polish rescue efforts, such as Lucy S. Dawidowicz, have attempted to argue that essentially there was no difference in the penalty that Poles and Western Europeans such as the Dutch faced for helping Jews. See Lucy C. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), p.166. However, the sources on which Dawidowicz relies belie this claim. Western Europeans very rarely faced the prospect of death for helping Jews. Raul Hilberg described the situation that prevailed in the Netherlands as follows: “If caught, they did not have to fear an automatic death penalty. Thousands were arrested for hiding Jews or Jewish belongings, but it was German policy to detain such people only for a relatively short time in a camp within the country, and in serious cases to confiscate their property.” See Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: Aaron Asher Books/Harper Collins, 1992), pp.210–11.

According to a Dutch historian, “usually, if Gentiles who helped Jews were punished, they were punished with short-term Schutzhaft, or protective custody; only severe cases were sent 286 to concentration camps in Germany.” See Marnix Croes, “The Holocaust in the Netherlands and the Rate of Jewish Survival,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 20, no. 3 (Winter 2006): pp.474–99.

In Belgium, a decree of June 1, 1942 warned the local population against sheltering Jews under punishment with “imprisonment and a fine.” See Mordechai Paldiel, Churches and the Holocaust: Unholy Teaching, Good Samaritans, and Reconciliation (Jersey City, New Jersey: Ktav Publishing House, 2006), pp.131–32.

Nor is there evidence of any death penalty being issued for helping Jews within Germany proper: “German law did not specifically probibit helping Jews. … In cases of violation, the non-Jewish German party was threatened with protective custody or three months in a concentration camp.” See Beate Kosmala, “Facing Deportation in Germany, 1941–1945: Jewish and Non-Jewish Responses,” in Beate Kosmala and Feliks Tych, eds., Facing the Nazi Genocide: Non-Jews and Jews in Europe (Berlin: Metropol, 2004), p.35. Moreover, unlike in occupied Poland, a significant group of people defined as “mixed race” and even Jews married to Germans could escape most of the Nazi regime’s anti-Semitic policies, provided they and their children did not practice the Jewish faith. However, thousands of Jews subsequently committed suicide when their protection came to an end. See Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War, 1939–1945 (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Books, 2008), pp.70–71, 251, 272–73.

“[I]n Austria no specific penalty was legally established for concealing Jews, yet rescue efforts there, as in Germany proper, were exceedingly rare. See Israel Gutman, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, vol. 8: Europe (Part I) and Other Countries (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2007), pp. xxix, liii. “…the death penalty was also found on the books in a few jurisdictions such as Norway and the Czech Protectorate, there too it was rarely used. Such laxity was virtually unheard of in occupied Poland, where the death penalty was meted out with utmost rigour.

Several Norwegian resistance fighters were executed for helping Jews to escape to Sweden, and a number of persons were imprisoned. See Mordecai Paldiel, The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (Hoboken, New Jersey: KTAV Publishing House; New York: The Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers, 1993), p.366.

Several dozen individuals in the Czech Protectorate were charged by Nazi special courts and sentenced to death. See Livia Rothkirchen, The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: Facing the Holocaust (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2005), pp.218–27, 303–304.

Some rescuers were also put to death in other occupied countries such as Lithuania. See Alfonsas Eidintas, Jews, Lithuanians, and the Holocaust (Vilnius: Versus Aureus, 2003), pp.326–27. See also Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One, pp.111–18, 284–86, 294, 295, for some other examples.

Historian István Deák states… (István Deák, “Memories of Hell,” The New York Review of Books, June 26, 1997):

The penalty for assisting or even trading with a Jew in German-occupied Poland was death, a fact that makes all comparisons between wartime Polish-Jewish relations and, say, Danish-Jewish relations blatantly unfair. Yet such comparisons are made again and again in Western histories—and virtually always to the detriment of the Poles, with scarce notice taken of the 50,000 to 100,000 Jews said to have been saved by the efforts of Poles to hide or otherwise help them … one must not ignore the crucial differences between wartime conditions in Eastern and Western Europe. 287 Collective Rescue Efforts of the Poles

“[…]Gunnar S. Paulsson. Paulsson [in an] article entitled, “The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland,” The Journal of Holocaust Education, volume 7, nos. 1 & 2 (summer/autumn 1998): pp.19–44.

“In the league of people who are known to have risked their lives to rescue Jews, Poland stands at the very top, accounting for more than a third of all the ‘Righteous Gentiles’. … Of the 27,000 Jewish fugitives in Warsaw, 17,000 were still alive 15 months after the destruction of the ghetto, on the eve of the Polish uprising in 1944. Of the 23,500 who were not drawn in by the Hotel Polski scheme, 17,000 survived until then. Of these 17,000, 5,000 died in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, and about 10,500 were still alive at liberation. … As it happens, there is an excellent standard of comparison, because it is estimated that in the Netherlands, 20–25,000 Jews went into hiding—about the same number as in Warsaw—of whom 10–15,000 survived—again, about the same number. … The conclusion, then, is quite startling: leaving aside acts of war and Nazi perfidy, a Jew’s chances of survival in hiding were no worse in Warsaw, at any rate, than in the Netherlands. … The small number of survivors, therefore, is not a direct result of Polish hostility to the Jews … The Jews were deported from the ghettos to the death camps, not by Poles, but by German gendarmes, reinforced by Ukrainian and Baltic auxiliaries, and with the enforced co-operation of the ghetto police. Neither the Polish police nor any group of Polish civilians was involved in the deportations to any significant degree, nor did they staff the death camps. Nor did the fate of the Jews who were taken to their deaths depend to any significant degree on the attitudes and actions of a people from whom they were isolated by brick walls and barbed wire. … The 27,000 Jews in hiding in Warsaw relied on about 50–60,000 people who provided hiding-places and another 20– 30,000 who provided other forms of help; on the other hand, blackmailers, police agents, and other actively anti-Jewish elements numbered perhaps 2–3,000, each striking at two or three victims a month. In other words, helpers outnumbered hunters by about 20 or 30 to one. The active helpers of Jews thus made up seven to nine per cent of the population of Warsaw; the Jews themselves, 2.7 per cent; the hunters, perhaps 0.3 per cent; and the whole network—Jews, helpers, and hunters—constituted a secret city of at least 100,000: one tenth of the people of Warsaw; more than twice as many as the 40,000 members of the vaunted Polish military underground, the AK [Armia Krajowa or Home Army]. … How many people in Poland rescued Jews? Of those that meet Yad Vashem’s criteria—perhaps 100,000. Of those that offered minor forms of help—perhaps two or three times as many. Of those who were passively protective—undoubtedly the majority of the population. All these acts, great and small, were necessary to rescue Jews in Poland.

[…] Gunnar S. Paulsson [wrote] in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, volume 13 (2000), at pages 78–103, … “The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw, 1943–1945.” Paulsson, pages 96 and 99:

“For the sake of comparison, the case of the Netherlands might be examined. There, 20,000–25,000 Jews are estimated to have gone into hiding, mainly in Amsterdam, of whom 10,000–15,000 survived the war. The overall survival rate in Holland was thus 40–60 percent, and in Warsaw, after levelling the playing field, notionally 55–75 percent. Thus the attrition rate among Jews in hiding in Warsaw was relatively low, contrary to expectation and contemporary perceptions. The main obstacles to Jewish survival in Warsaw are seen to have been the Hotel Polski trap and the 1944 uprising and its aftermath, rather than the possibility of discovery or betrayal. Despite frequent house searches and the prevailing Nazi terror in Warsaw (conditions absent in the Netherlands), and despite extortionists, blackmailers, and antisemitic traditions (much less widespread in the Netherlands), the chance that a Jew in hiding would be betrayed seems to have been lower in Warsaw than in the Netherlands. … it is clear that Warsaw was the most important centre of rescue activity, certainly in Poland and probably in the whole of occupied Europe. The city accounted for perhaps a quarter of all Jews in hiding in Poland … The 27,000 Jews in hiding there also constituted undoubtedly the largest group of its kind in Europe.”

“… See also Gunnar S. Paulsson, “Evading the Holocaust: The Unexplored Continent of Holocaust Historiography,” in John K. Roth and Elisabeth Maxwell, eds., Remembering for the Future: The Holocaust in an Age of 288 Genocide (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001), vol. 1, pp.302–318; Gunnar S. Paulsson, “Ringelblum Revisited: Polish-Jewish Relations in Occupied Warsaw, 1940–1945,” in Joshua D. Zimmerman, ed., Contested Memories: Poles and Jews during the Holocaust and Its Aftermath (New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers University Press, 2003), pp.173–92; and a newly published monograph by Gunnar S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002).

“Contrary to what is often claimed in Holocaust literature, there are many recorded cases of entire villages sympathizing with the Jews and participating in their rescue. With rare exceptions, these rescuers—and indeed the vast majority of those who extended assistance to Jews—have not been recognized by Yad Vashem. Emanuel Ringelblum recorded:

“I heard from Jews of Glowno [Główne] how peasants helped them during the whole of the winter. A Jew who went out to a village in search of food usually returned with a bag of potatoes … In many villages, the peasants showed open sympathy for the Jews. They threw bread and other food [through the barbedwire fence] into the camps … located in their neighborhood.”

See Philip Friedman, Their Brothers’ Keepers (New York: Holocaust Library, 1978), p.116. Hercek Cedrowski, Tojwje Drajhorm and Jankiel Borkowski wrote in 1947:

“The Jews of Ozorków maintained contact with the Poles. The Polish population did not help the Germans in the liquidation of the Jews. They traded with the Jews and brought food to the ghetto. The Jews were afraid of speaking with Poles, and Poles were afraid of helping Jews, but there were no denunciations of Jews.”

See Michał Grynberg and Maria Kotowska, comp. and eds., Życie i zagłada Żydów polskich 1939–1945: Relacje świadków (Warsaw: Oficyna Naukowa, 2003), p.488. Menachem Superman, who was survived in the Rzeszów area, wrote:

“the entire village knew that I was Jewish, but [my rescuer] always said to me that I shouldn’t be afraid, because no one will hand me over to the Germans.”

See Elżbieta Rączy, Pomoc Polaków dla ludności żydowskiej na Rzeszowszczyźnie 1939–1945 (Rzeszów: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2008), p.128. Isadore Burstyn, as a boy of eleven, was able to survive through the friendship of people in the village of Głupianka near Otwock (outside of Warsaw), where his father was confined in the ghetto:

“In my case the entire village sheltered me even though I know there were still about 20 per cent anti-Semites among them.”

See “Edmonton survivor returns to Poland,” The Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), August 2, 1990, and “Return to Otwock brings back rush of memories,” The Canadian Jewish News, August 30, 1990.

See also Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, vol. 5: Poland, Part 2, p.927. When Abram Jakub Zand, a tailor from the village of Bolimów near Warsaw,

“stole back to his village; the local peasants welcomed him back, and he was passed from house to house, working a week or two in each. … ‘If I were to thank everyone, whole villages would have to visit me.’”

See Tatiana Berenstein and Adam Rutkowski, Assistance to the Jews in Poland, 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Polonia Publishing House, 1963), p.27. A Polish Red Cross worker gave over to a Polish couple by the name of Kaczmarek, themselves refugees from Western Poland living in the town of Żyrardów near Warsaw, a young Jewish girl found abandoned in an empty death train: Many of the neighbours knew that she was Jewish, yet no one informed.”

See Zbigniew Pakula, The Jews of Poznań (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), p.51. In the village of Osiny, “the peasants arranged among themselves that each would hide a Jewish girl for a certain period so that ‘everyone would be guilty and no one could inform.’”

See Berenstein and Rutkowski, Assistance to the Jews in Poland, 1939–1945, p.27; Krzysztof Czubaszek, Żydzi z Łukowa i okolic (Warsaw: Danmar, 2008), p.252. Henryk Prajs survived the war passing as a Pole in the village of Podwierzbie near Magnuszew where the fact that he was Jewish was widely known, with the protection of the head of the village.

See the testimony of Henryk Prajs, January 2005, Internet: In the small village of Bokowo Wielkie near Sierpc four Jews were rescued by diverse Polish farmers.

See Leon Gongoła, “O prawach i ludziach,” Polska (Warsaw), no. 7 (1971): pp.170–72. A Jew by the name of Duczy was sheltered in his native village of Tarzymiechy near Zamość, with the knowledge of all of the villagers.

See Philip Bialowitz, as told to Joseph Bialowitz, Bunt w Sobiborze: Opowieść o przetrwaniu w Polsce okupowanej przez Niemców (Warsaw: Nasza Księgarnia, 2008), pp. 214–15. The case of author Jerzy Kosinski and his parents, who lived openly in Dąbrowa Rzeczycka near Stalowa Wola, is another example. The Kosiński family attended church in nearby Wola Rzeczycka, obtained food from villagers in Kępa Rzeczycka, and were sheltered temporarily in Rzeczyca Okrągła. Other Jews were also assisted by the local villagers.

See James Park Sloan, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography (New York: Dutton/Penguin, 1996), pp.7–54. 289 Faiga Rosenbluth, a penniless teenage Jewish girl from Kańczuga, roamed the countryside moving from one village to the next for some two years; she helped out by very many peasants and was not betrayed, even though she was readily recognized as a Jew.

See Fay Walker and Leo Rosen (with Caren S. Neile), Hidden: A Sister and Brother in Nazi Poland (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), passim.

Marian Gołębiowski, who was awarded by Yad Vashem, placed Dr. Bernard Ryszard Hellreich (later Ingram) and his future wife Irena Szumska, who went by the names of Zbigniew and Irena Jakobiszyn, in the village of Czermna near Jasło, where their presence was known to all the villagers, and they enjoyed the protection of the owners and manager of a local estate.

See Piotr Zychowicz, “Ratowali Żydów i nie godzą sie na kłamstwa,” Rzeczpospolita, October 30, 2009; Polish Righteous, Internet: Henryk Schönker recalled that when he was fingered in Wieliczka by a boy who started to chase him, the passers-by ignored the boy’s cry to “catch the Jew.” No made an effort to apprehend him. One of the onlookers seized the boy and admonished him.

See Henryk Schönker, Dotknięcie anioła (Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta, 2005), pp.135–36. The case of Doctor Olga Lilien, a Holocaust survivor from Lwów with a very marked Jewish appearance, who lived with a Polish family near Tarnobrzeg, is another example of solidarity among the Polish villagers. A German came looking for a fugitive and summoned the villagers to a meeting to question them about his whereabouts.

“Suddenly he looked at me and said, ‘Oh, but this is a Jewess.’ The head of the village said, ‘Oh, no, she cooks at the school. She is a very good cook.’ Nobody said, ‘Oh, well, she is Jewish. Take her.’ He let me go. The population of the village was about two thousand. They all knew there was something ‘wrong’ with me. Any one of them could have sold me to the Germans for two hundred deutsche marks, but out of two thousand people nobody did it. Everybody in the village protected me. I had very good relations with them.”

See Ellen Land-Weber, To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), pp.204–206, 246. The villagers of Czajków near Staszów were known for the support they gave to Jews who were hiding from the Germans:

“it was something exceptional to see the humane way the villagers behaved. These simple people helped us of their own free will, and without receiving any money in return. From them we often heard some kind words, quite apart from the money, loaves of bread and boiled potatoes they gave us from time to time.”

See Gabriel Singer, “As Beasts in the Woods,” in Elhanan Ehrlich, ed., Sefer Staszow (Tel Aviv: Organization of Staszowites in Israel with the Assistance of the Staszowite Organizations in the Diaspora, 1962), p.xviii (English section). More than a dozen villagers have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles.

See Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, vols. 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, p.197; Part 2, p.670. Many villagers in Głuchów near Łańcut were also engaged in sheltering Jews and did so with the support of the entire community.

See Mariusz Kamieniecki, “Ratowali Żydów przed zagładą,” Nasz Dziennik, November 24, 2005. An illiterate Jewish woman who survived in a village near Lublin acknowledged that

“the entire village rescued me. They all wanted me to survive. And when the Germans were routed, I left the village and shall never return there.” When asked why she didn’t want to see the people who saved her life, she replied: “Because I would be beholden to the entire village. So I left and won’t return.”

See Klara Mirska, W cieniu wiecznego strachu: Wspomnienia (Paris, n.p.: 1980), p.455. The villagers of Wola Przybysławska near Lublin took turns sheltering and caring for a young Jewish girl who survived a German raid on a forest bunker. She was passed from one home to another, thus ensuring there wouldn’t be any informing.

See Shiye Goldberg (Shie Chehever), The Undefeated (Tel Aviv: H. Leivick Publishing House, 1985), pp.166–67. A Jewish woman named Berkowa (née Zelman) was rescued by Jan Łoś in the village of Żabno near Żółkiewka; although this was widely known, no one betrayed her.

The Wajc family, consisting of Mendel and Ryfka and their two young sons, Jankiel and Zygmunt, survived in the village of Różki near Żółkiewka, where they were known to the villagers.

See Chaim Zylberklang, Z Żółkiewki do Erec Israel: Przez Kotłas, Buzułuk, Ural, Polskę, Niemcy i Francję, Second revised and expanded edition (Lublin: Akko, 2004), 169, pp.171–72. A Jewish boy of seven or eight years named Abraham, who tended geese for a farmer near Sandomierz, was known to the peasants as “Żydek” (little Jew).

See Eva Feldenkreiz-Grinbal, ed., Eth Ezkera—Whenever I Remember: Memorial Book of the Jewish Community in Tzoymir (Sandomierz) (Tel Aviv: Irgun yots’e Tsoizmir be-Yisra’l: Moreshet, bet iedut ‘a. sh. Mordekhai Anilevits’, 1993), p.544. The Idasiak family took in a teenaged Jewish boy by the name of Dawid, whom they sheltered for almost two years. The neighbours were fully aware that he was Jewish and also helped him. He herded cows and played with the village children.

See the account of B. Idasiak, “Jedwabne: Dlaczego kłamstwa?,” Nasz Dziennik, February 26, 2001. A 9-year-old Jewish boy by the name of Wintluk (Wintel), who 290 had lost his mother and three fingers when shot at by Germans while escaping, was taken in by a poor Polish family in Mulawicze near Bielsk Podlaski and then cared for and protected by the entire village who took pity on him:

“The entire village, which was more aware of the danger, took responsibility for his survival. The village administrator gave warning of visits by the Germans, who were stationed in the village school. Thanks to this collective effort, the boy survived the war.”

See Alina Cała, The Image of the Jew in Polish Folk Culture (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew Univeristy, 1995), pp. 209–10. Alfreda and Bolesław Pietraszek sheltered several Jewish families consisting of 18 people on their farm in Czekanów near Sokołów Podlaski for a period of two years. Although they had to rely on the assistance of neighbors for food for their charges, no one betrayed them.

See “Odznaczenia dla Sprawiedliwych,” Internet: Two young Jewish men were passed from farmer to farmer in the village of Zdziebórz near Wyszków and were eventually accepted into the Home Army.

See Krystian Brodacki, “Musimy ich uszanować!” Tygodnik Solidarność, December 17, 2004. Yitzhak Kuniak from Kałuszyn hid among peasants for whom he was sewing secretly. He moved about in a few villages where he was fed and sheltered.

See Layb Rochman, “With Kuniak in Hiding,” in A. Shamri and Sh. Soroka, eds., Sefer Kaluszyn: Geheylikt der khorev gevorener kehile (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Kaluszyn in Israel, 1961), 437ff., translated as The Memorial Book of Kaluszyn,

Internet: A teenaged boy and his mother, who lived in a damaged, abandoned house in Drzewica where he openly played with village boys, survived the war despite his Semitic appearance.

See Sven Sonnenberg, A Two Stop Journey to Hell (Montreal: Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, 2001). A poor Jewish tailor survived the war by being passed from home to home in the village of Dąbrowica near Ulanów.

See Jolanta Chodorska, ed., Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny: Świadectwa nadesłane na apel Radia Maryja (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek, 2002), Part Two, pp.161–62. Jerzy and Irena Krępeć, who were awarded by Yad Vashem, sheltered and otherwise assisted a number of Jews on their farm in Gołąbki near Warsaw. Their son, a 14-year-old boy at the time, recalled:

“the fact that they were hiding Jews was an open secret in the village. At times, there were 20 or 30 people living on the farm. Many of the visitors were urban Jews who spoke Polish with an accent. Their children attended underground schools that moved from house to house. ‘The neighbors knew. It would have been impossible to manage this without people finding out. But everyone knew they had to keep quiet—it was a matter of life or death.’”

In fact, many of the Krępeć’s Polish neighbours helped, “if only to provide a meal.”

See Peggy Curran, “Decent people: Polish couple honored for saving Jews from Nazis,” Gazette (Montreal), December 10, 1994; Janice Arnold, “Polish widow made Righteous Gentile,” The Canadian Jewish News (Montreal edition), January 26, 1995;

Irene Tomaszewski and Tecia Werbowski, Żegota: The Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland, 1942–1945 (Montreal: Price-Patterson, 1999), pp.131–32. Ludwika Fiszer was one of three women who escaped naked from an execution pit where Jews from the Poniatowa labour camp were taken by Germans and their Ukrainian henchmen. Roaming from village to village, despite their dishevelled appearances, they received various forms of assistance, even though the peasants were clearly terrified of Ukrainian retaliation. Although most peasants were reluctant to keep them for any length of time, no one betrayed them, and several weeks later they met up with a Polish woman who took them to Warsaw.

See the account of Ludwika Fiszer in the web site Women and the Holocaust (Personal Reflections—In Ghettos/Camps), Internet: Joseph Dattner, from Bielsko in Upper Silesia, recalls:

“I survived, like my brothers, by pretending to be Christian. I took the name Poluk but I was well-known and most people knew I was Jewish.”

See Al Sokol, “Holocaust theme underscores work of artist,” Toronto Star, November 7, 1996. Several Jews were hidden in a forest bunker near the village of Leńce near Białystok. The villagers in the area knew about these Jews, but no one denounced them.

See Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewinówna, eds., Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, Second revised and expanded edition (Kraków: Znak, 1969), pp.741–42. In the village of Dziurków near Radom, a local Jew lived openly throughout the war with two Polish families under an assumed identity furnished by the Home Army, and even took seasonal employment with the Germans, without being betrayed.

See Tadeusz Kozłowski, “Spotkanie z żydowskim kolegą po 50 latach,” Gazeta (Toronto), May 12–14, 1995. In the village of Olsztyn near Częstochowa, four Jewish families passed as Polish Christians with the collusion of the villagers.

See Frank Morgens, Years at the Edge of Existence: War Memoirs, 1939–1945 (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1996), pp.97, 99. Another eyewitness writes:

“In Kielce Voivodship I know of cases where an entire village knew that a Jew or a Jewess were hiding 291 out, disguised in peasant clothes, and no one betrayed them even though they were poor Jews who not only could not pay for their silence but had to be fed, clothed and housed.”

See Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin, eds., Righteous Among Nations: How Poles Helped the Jews, 1939–1945 (London: Earlscourt Publications, 1969), p.361. A similar attitude in several villages near Łowicz is described by Joseph Szmekura.

See Gedaliah Shaiak, ed., Lowicz, A Town in Mazovia: Memorial Book (Tel Aviv: Lowitcher Landsmanshaften in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, 1966), pp.xvi–xvii. Hanna Mesz, along with her mother, spent the period September 1944 to February 1945 in the village of Korzeniówka near Grójec, working for various peasants who knew they were Jews.

See Wiktoria Śliwowska, ed., The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998), pp.120–23. A similar case near Łaskarzew is recorded in Małgorzata Niezabitowska, Remnants: The Last Jews of Poland (New York: Friendly Press, 1986), pp.118–124:

Zygmunt Srul Warszawer hid for 26 months moving from place to place among numerous villages, such as Wielki Las, in the triangle formed by Łaskarzew, Sobolew, and Wilga,

“visiting every farm because he figured that if everyone helped him no one would turn him in—to do would mean self-destruction.” No one turned him away empty handed during those 26 months: “‘No one ever refused to help you?’ ‘No, not food! In twenty-six months, not once. Sometimes they were afraid to let me into the house, or into the barn. It varied, but their food they shared.”

See Nechama Tec, Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003). Eva Safszycka, not yet 20 at the time, left the ghetto in Siedlce, obtained false identity documents with the help of a Pole, a stranger she happened to encounter, and took a position as a domestic on an estate owned by a Pole. She recalled:

“I met with so much kindness from the Poles, so many were decent and helpful that it is unbelievable. … They hid other Jews, one of them a girl of eleven.”

Ibid., p.224. Tema Rotman-Weinstock from the Lublin area presents a similar story. Dressed as a peasant, during the last stage of the war she roamed the familiar countryside moving from employer to employer, most of whom were hungry themselves and found it hard to feed her. She met a cousin who lived with his wife in a bunker in the forest, but he refused to let her join them. Once when she was on the verge of collapse, kind peasants took her into their home. After a month, afraid to keep her, they directed her to a woman who lived on a farm with her daughter in the village of Kajetanówka. She remained there until the liberation, even though the word had spread that she was Jewish.

“Fortunately, no bad consequences followed because she found a powerful protector in the local priest. He baptized Tema and defended her … ‘The priest stood up for me, arguing that conversion was a wonderful Christian deed.’”

Ibid., pp.227–29. Rina Eitani (11 years old at the time) and her mother and sister (10 years old) supported themselves by smuggling farm goods from the countryside to Warsaw. They worked separately to lessen the risk of discovery. While the Germans were ruthless toward smugglers, the natives treated them kindly:

“One day I was buying something in a store. A little girl came in, warning me, ‘The Gestapo are in the house where you live.’ Right away, the owner of the store, a woman, put me in the cellar. She wouldn’t let me go until the Gestapo left. … We stayed a lot in the villages where we bought the produce. The peasants were nice to us. They would feed us and sometimes, in exchange, we worked for them.”

Ibid., 231–32. Chava Grinberg-Brown roamed the countryside near Żyrardów (she hailed from the village of Wiskitki) for the last years of the German occupation:

“…at the end of each day, I would beg people to let me come in and sleep. I remember that once someone gave me a place to stay and offered me chicken soup … In another home, one of the women gave me medication for my skin condition. They knew that I was Jewish … it was obvious. As I wandered from one little place to another, people fed me and let me sleep in their homes or close to them; in barns, pigstys, etc.” When a Pole who recognized her wanted to turn her in, “Some peasants who realized what he was after threatened to give him a beating he would never forget. That stopped him from bothering me.” Her story continues: “I went to the place I had worked before [the war]. I stayed there for a few days. After that, I kept moving from one place to another. Some refused me work. Then a peasant offered me a more stable job. … I remained with this peasant for most of the summer. Then I left and went to another village. I went from one village to another. Even during the summer I would change places. When the Poles sent me away, I was not angry. I understood that they were afraid or had not enough food and could not share the little they had. I did not particularly feel their anti-Semitism. … Most people knew right away when I came in that I was Jewish, but they did not harm me. Only a few times did I have to run away. … When I entered a village I would go first to the head of the village, and he would send me to a peasant. Usually they were not afraid if they had a note from the head of the village. … I have no bad feelings toward the Christians. I survived the war thanks to them.”

Ibid., pp.225–27. 292 A 31-year-old barber named Zimler, who wandered with his wife in the Wiskitki area near Żyrardów in 1941, cutting hair for farmers, wrote that “the attitude of the farmers to us was extremely good.” The farmers in various villages such as Oryszew, Wyczółki and Janówka, allowed them to stay in their homes, gave them food, washed their laundry, and even invited them to a wedding.

See Marta Markowska, ed., Archiwum Ringelbluma: Dzień po dniu Zagłady (Warsaw: Ośrodek Karta, Dom Spotkań z Historią, and Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2008), 100–1. In an unspecified village outside Warsaw, “A Jew who had been starving in the woods turned up one day, asking for water. The farmer called the police, who shot the Jew on the spot. This had so outraged the village that the offender had to flee to Warsaw in fear of reprisal.”

See Natan Gross, Who Are You, Mr Grymek? (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2001), pp.248–49. A number of Jews were sheltered in another unnamed village outside Warsaw, with the knowledge of the entire village, and no one was betrayed.

See Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2 nd ed., pp.572–73. Franciszka Aronson, from a village near Mińsk Mazowiecki, wandered about many villages, including villages where she was known, before she was taken in by nuns at a convent in Ignaców where several Jews and a Gypsy woman were sheltered.

See Ewa Kurek, Dzieci żydowskie w klasztorach: Udział żeńskich zgromadzeń zakonnych w akcji ratowania dzieci żydowskich w Polsce a latach 1939–1945 (Lublin: Clio, 2001), p.116. Dr. Zofia Szymańska, who was sheltered by the Grey Ursulines in Ożarów, received material care and an abundance of spiritual comfort from many nuns and priests, without any effort on their part to convert her. News of her stay was widely known to the villagers, but no one betrayed her, not even when a German military unit was, at one point, quartered in the convent. Her 10-year-old niece, who had a very Semitic appearance, was sheltered by the Sisters of the Immaculate Virgin Mary in Szymanów, along with more than a dozen Jewish girls. All of the nuns were aware that their young charges were Jews, as were the lay staff, the parents of non-Jewish children and many villagers. None of the Christian parents removed their children from the school despite the potential danger, and in fact many of them contributed to the upkeep of the Jewish children. Dr. Szymańska wrote:

“The children were under the protection of the entire convent and village. Not one traitor was to be found among them.”

See Zofia Szymańska, Byłam tylko lekarzem… (Warsaw: Pax, 1979), pp.149–76. Another example is provided by Mary Rolicka, whose mother, one other Jewish woman and two Jewish men were sheltered by the Sisters of Charity, with the assistance of their chaplain, Rev. Albin Małysiak, in the Helcel Institute in Kraków and later at an old age home in Szczawnica. Rev. Małysiak recalled:

“All of the charges of the institute as well as the personnel (nuns and lay staff) knew that there were Jews hidden among us. It was impossible to conceal that fact, even though it was known what danger faced those who were responsible for sheltering Jews. After the passage of weeks and months many of the residents of Szczawnica learned of the Jewish boarders. No one betrayed this to the Germans, who were stationed in the immediate vicinity.”

See Mary Rolicka, “A Memoir of Survival in Poland,” Midstream, April 1988, pp.26–27. It was universally known that the young daughter of Reb Moshe of Grodzisko near Leżajsk was sheltered in an orphanage run by nuns in that village, yet no one betrayed her.

See Bertha Ferderber-Salz, And the Sun Kept Shining… (New York: Holocaust Library, 1980), p.199. Marian Małowist, who survived the war in the village of Jabłoń near Parczew, said:

“The family with whom I lived knew everything about me—in fact, two families knew. After the war it came out that more families knew, and also the chief of the navy-blue police, a Pole, a very decent person. Juliusz Kleiner was hiding in the neighbourhood; in the next village there was a Jewess; in that area many were hiding.”

See “Marian Małowist on History and Historians,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 13 (2000): p.338. Jewish partisan Gustaw Alef-Bolkowiak identifies the following villages in the Parczew-Ostrów Lubelski area as ones where

“almost the entire population was actively engaged in helping fugitives from the ghettos”:

Rudka, Jedlanka, Makoszka, Tyśmienica and Bójki. He also states that in the village of Niedźwiada near Opole Lubleskie, the foresters sheltered several Jewish families with the knowledge of the entire village.

See Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., pp.533–34. About one hundred and fifty Poles were killed in mass executions in the villages of Białka in the Parczew forest and Sterdyń near Sokołów Podlaski for extensive help given to Jews by those villages.

See Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One, pp.123–24, 228. More than a dozen villagers in Mętów near Głusk, outside of Lublin, sheltered Jews.

See Dariusz Libionka, “Polska ludność chrześcijańska wobec eksterminacji Żydów—dystrykt lubelski,” in Dariusz Libionka, ed., Akcja Reinhardt: Zagłada Żydów w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2004), p.325. Survivors from Sokoły recall:

“The village Landowa [Lendowo near Brańsk] had a good name among the Jews who were hiding in the area around Sokoly, 293 and they regarded it as a paradise. Many Jews began to stream there. … there wasn’t a house in Landowa where there weren’t three or four Jews.” (Liba Goldberg-Warobel) “Finally, we came to the village of Landowa [Lendowo]. … we knocked on the door of a house, not far from the forest. An old farmwoman brought us into the house. … I remained alone with the old farmwoman. … Over time, it became known to all of them that I was not related to her family and that I didn’t even know Polish. The farmwoman did not hesitate to admit that she had adopted me, a Jewish girl, as her daughter. … The farmwoman began to teach me Christian prayers, and on Sundays I went with her to church. … The goyim, residents of the village who knew I was Jewish, did not hand me over to the Germans.” (Tzipora Tabak-Burstein)

See Shmuel Kalisher, ed., Sokoly: B’maavak l’haim (Tel Aviv: Organization of Sokoły Emigrés in Israel, 1975), pp.188–207, translated as Sokoly: In the Fight for Life,

Internet: Another survivor writes:

“This village Lendowo became a refuge for a lot of wandering Jews, they called this village the Garden of Eden. … here they opened wide the doors without having any fear. Soon there were Jews in every house.”

See Luba Wrobel Goldberg, A Sparkle of Hope: An Autobiography (Melbourne: n.p., 1998), p.63. Rywka Chus and her husband, a grain merchant from Ostrów Mazowiecka, were protected by the villagers of Króle Duże who respected and helped them survive the war.

See Andrzej Żbikowski, U genezy Jedwabnego: Żydzi na Kresach Północno-Wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej. Wrzesień 1939–lipiec 1941 (Warsaw: Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, 2006), p.69. Klamen Wewryk describes the assistance he received from numerous peasants as he wandered from village to village in an area south of Chełm populated by decent but frightened Poles and Ukrainian Baptists. A family of five Jews hid in Teresin near Chełm:

“Everybody in the hamlet knew that this family was hiding, but nobody knew where and they didn’t want to know. Moishe told me how they were loved in that hamlet—there were decent people there.”

See Kalmen Wawryk, To Sobibor and Back: An Eyewitness Account (Montreal: The Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies, and The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, 1999), pp.66– 68, 71. A teenager, Marian Finkielman wandered the villages in the vicinity of Dubeczno where he was employed as a farmhand by various farmers:

“In 1941 and 1942 many young Jews wandered from village to village, offering their services in exchange for room and board. The peasant farmers knew who they were, and for some time took advantage of their help, just as the farmer in the village of Kozaki benefited from my situation.” In Kozaki, “Luckily, during my stay there from April through July 1942, … none of the inhabitants of the village, Ukrainians or Poles, informed of Jurek’s [a Jewish boy from Warsaw who also worked as a herdsman] or my existence. It seemed that there were no informants in this village …”

See Marian Finkielman, Out of the Ghetto: A Young Jewish Orphan Boy’s Struggle for Survival (Montreal: The Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies and The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, 2000), pp.34–36. The villagers of Kubra near Radziłów (in the Białystok District) did not betray the family of Helena Chilewicz when the Gestapo came looking for them in July 1942, and she and her mother survived the war penniless moving from village to village.

See Danuta and Aleksander Wroniszewski, “…aby żyć,” Kontakty–Łomżyński Tygodnik Społeczny, July 10, 1988. Mirla Frydrich (Szternzys), from Żółkiewka, was shot in the thigh when she jumped from a train headed for the Bełżec death camp. A Pole who happened to be driving by took her in his carriage and nursed her back to health with the help of another Pole. When Mirla returned to Żółkiewka she received assistance from a number of Poles in several nearby villages.

See Zylberklang, Z Żółkiewki do Erec Israel, pp.181–84. About 12 miles outside Lwów, Abraham Trasawucki, dressed only in rags, jumped from a death train headed for Bełżec in the middle of winter. Although he was easily identifiable as a Jew on the run, the villagers did not betray him, rather he was offered temporary shelter, food, clothing and money at two random Polish farmsteads, and given rides in the wagons of other Poles. He was sold a train ticket by an official, allowed on the train by a guard who checked his ticket, and not denounced by the passengers, even though everyone recognized him as a Jew.

See Abraham Tracy, To Speak For the Silenced (Jerusalem and New York: Devora, 2007), pp.165–72. Ryfka Goldiner, a young Jewish child, was rescued by Stanisław and Helena Wiśliński in Bełżyce near Lublin. Although the villagers were aware of her origin no one betrayed them. The local priest did not agree to formally baptize the child in the event her parents survived the war and returned for her, which they did.

See Anna Dąbrowska, ed., Światła w ciemności: Sprawiedliwi Wśród Narodów Świata. Relacje (Lublin: Ośrodek “Brama Grodzka–Teatr NN,” 2008), pp.56–61. Luba Hochlerer, ten years of age, lived openly with Józef and Bronisława Zając in the hamlet of Witoldów near Wojsławice, where she attended village school, yet no one betrayed her.

Ibid., pp.106–7. Irena Sznycer, a Jewish girl with strikingly Semitic features, who was sheltered by a Polish woman in the village 294 of Bełżec, recalled shortly after the war:

“I was well cared for by that lady and was not afraid of anything. Although the neighbours knew I was Jewish, this lady had no enemies so nothing [bad] could happen.”

See Teresa Prekerowa, “Stosunek ludności polskiej do żydowskich uciekinierów z obozów zagłady w Treblince, Sobiborze i Bełżcu w świetle relacji żydowskich i polskich,” Biuletyn Głównej Komisji Badania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu—Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, vol. 35 (1993): p.104. According to three separate testimonies of Jewish escapees from the death camps of Treblinka and Sobibór, they “walked about the villages” and were “known to everybody,” including the farm-hands and school children, without being betrayed.

Ibid., p.108. A Jew who escaped from the Treblinka death camp recalled the help he received from peasants:

“I was free. I walked to a village. … I knocked to ask for bread. The peasants looked at me in silence. ‘Bread, bread.’ They saw my red hands, torn jacket, worn-out slippers, and handed me some hard, gray crusts. A peasant woman, huddled in shawls, gave me a bowl of hot milk and a bag. We didn’t talk: my body had turned red and blue from the blows and the cold, and my clothes, everything proclaimed Jew! But they gave me bread. Thank you, Polish peasants. I slept in a stable near the animals, taking a little warm milk from the cow in the morning. My bag filled with bread.”

See Martin Gray, with Max Gallo, For Those I Loved (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, 1972), p.178. A Jew from Serock (north of Warsaw) who escaped from a German execution site badly wounded was cared for by many many villagers where he sought refuge.

See Michał Grynberg, Żydzi w rejencji ciechanowskiej 1939–1942 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1984), p.134. Izaak Zemelman of Płock recalled the assistance provided by a large number of Polish families in the nearby village of Sikórz where he and his family took shelter: Stawiski, Romanowski, Górski, Danielak, Adamski, Kłosiński, and others.

See Janusz Szczepański, Społeczność żydowska Mazowsza w XIX–XX wieku (Pułtusk: Wyższa Szkoła Humanistyczna imienia Aleksandra Gieysztora w Pułtusku, 2005), p.492. Some Jews came to realize that their guise as Christian Poles was not as foolproof as they had believed, but this had not caused them to be betrayed. One Jew who called on farmhouses in the Urzędów area, pretending to be a Christian, recalled:

“I would cross myself, bless Jesus Christ, and ask for something to eat. I had made up a story in case questions were asked. Most farmers were not talkative. Viewed suspiciously, sometimes I would be given soup or bread and asked to leave quickly: sometimes I was just told to go. Later it dawned on me that I was crossing myself incorrectly, touching my chin rather than the chest.”

See David Makow, Dangerous Luck: Memories of a Hunted Life (New York: Shengold Publishers, 2000), p.28. In 1942, Jerzy Mirewicz, a Jesuit priest, escorted a Jewish fugitive by train from Biłgoraj to Milanówek near Warsaw, so that he could join members of his family who were being hidden by a Christian family. Even though the priest had permission to travel, officials were constantly checking the papers of passengers. When the train reached Dęblin, a policeman came into the car and demanded to know if his companion was a Jew. Fortunately for the priest and the fugitive, the whole compartment came to their rescue by insisting that priest was escorting a “lunatic” to a hospital asylum.

See Vincent A. Lapomarda, The Jesuits and the Third Reich (Lewiston/Queenston and Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), p.130. A Jewish lawyer was able to continue his practice in Mielec, in defiance of a Nazi ban, with the collusion of the town’s entire legal profession, until he was denounced by a fellow Jew, first to the Gestapo and then to the Justice Department.

See Mark Verstandig, I Rest My Case (Melbourne: Saga Press, 1995), pp. viii, 109–13, 130–32. In the village of Goszcza near Miechów, everyone was aware that Jews, some of them with a marked Semitic appearance, were being sheltered yet no one betrayed them. See Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., pp.643–44. Similar reports come from the villages of Gałuszowice and Chrząstów near Mielec.

See Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., pp.721–22. In Majdan Niepryski, several families sheltered a young Jewish girl thrown from a train headed for Bełżec.

See Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., pp.709–710. A teenage boy with a Semitic appearance, the son of a Jewish beggar woman, lived openly in the village of Głowaczowa near Dębica, with the Polish farmer who had taken him in, without being betrayed.

See Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, 2nd ed., p.640. In Grodzisk, a small community just outside Warsaw, an elderly Jewish teacher married to a Polish Catholic woman was able to live openly with his wife throughout the war: “Everybody knew my uncle was Jewish but no one reported him to the Gestapo.” This family took in other Jews, also without incident.

See Sylvia Rothchild, ed., Voices from the Holocaust (New York: Nal Books/New American Library, 1981), p.225. A foundry in Wołomin, outside of Warsaw, engaged a Jew whose appearance and manner of speaking readily gave him away, yet no one betrayed him.

See Antoni Marianowicz, Życie surowo wzbronione (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1995), pp.159–60; Antoni Marianowicz, Life Strictly Forbidden (London: 295 Vallentine Mitchell, 2004). The most frequent for of assistance was, however, casual assistance for short periods of time offered by many fearful but courageous Poles whose names will never be remembered and whose deeds are largely forgotten. One Jew from Zabłudów has made an effort to recall the numerous Poles who helped him to survive the German occupation in the Białystok District:

“We heard the shooting and immediately went to the path leading to the village we knew very well. Some farmers gave us flour, barley, and butter … Early in the morning they took us through the path where we could go to Bialystok … [The Nazis] kept hitting me until I fainted. … I dragged myself to the road; some Christians that stood there and saw me started crying. … Other [Jewish families] went through back ways to the village to get some food. I managed to get a job from Vintzig Volnetzvick, the Christian … His son-in-law, Chashick [Czesiek], promised me that if I stayed with him I wouldn’t have to work for the Germans … One day Vinchick, the Christian that I lived with drove me to Bialystok … Zabludow’s Jewish women went to the Christian’s field to get some potatoes for the winter. … We hid in Vinchik Velosoviches barn deep in the hay … The helpful Christian’s wife came to the barn begging me to leave. “There were whispers in the city that you were not seen among the people in the wagons, saying that you are probably hiding.” She asked that I pity her, because if I would be caught her family will be held responsible, and they will be punished severely. I was able to convince her to let me stay until Sunday. … I came to Novosad [Nowosady] village, I knew a good Christian there. My appearance scared him, and immediately he told me about the order that they have to bring any Jews without delay to the Nazi headquarters. “I have to be very careful,” he said. He gave me some food and took me to a place behind the barn where I could escape. When evening came I arrived at a new village. I had a friend there … He too took me in courteously and brought me food, but refused to let me stay. Fearfully he gave me food quickly and begged me to leave, I continued my wandering … later on I had the opportunity to find shelter in an agriculture farm of Christian people I knew. I left the place when they told me that the Germans were hunting the area and were planning to sleep in their house. I wandered all night through fields and forests until I got to Baranke [Baranki] village, where my father used to live. A farmer, a good acquaintance that we knew from the past took me in nicely. I shaved and bathed; they even provided me with clean clothes. I hid in the side section of the house where no one lived. … I stayed in the forest until the evening, and then I came back to the Christians. The Germans were not in the village anymore, but the farmer didn’t let me stay and take the risk. I wandered again, and soon I got to another agriculture farm and stayed there a couple of days. The farmer didn’t allow for me to stay with him; he was afraid the children might talk and risk giving me away. From there I moved to a farm near Araje. … The farm’s owners gave me shelter. I knew his son from the old days where we were both captured by the Germans. For a while I was able to rest. When the Christians’ holiday came I took part in the ceremonies, and I acted like them. … In the forests there were a lot of Russian partisans … When I realized that the Nazis raided around the farm where I was staying I decided to escape. … I got to a big village by the name of Zavick [Zawyki]. I slipped away secretly to the barn and laid there until the morning. The barn’s owner found me, but he was a good man who was ready to help. He took me to his house, fed me, and helped me hide. It was a secret basement under the dining room. … the Nazis searched the village and came to the farmer’s house. … They were looking for Jews and partisans. … I stayed in the hiding place for a few days. I was asked to leave by his wife who had started to cry, saying that I was putting her family in danger. “I’m a mother of six children,” she said. “If they’ll find out that I am hiding you they will kill us. I’ll give you food and drink and be on your way. Have pity on us, and save your soul.” I promised that I would leave that night. … I got to the previous farm from which I had escaped. The frightened Christian told me that the night I escaped the Nazis searched the house and barn. … It was dangerous to stay in the village, where to go? I decided to go toward Bialystok. On the way I stopped at different villages. … The Christian who told me the news was ready to leave the next morning with his wagon to bring food to Bialystok. I asked him to take me with him in his wagon. His wife gave me bread and fat. We left early in the morning so that nobody would see me. … When we approached Bialystok the farmer got scared and asked me to get off the wagon. I got off, raised my collar and continued by foot …”

See the account of Phinia Korovski in Nechama Shmueli-Schmusch, ed., Zabludow: Dapim mi-tokh yisker-bukh (Tel Aviv: The Zabludow Community in Israel, 1987), an English translation of which is posted on the Internet.

Other examples of communal assistance by Poles in central Poland are recorded in Stanisław Wroński and Maria Zwolakowa, Polacy Żydzi 1939–1945 (Warsaw: Książka i Wiedza, 1971), p.269 (Niedźwiada near Opole Lubleskie), p.307 (an entire street in the city of Przemyśl was aware of a Jewish hideout), p.322 (Runów near Grójec), p.343 (Gorzyce near Dąbrowa 296 Tarnowska), p.349 (Przydonica, Ubiad, Klimkówka, Jelna, Słowikowa, and Librantowa), p.353 (Rakszawa)

See Isaac Kowalski, Anthology on Armed Jewish Resistance, 1939–1945, vol. 3 (Brooklyn, New York: Jewish Combatants Publishers House, 1986), p.308 (two villages near Parczew)

See Thomas Toivi Blatt, From the Ashes of Sobibor: A Story of Survival (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997), pp.207ff. (Mchy near Krasnystaw)

See Diane Armstrong, Mosaic: A Chronicle of Five Generations (Milsons Point, New South Wales: Random House, 1998), pp.576–81 (Piszczac near Biała Podlaska)

See Roman Soszyński, Piszczac: Miasto ongiś królewskie (N.p., n.p., 1993), p.95 (Kolonia Dworska near Piszczac), p.97 (Piszczac)

Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, vols. 4 and 5: Poland, Part 1, p.95 (villages near Lublin), p.317 (villages near Lublin), p.326 (villages near Lublin), pp.343–44 (villages near Skierniewice), p.452 (Różki near Krasnystaw), Part 2, p.647 (villages near Zamość), p.673 (villages near Radzymin), p.692 (villages near Radzymin), p.927 (villages near Otwock).

Public executions of Polish rescuers did not bring rescue activity to a hault. See, for example, Chodorska, Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny, Part One, p.21 (Mariampol). Even in large cities like Warsaw, Jews passing as Christians have acknowledged that they unexpectedly ran into many Poles whom they knew without being betrayed:

“I often met people I knew who either looked at me without greeting me, or greeted me with open sympathy. … Occasionally, I did not even realize that the person I met knew me.”

See Stefan Chaskielewicz, Ukrywałem się w Warszawie: Styczeń 1943–styczeń 1945 (Kraków: Znak, 1988), pp.35– 36. Marcus David Leuchter, who lived in “Aryan” Warsaw for more than two years, attested:

“Having escaped from the Ghetto [in Kraków], I assumed a Polish gentile identity. While everybody around me knew, or at least suspected, that I was a Jew, nobody betrayed me.”

 See his “Reflections on the Holocaust,” The Sarmatian Review (Houston, Texas), vol. 20, no. 3 (September 2000).

Henryk Grabowski, the famed liaison officer between the Polish and Jewish underground who smuggled scores of Jews out of the Warsaw ghetto, often used his small, crowded home in Warsaw to hide Jews, a fact widely known among the neighbours.

See Barbara Stanisławczyk, Czterdzieści twardych (Warsaw: ABC, 1997), p.91. An entire apartment building in the working-class district of Mokotów in Warsaw was aware that an extended Jewish family, some of them Semitic-looking and speaking Polish poorly, resided in their midst.

See Marek Halter, “Tzedek,” Wprost, June 13, 1993.

Feliks Tych, a historian at the Jewish Historical Museum in Warsaw, who survived the war as a teenager, recalls:

“I lived with my adopted family for some time until liberation in the Warsaw suburb of Miedzeszyn. There the neighbours could not have not known that in our house several Jews were sheltered. And nothing happened to any of them. No one was denounced.”

See “O ukrywaniu się po ‘aryjskiej stronie’: Z profesorem Feliksem Tychem rozmawia Barbara Engelking,” in Zagłada Żydów: Studia i materiały (Warsaw: Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów IFiS PAN, 2005), vol. 1, p.234. A Jewish woman who had to find new lodgings in Warsaw for herself and a friend with a Jewish appearance recalled:

“Maria’s physician paid a house call, bringing some medication and an injection. It was only one of several visits for which he never asked payment or information of any kind. … We combed the neighborhood, asking in the storefronts if there might be a room to let. We gave many in those streets occasion to wonder about the two forlorn young women, one with a black-and-blue face. But no one denounced us a Jews or escapees from the ghetto. In fact, one morning the owner of a barber shop on Rakowiecka Street offered Maria his shop to stay in. All he asked was that she come late and leave early, before his help arrived.”

See Blanca Rosenberg, To Tell at Last: Survival under False Identity, 1941–45 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), p.122. Employees of the Warsaw Department of Social Services were heavily involved in the rescue of Jewish children, placing hundreds of them in Catholic convents.

“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 signalled to the nun that she and the boy should remain.”

See “Traktowałem to jako obowiązek chrześcijański i polski” (an interview with Jan Dobraczyński), Słowo–Dziennik Katolicki, Warszawa, no. 67 (1993). A Jewish woman who was being pursued by a blackmailer in Warsaw turned to the conductor of the streetcar she had boarded with a plea, “‘Sir, that man is an extortionist and he’s persecuting me.’ Without hesitating, the conductor went over to the intruder and slapped him twice across the face.” In the ensuing confusion, she managed to jump off.

See Gross, Who Are You Mr Grymek?, pp.249–50. A network of Poles in the Warsaw suburb of Żoliborz was engaged in finding rooms among trusted for Jews passing as Poles.

See Marian Turski, ed., Losy żydowskie: Świadectwo żywych, vol. 2 (Warsaw: Stowarzyszenie Żydów Kombatantów 297 i Poszkodowanych w II Wojnie Światowej, 1999), vol. 2, p.150. As another Jew remarked,

“in the small houses in Warsaw’s Żoliborz district inhabited mostly by the Polish intelligentsia there were hidden many Jews who had escaped from the ghetto. I was in such a home which belonged to a known prewar Endek [nationalist]. Having learned that he was sheltering two Jewesses I asked with surprise: ‘You who before the war were an anti-Semite are now harbouring Jews in his home???’ He replied: ‘We have a common enemy and I am fighting in my way. They are Polish citizens and I have to help them.”

See Zdzisław Przygoda, Niezwykłe przygody w zwyczajnym życiu (Warszawa: Ypsylon, 1994), p.49. Assistance by Polish villagers in Eastern Galicia and in Volhynia was also plentiful. Jewish historians Tatiana Berenstein and Adam Rutkowski list several examples of help extended by entire rural communities. In Kretówka, in Tarnopol voivodship, “several dozen Jews were able to move about almost freely because the whole village shielded them from the Nazis.”

In Woronówka near Ludwipol, Volhynia,

“the collusion of the peasants was cemented by blood ties: every villager was either a Kuriata or a Torgoń. The peasants in Kościejów, in the vicinity of which ran the railway line leading to the extermination camp at Bełżec, tended to Jews who jumped out of the ‘death trains.’ They not only brought them food and clothing but also sent word to Jews in the nearby village of Kulików to come and fetch the heavily injured immediately; the rest were taken by the peasants themselves to Kulików under cover of darkness. In Bar [near Gródek Jagielloński] villagers supplied a group of 18 Jews hiding in the neighbouring woods with food; they came into the village at night for their provisions and thanks to this help were able to hold out until the area was liberated by the Soviet Army.”

See Berenstein and Rutkowski, Assistance to the Jews in Poland 1939–1945, pp.27, 45–46; Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, p.444. One of those rescued praises the “noble attitude of the entire population, without exception, of the Polish village of Bar” (near Gródek Jagielloński) who helped more than twenty people hiding in nearby forests to survive.

See Gerszon Taffet, Zagłada Żydów żółkiewskich (Łódź: Centralna Żydowska Komisja Historyczna, 1946), p.62; Bartoszewski and Lewin, Righteous Among Nations, p.444. Almost every Polish family in the hamlet of Zawołocze near Ludwipol, in Volhynia, sheltered or helped Jews. None of the Jews were betrayed.

See Chodorska, Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny, Part Two, pp.77–78. Jews hiding in the forests in the vicinity of Berezne (Bereźne) near Kostopol, Volhynia, received extensive assistance from Polish villagers and partisans.

See the account of Seweryn Dobroszklanka, Jewish Historical Institute (Warsaw) archive, record group 301, testimony 1222; Wroński and Zwolakowa, Polacy Żydzi 1939–1945, pp.324–25. Polish villages in the vicinity of Korzec, Volhynia, helped Jews hiding in the forests.

See Nyuma Anapolsky, “We survived thanks to the kind people—Ukrainians and Poles,’ in Boris Zabarko, ed., Holocaust in the Ukraine (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2005), pp.10–11. A report about the village of Stara Huta near Szumsk, in Volhynia, states:

“The people of a small Polish village named Stara Hota [sic] welcomed a group of Jews to stay and hide in their homes. The Ukrainians found out about the Jewish presence in the village. They informed the Germans right away. The Poles had managed to help the Jews run into the fields, but they were all caught and killed during their escape.”

See Ruth Sztejnman Halperin, “The Last Days of Shumsk,” in H. Rabin, ed., Szumsk: Memorial Book of the Martyrs of Szumsk, Internet: translation of Shumsk: Sefer zikaron le-kedoshei Shumsk (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Szumsk in Israel, 1968), pp.29ff. Dawid Sasower recalls:

“near Zaturne [near Łuck], there was a Polish village in which about twenty Jews lived. In the daytime they worked in the fields and at night the Poles gave them rifles so that they could protect themselves from the banderovtsy [Ukrainian nationalist partisans].”

See Rima Dulkinienė and Kerry Keys, eds., Su adata širdyje: Getų ir koncentracijos stovyklų kalinių atsiminimai; With a Needle in the Heart: Memoirs of Former Prisoners of Ghettos and Concentraion Camps (Vilnius: Garnelis and Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, 2003), pp.319–20. Regarding conditions in Kosów near Kołomyja, Bronia Beker states:

“My aunt didn’t have to hide. She was so well loved and respected by all because she always helped the poorest of the poor, that while she was walking around freely, living among the ruins nobody gave her away. … The people in the town also made sure she had food at all times.” See her account in “Women of Valor: Partisans and Resistance Fighters,”

www.interlog.com/~mighty/personal/bronia.htm, originally published in the Journal of the Center for Holocaust Studies, vol. 6, no. 4 (spring 1990). Samuel Eisen, a teenager who survived in the forest near Tłuste, recalled:

“We had no money, but in the village nearby lived a lot of Poles who knew us and were good to us. They were afraid to hide us but they gave us food.”

See Maria Hochberg-Mariańska and Noe Grüss, eds., The Children Accuse (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1996), p.206. Maria Fischer Zahn, who hid near Zborów, stated: 298

“Everybody in the neighborhood knew we were hiding, but nobody told the Germans. The people in Jezierna were good people. They didn’t give us away. They helped us with food. We couldn’t have survived without them.”

See Carole Garbuny Vogel, We Shall Not Forget! Memories of the Holocaust, Second edition (Lexington, Massachusetts: Temple Isaiah, 1995), p.280, and also p.276. Shlomo Berger, who passed as a Pole in a small town near Czortków, working for Tadeusz Duchowski, the Polish director of a company, recalled:

“I rented a room in Niźniów with one of the Polish workers. I learned from him that the man who was in charge of the office was the son of a judge who was a Jew who had converted to Catholicism. The son was probably raised as a Christian, but by German criteria he was still Jewish. The people at the office knew who he was, but nobody said anything.”

See Ronald J. Berger, Constructing a Collective Memory of the Holocaust: A Life History of Two Brothers’ Survival (Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1995), p.55. A number of Jews were sheltered by Polish villagers in Ułaszkowce near Czortków.

See Abraham Morgenstern, Chortkov Remembered: The Annihilation of a Jewish Community (Dumont, New Jersey: n.p., 1990), pp.83–84, 98. Markus Lecker, who joined up with a large group of Jews living in a forest bunker in the vicinity of Borszczów, describes their relations with a Polish settlement that provided them with food:

“The colony … consisted of six houses with six Polish families living there. … These 6 Polish families were the main support for us Jewish outcasts who lived in the bunker. We used to go to the Polish colony at night and exchange whatever we had left for food … But I must say these Polish colonists did supply us with some food … even if we didn’t have what to give them in return …”

See Marcus Lecker, I Remember: Odyssey of a Jewish Teenager in Eastern Europe (Montreal: The Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies, and The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies, 1999), p.56. Scores of Jews were helped by the Polish villagers of Hanaczów, about 40 km east of Lwów.

See Jerzy Węgierski, W lwowskiej Armii Krajowej (Warsaw: Pax, 1989), pp.77–78; Eliyahu Yones, Smoke in the Sand: The Jews of Lvov in the War Years 1939–1944 (Jerusalem and New York: Gefen, 2004), pp.227–28; Chodorska, Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny, Part Two, pp.204–207; Gutman and Bender, The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations, vol. 5: Poland, Part 2, pp.886–87.

Other examples of communal assistance by Poles are recorded in the following publications: Abraham Weissbord, Death of a Shtetl, Internet:  translation of Es shtarbt a shtetl: Megiles Skalat (Munich: Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone of Germany, 1948), p.65 (Ostra Mogiła near Skałat: “The people in this village were friendly to the Jews and provided them with whatever they could. … Twenty-nine Jews survived in Ostra-Mogila.”)

Wroński and Zwolakowa, Polacy Żydzi 1939–1945, p.263 (Konińsk near Sarny), p.265 (Pańska Dolina near Dubno), p.266 (Świnarzyn near Dominopol), p.307 (an entire street in the city of Przemyśl was aware of a Jewish hideout), pp.324–25 (in the vicinity of Bereźne near Kostopol), p.327 (Woronówka near Ludwipol), pp.361 and 389 (Obórki), p.386 (Wólka Kotowska near Łuck), p.392 (Przebraże)

Edward Prus, Holocaust po banderowsku: Czy Żydzi byli w UPA? (Wrocław: Nortom, 1995), p.82 (Zdołbunów), p.144 (Adamy), p.167 (Huta Brodzka)

Bronisław Szeremeta, “Zagłada wsi Adamy—rok 1943,” Semper Fidelis (Wrocław), no. 1 (14), 1993: p.19 (Adamy)

Asher Tarmon, ed., Memorial Book: The Jewish Communities of Manyevitz, Horodok, Lishnivka, Troyanuvka, Povursk, and Kolki (Wolyn Region) [Tel-Aviv: Organization of Survivors of Manyevitz, Horodok, Lishnivka, Troyanuvka, Povursk, Kolki and Surroundings Living in Israel and Overseas, 2004], pp.39–40, 67– 68, 74, 85 (Konińsk near Sarny)

E. Leoni, ed. Rokitno (Volin) ve-ha-sevivah: Sefer edut ve-zikaron (Tel Aviv: Former Residents of Rokitno in Israel, 1967), translated as Rokitno-Wolyn and Surroundings: Memorial Book and Testimony, Internet: pp.293ff. (Blizhov— “I must say that these peasants treated us fairly well. In the area of Blizhov there were no attacks or denunciations of Jews.”); pp.317ff. (Netreba and Okopy near Kisorycze), pp.327ff. (Netreba), pp.334ff. (Netreba, Borowskie Budki, and Okopy—

“in the village of Netrebe [sic], tens of Jews from Rokitno and the area found shelter. They were helped by the villagers who not only did not harm them but also hid them near the village during the day. At night they took them to their homes. Many Jews survived there until the liberation by the Red Army. In the Polish village of Budki some Jews survived ... In the same area, in the Polish village of Okopi [sic], some tens of Jews were saved thanks to two special individuals… the Catholic priest [Rev. Ludwik Wrodarczyk] and the village teacher. The priest used to give sermons to his followers telling them not to be involved in the extermination of Jews. He asked them to help the Jews to survive … The village teacher also had compassion for the unfortunate Jews. Their suffering touched her heart and she helped in any way possible. She was killed by a Ukrainian gang 299 on the way from the village of Rokitno where she was helping a Jewish family. The priest was burned alive in his church.”),

pp.342ff. (Netreba), p.351 (“in a Polish village near Snodovich [Snodowicze], we found a few Jewish families working in the houses and fields of the villagers”)

Yehuda Bauer, “Sarny and Rokitno in the Holocaust: A Case Study of Two Townships in Wolyn (Volhynia),”

Steven T. Katz, ed., The Shtetl: New Evaluations (New York and London: New York University Press, 2007), 273 (Okopy, Budki Borowskie, Dołhań, and Netreba)

Denise Nevo and Mira Berger, eds., We Remember: Testimonies of Twenty-four Members of Kibbutz Megiddo who Survived the Holocaust (New York: Shengold, 1994), p.209 (Huta Sopaczewska near Sarny), 257 (Polish villages near the village of Berezołupy near Rożyszcze:

“When I arrived in the Polish village, someone told me that five kilometers from there, here was another Polish village where I might find my brother … I went there and asked the farmers about him. They told me where to go, and I found him in a forest, with a group of six other Jews. … They too had spent the winter in the forest, and at night they had brought potatoes and bread from the Polish village. … I was accepted by an older couple … My brother also got a job with another Polish farmer, about four kilometers from the village where I was. … I stayed with that farmer for almost a year, until the Russians freed our area in April 1944.”)

Yitzhak Ganuz, ed., Our Town Stepan, Internet: , translation of Ayaratenu Stepan (Tel Aviv: Stepan Society, 1977), pp.213ff. (Karaczun near Kostopol, where both the Polish underground and Polish villagers were extremely helpful to Jews who hid in the forest), 287 (Huta Stepańska); Stanisław Siekierski, ed., Żyli wśród nas…: Wspomnienia Polaków i Żydów nadesłane na konkurs pamięci polsko-żydowskiej o nagrodę imienia Dawida Ben Guriona (Płońsk: Zarząd Miasta Płońsk, Miejskie Centrum Kultury w Płońsku, and Towarzystwo Miłośników Ziemi Płońskiej, 2001), p.121 (Karaczun near Kostpol)

Sonya Tesler-Gyraph, “Memories from the Nazi Period,” in Yosef Kariv, ed., Horchiv Memorial Book (Tel Aviv: Horchiv Committee in Israel, 1966), p.63 (a village near Horochów)

Donald L. Niewyk ed., Fresh Wounds: Early Narratives of Holocaust Survival (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1998), p.164 (Huta Olejska near Lwów)

Isaiah Trunk, Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution: Collective and Individual Behavior in Extremis (New York: Stein and Day, 1979), pp.250–52 (Kurdybań Warkowicki, Bortnica, Pańska Dolina, Żeniówka, all in Volhynia)

Account of Mordechai Tennenbaum in Israel Zinman, ed., Memorial for Greater Mezirich: In Construction and Destruction (Haifa: Organization of Meziritsh Association, 1999), Internet: (a Polish village in the vicinity of Międzyrzec near Równe, Volhynia)

Daniel Kac, Koncert grany żywym (Warsaw: Tu, 1998), p.183 (Przebraże and Huta Stepańska, in Volhynia); Andrzej Żbikowski, ed., Polacy i Żydzi pod okupacją niemiecką 1939–1945: Studia i materiały (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowek—Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2006), p.309 (a Polish settlement near Aleksandria in Volhynia where all the villagers knew about and assisted the sisters Cypa and Rywa Szpanberg)

Stepan Makarczuk, “Straty ludności w Galicji Wschodniej w latach II wojny światowej (1939–1945),” in Polska–Ukraina: Trudne pytania, vol. 6 (Warsaw: Światowy Związek Żołnierzy Armii Krajowej, Związek Ukraińców w Polsce, and Karta, 2000), p.240 (Rakowiec and Hołosko Wielkie, both near Lwów)

“Letter of Chayeh Kanner,” Khurbn Glinyane (New York: New York: Emergency Relief Committee for Gliniany and Vicinity, 1946), translated as The Tragic End of Our Gliniany, Internet: (“The few Jews of Gliniany who saved their lives were hiding in the woods near Zeniow [Żeniów]. The Polish peasants of that village supplied their food.”)

Reuben Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Poland (with a historical survey of the Jew as fighter and soldier in the Diaspora) (London: Paul Elek, 1974), pp.450–53 (Dzwonica, Huta Pieniacka, Huta Werchobuska near Złoczów)

Shlomo Blond, et al., eds., Memorial Book of Tlumacz: The Life and Destruction of a Jewish Community (Tel Aviv: Tlumacz Societies in Israel and the U.S.A., 1976), column clxxiv (Horyhlady or Horyglady near Tłumacz, and Wojciechówka near Skałat)

Alicia Appleman Jurman, Alicia: My Story (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp.149, 157 (Horyhlady or Horyglady near Tłumacz, and Wojciechówka near Buczacz)

Etunia Bauer Katz, Our Tomorrows Never Came (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000), pp.98–99 (Matuszówka near Buczacz)

Elżbieta Isakiewicz, Harmonica: Jews Relate How Poles Saved Them from the Holocaust (Warsaw: Polska Agencja Informacyjna, 2001), pp.106–108 (Dźwinogród near Buczacz)

Yehuda Bauer, “Buczacz and Krzemieniec: The Story of Two Towns During the Holocaust,” in Yad Vashem Studies, vol. 33 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, The Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, 2005), p.298 (Nowosiółka Koropiecka near Buczacz)

David Ravid (Shmukler), ed., The Cieszanow Memorial book (Mahwah, New Jersey: Jacob Solomon Berger, 2006), pp.190–91 300 (Wojciechówka near Buczacz); account of Rose (Raisel) Metzak, posted at (Hucisko Olejskie near Złoczów— “It is a Polish village … The gentiles were also very kind. We were there. We slept in barns. We slept here a day, here a day, here a night.”)

Hersch Altman, One the Fields of Loneliness (New York and Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and The Holocaust Survivors’ Memors Project, 2006), 139ff. (the Polish village of Hucisko near Brzeżany, a Home Army base). Spontaneous assistance was much more frequent than is often assumed, as illustrated by the following examples. In October 1942, after the liquidation of the ghetto in Zdołbunów, the Germans and Ukrainian militiamen combed the town to locate any signs of survivors:

“[Fritz] Germ would point to a certain house, always one occupied by Polish citizens, and the guards would crash through the door or a window, emerging with a family and the Jews whom they had hidden. The fate was the same for the rescuers as it was for the Jews. This occurred at four or five different homes.”

See Douglas K. Huneke, The Moses of Rovno: The Stirring Story of Fritz Graebe, a German Christian Who Risked His Life to Lead Hundreds of Jews to Safety During the Holocaust (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1985), p.84.

Irene Gut Opdyke, a Polish rescuer recalled:

“There was a priest in Janówka [near Tarnopol]. He knew about the Jews’ escape—many of the Polish people knew about it. … Many people brought food and other things—not right to the forest, but to the edge—from the village. The priest could not say directly ‘help the Jews,’ but he would say in church, ‘not one of you should take the blood of your brother.’ … During the next couple of weeks there were posters on every street corner saying, ‘This is a Jew-free town, and if any one should help an escaped Jew, the sentence is death.’”

See Carol Rittner and Sondra Myers, eds., The Courage to Care: Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (New York: New York University Press, 1986), pp.47–48. The warning soon became a terrifying reality when the town square in Tarnopol

“was choked with a milling, bewildered crowd. SS men abruptly pushed me into the middle of the square, just as they had the others, with a command not to leave. A scaffold had been erected in the center of the square, and what appeared to be two separate families were slowly escorted through the crowd to the block. A Polish couple, holding two small children, were brought up first, followed by a Jewish couple with one child, all three wearing the yellow Star of David. Both groups were lined up in front of dangling nooses. They were going to hang the children as well! Why didn’t somebody do something? What could be done? Finally, their ‘crimes’ were announced—the Polish family had been caught harboring the Jewish family! Thus, we were forced to witness the punishment for helping or befriending a Jew.”

See Irene Gut Opdyke with Jeffrey M. Elliot, Into the Flames: The Life Story of a Righteous Gentile (San Bernardino, California: The Borgo Press, 1992), p.139. Public executions of Poles who had helped Jews became commonplace in an effort to instil fear into the population.

See Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One, Entry 482 (Stryj). About twenty residents of Berecz, in Volhynia, were killed during a pacification of that Polish settlement by Ukrainian police in November 1942 for assisting Jews who had escaped from the ghetto in Powursk (Powórsk).

See Władyslaw Siemaszko and Ewa Siemaszko, Ludobójstwo dokonane przez nacjonalistów ukraińskich na ludności polskiej Wołynia, 1939–1945 (Warsaw: von borowiecky, 2000), vol. 1, p.363. In Huta Werchobuska or Werchobudzka (near Złoczów) and Huta Pieniacka (near Brody), the Polish villagers were simply annihilated, and their homes and farmsteads burned down in German pacifications (the primary perpetrators were the SS Galizien forces) brought on in part by longstanding assistance provided to Jews.

See Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One, pp.154–55

Tsvi Weigler, “Two Polish Villages Razed for Extending Help to Jews,” Yad Washem Bulletin, no. 1 (April 1957): pp.19–20

Ainsztein, Jewish Resistance in Nazi-Occupied Eastern Europe, pp.450–53; Na Rubieży (Wrocław), no. 10 (1994): pp.10–11 (Huta Werchodudzka)

Na Rubieży, no. 12 (1995): pp.7–20 (Huta Pieniacka); Na Rubieży, no. 54 (2001): pp.18–29. Feiwel Auerbach, a Jew from Sasów, made the following deposition shortly after the war:

“There were 30 of us [Jews] in the forest. We hid in Huta Werchobuska and Huta Pieniacka. The Polish inhabitants of those villages helped us. The peasants were very poor and were themselves hungry but they shared with us their last bits of food. We stayed there from July 1943 until March 1944. Thanks to them we are alive. When there were manhunts, the village reeve warned us. Once 500 Germans encircled the forest, but since they were afraid to enter deep into the forest they set their dogs on us. We were saved because our Polish friends warned us of the impending danger. Because of a denunciation [by the Ukrainian police] all of the villagers of Huta Pieniacka and Huta Werchobuska were killed. Some of them were burned alive in a barn. The village was burned to the ground.”

Auerbach’s account can be found in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (document no. 1200). In Polesie (Polesia), a largely Belorussian area, Kopel Kolpanitzky describes the helpfulness of the 301 residents of Zahorie [Zahorze], a small village of Polish Catholics three kilometers from Łachwa, which the Germans later burned to the ground.

See Kopel Kolpanitzky, Sentenced To Life: The Story of a Survivor of the Lahwah Ghetto (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2007), pp.89–96.

Shulamit Zabinska, a teenage girl who was sheltered by Poles in the Wilno countryside, recalled that many Poles brought food to the ghetto, “otherwise everyone would have starved to death. It was dangerous, and people were shot for this.” After escaping from the ghetto, she was taken in by Weronika (“Wercia”) Stankiewicz and her mother, passing as Wercia’s niece. Although the villagers knew she was Jewish no one betrayed her.

See Irene Tomaszewski and Tecia Werbowski, Zegota: The Rescue of Jews in Wartime Poland (Montreal: Price-Patterson, 1994), pp.117– 18; and the revised edition Żegota: The Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland, 1942–1945 (Montreal: Price-Paterson, 1999), p.110. Similarly, Estera Bielicka was taken in by the Myślicki family in Matejkany where she lived openly. Although the villagers knew about her Jewish origin, no one betrayed her.

See Wiktor Noskowski, “Czy Yaffa Eliach przeprosi Polaków?” Myśl Polska (Warsaw), July 20–27, 1997. The neighbours of a Polish family in Białozoryszki near Wilno were aware that that family was sheltering a Jewish boy.

See Chodorska, Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny, Part One, pp.104–109. Pola Wawer, a doctor from Wilno, recalled the help she and her parents received from all of the inhabitants in the hamlet of Zameczek who consisted of the families of five cousins.

See Pola Wawer, Poza gettem i obozem (Warsaw: Volumen, 1993), p.71. Another Jew from the Wilno region recalled the assistance he and his father received from the villagers of Powiłańce on a number of occasions:

“The village was composed of some forty houses strung out side by side on a single street. Each house was inhabited by Poles, but my father knew many of them and had done favours for them in the past. At each house, we knocked and explained our plight. Only a few turned us down … Very soon our wagon was filled with butter and eggs and flour and fresh vegetables, and my father and I wept at their kindness and at the realization that we had been reduced to beggars. The people of Powielancy were so generous … Now we sent out a food gathering group each evening to beg in the neighbouring villages where most of the people felt kindly toward us. One of the villages in this area was Powielancy whose people had filled our cart with food when father and I had come from the Radun [Raduń] ghetto. They helped us again most willingly for they sympathized with our plight.”

See Leon Kahn (as told to Marjorie Morris), No Time To Mourn: A True Story of a Jewish Partisan Fighter (Vancouver: Laurelton Press, 1978), pp.55, 124. Meir Stoler, who escaped the German massacre of Jews in Raduń on May 10, 1942, managed to reach the tiny Polish hamlet of Mizhantz [Mieżańce], where the villagers took him in and gave him food.

See Martin Gilbert, The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust (Toronto: Key Porter, 2003), p.19. The village of Mieżańce is mentioned in other accounts as friendly to the Jews.

See the testimony of Beniamin Rogowski, March 14, 1965, Yad Vashem Archives, 03/2820. Murray Berger of Wsielub near Nowogródek attests to receiving extensive help from numerous villagers from December 1941, when he left the ghetto, until he joined up with the Bielski unit the following year. (His account is in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives.) Sarah Fishkin of Rubieżewicze left a diary attesting to repeated acts of kindness by villagers in that area.

See Anna Eilenberg-Eibeshitz, Remember! A Collection of Testimonies (Haifa: H. Eibeshitz Institute for Holocaust Studies, 1999), pp.285–306. The Krepski family of Helenów near Stołpce sheltered Shimon Kantorowicz for two years. Even though almost the entire village was aware of this, no one betrayed them. Information from Yad Vashem, case no. 5844. In Poznań, in Western Poland, a stronghold of the National Democratic (Endek) Party, relations with the Jews imprisoned in the Stadion labour camp in 1941–1943 were amicable. Samuel Bronowski, who appeared as a witness in the trial of Arthur Greiser, Gauleiter of the socalled Wartheland, made the following deposition before the Supreme National Tribunal:

“The only help possible was aid in kind by supplying food. In the camp we received 200 grams of bread and one litre of turnip soup per day. Obviously, those who had no help from outside were bound to die within a short time. A committee was formed in Poznań for the collection of food. This was no easy matter since everything was rationed under the food coupon system. Many a time, we received bigger parcels which reached us secretly at the construction sites where we worked and met the Polish people. Parcels were also thrown into the camp by night. It is not easy to describe the attitude of the civilian population outside the camp—to say that it was friendly, would be too little. There was marked compassion. There has not been a single case in Poznań of a Pole who would betray a Jew escaping the camp. There has not been a single case on the construction site of a foreman striking a Jew without immediate reaction on the part of the Polish co-workers. Those Jews who survived did so only thanks to the help from the Polish population of Poznań.”

Maks Moszkowicz, another inmate of the Stadion labour camp, stated in his 302 deposition for Yad Vashem:

“I wish to stress that the behaviour of the Polish population in Poznań towards us, the Jewish prisoners, was very friendly and when our labour battalions were coming out of the camp, people— mostly women—waited for us in the street in order to throw us food in spite of severe interdictions and punishment.”

See Bartoszewski, The Blood Shed Unites Us, p.225. People readily recognizable as Jews who spoke poor Polish were able to survive in the Western Polish countryside, without being betrayed:

“[Alexander] said that he had gone through the war with a false identity. It sounds like a joke with his Yiddish accented Polish, with his looks. ‘I presented myself as a Lithuanian, I had no papers, I had no money, but I was young and strong. … I escaped westward, to the Poznan [Poznań] region where Jews were hardly known. I worked in the village, at the farm of somebody … He didn’t pay me anything. … What matters is that he fed me, gave me some rags to wear, and I lived like a king.’”

See Ephraim F. Sten, 1111 Days In My Life Plus Four (Takoma Park, Maryland: Dryad Press, in association with the University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), pp.66–67. A Jewish woman from Butrimonys (Butrymańce) recalled the widespread assistance of the local Polish minority in interwar Lithuanian territories:

“Parankova [Parankowa] became known among us unfortunate Jews as a Polish hamlet where nobody would hand you over to the murderers; ‘to me Parankova is truly the Jerusalem of Lithuania’.”

See Rivka Lozansky Bogomolnaya, Wartime Experiences in Lithuania (London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2000), p.75.

See also If I Forget The…: The Destruction of the Shtetl Butrimantz. Testimony by Riva Lozansky and Other Witnesses (Washington, DC: Remembrance Books, 1998), passim; and the testimony of Sarah Epstein (Sara Epshteyn) in Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman, The Unkown Black Book: The Holocaust in the GermanOccupied Soviet Territories (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2008), p.297 (villages near Stakliškės or Stokliszki).

303 Recognition and (In)Gratitude Szymon Datner, long-time director of Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute: “In my research I have found only one case of help being refused [by nuns]. No other sector was so ready to help.”

Updated October 26, 2021