Catholic Rescuers and Resisters

During the Holocaust

1943 Poster: “Give a Hand in Rescue” A Jewish child in hiding as a Christian

Definitions

• Rescue and resistance - “despite the indifference of most Europeans and the collaboration of others in the murder of Jews during the Holocaust, individuals in every European country and from all religious backgrounds risked their lives to help Jews.”

• Yad Vashem - established, in 1953, by the state of Israel, “to document and record the history of the Jewish people during the Holocaust as well as to acknowledge the countless non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to save Jews.”

• Righteous Among the Nations - “Yad Vashem began to award the title “Righteous Among the Nations” in 1963, and since that time, over 22,000 rescuers from 44 countries have been acknowledged for their efforts.” http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/bibliography/?lang=en&content=rescuers#intro

Methods and Consequences

• Protest in letters, sermons

• Smuggling food and supplies to those in ghettos or in hiding

• Shelter in homes, barns, holes, zoos, convents, orphanages, church crypts, often relocating frequently

• Medical help

• Money, tickets, transportation

• False documents:• identification papers• baptismal certificates

• Information and warnings, maps

• Provide tools for deception• Catholic customs to evade

detection• pseudonyms, etc.

• Constant risk of discovery from searches, betrayals, denouncements, blackmail

• Interrogations, beatings, torture for information

• In many Nazi occupied areas helping Jews was a crime

• Helping Jews was punishable by death for the entire family

“. . . rescuers, who every day had to decide whether or not to continue to risk their lives and those of their families to help those in hiding . . .”

http://www.holocausttaskforce.org/education/guidelines-for-teaching/how-to-teach-about-the-holocaust.html

IF THEY HAD CAUGHT US, FIRST THEY WOULD HAVE SHOT MY CHILDREN RIGHT BEFORE MY EYES, THEN THE CHILD WE WERE HIDING, THEN THEY WOULD HAVE

KILLED US. BUT WE DIDN’T THINK ABOUT THE DANGER. WE JUST WANTED TO SAVE THE CHILD . . . .

One Polish rescuer described the situation:

(Gilbert)

Poland

Deportation of Jewish Children in Poland

Irene Gut Opdyke Tarnopol, Poland

● Helped Jews in the ghetto with food, supplies and information

● Hid Jews in laundry where she worked

● Hid 13 Jews in basement of German major’s home, including an infant

● The German Major found out, but he became an accomplice for their safety

● All survived

● Named Righteous Among the Nations

Nazi Decree: Poles who help Jews will be executed

Zofia Kossak-Sczucka Warsaw, Poland

• After advocating for a Poland without Jews before the war, Nazi occupation convinced her to oppose persecution of Jews

• Founded Zegota:The Council for Assistance to the Jews

• Worked with the Armia Krajowa (AK) or Home Army to care for thousands of Jews, mostly children

• Created safe houses for hiding and provided false documents

• Arrested and sent to Auschwitz, but survived

• Named Righteous Among the Nations

Kossak-Szucka, bottom left

“Angel of Lvov” “Angel of Lvov”

• Worked with Zegota and the Home Army

• False documents to Jews• Helped Jews who escaped

from the ghetto• Wrote a letter to President

Roosevelt asking for help for the Jews

• Named Righteous Among the Nations

False baptismal certificate

Wladyslawa ChomsLvov, Poland

Irena Sendlerowa (Irena Sendler) Warsaw, Poland

• Catholic social worker, head of children’s division of Zegota

• Smuggled babies out of ghetto, gave false identities and placed in homes

• Cataloged all the babies’ names and locations and hid them in jars in a tree

• Captured and tortured, later rescued

• Tried to reunite the children with their families after war

• Named Righteous Among the Nations

• Nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize Irena Sendlerowa

Marceli Godlewski Marceli Godlewski Stefanie PodgorskaStefanie Podgorska

● Priest at All Saints Church which bordered Warsaw ghetto

● Jews hid in the crypt, received false papers

● Smuggled children out under his robes

● Named Righteous Among the Nations

● Catholic teenager in Przemysl, Poland

● Parents were sent to camps

● Hid 13 Jews in her home’s attic for 2 ½ years

● Named Righteous Among the Nations

Poland

France

Teens live under false identities in a convent-operated, old age home in France

Mother Maria--Elizabeth SkobtsovaParis, France

● Russian Orthodox nun

● Hid Jews in her small convent

● Collected food and supplies for those imprisoned at Drancy

● Coordinated efforts to smuggle children out of Drancy with trash collection

● Arrested, admitted helping Jews, and was sent to Ravensbruck where she died just before liberation.

Drancy Transit Camp, France

Bishop Pierre-Marie Theas

Bishop Pierre-Marie Theas

Germaine RibiereGermaine Ribiere

Montauban, FranceWrote letters to other

priests condemning deportations of Jews

Delivered by female bicycle courier to all churches within 100 kilometers

Urged all Catholics to protect Jews and resist

Paris, France

Catholic resistance fighter, founded Amitie Chretienne

Advocated that the Catholic church return Jewish children to their families after war

France

Both named Righteous Among the Nations

Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyons, France

Joined forces with groups of Jewish resistance

Hid five hundred adults

Hid more than a hundred children

As Catholic priests were being arrested for sheltering Jews, Gerlier issued a refusal to hand over those he sheltered

Named Righteous Among the Nations

Belgium

Jewish child in hiding on a farm in Belgium

Cardinal van RoeyBelgium

Head of the Catholic Church of Belgium

Worked with Queen Elisabeth of Belgium to intervene to save Jewish leaders

Gave sanctuary to children in the St. Joseph orphanageYoung Belgan-Jewish child

about to go into hiding.

Belgium

Sister Alfonsja

• Directed an orphanage where Jewish children were hidden

Father Bruno

• Hid 320 Jewish children in family homes

Both named Righteous Among the Nations

Holland

1933 Map of Holland

Village of Sevenum, Holland

The whole Roman Catholic village hid several hundred Jews on its farms

German-Jewish child in hiding in Holland

Germany

Yellow badge bearing German word for Jew

Margarete SommerBerlin, Germany

Member of Berlin Catholic resistance circleProtected Catholic patients from T-4

euthanasia programWrote detailed reports on conditions in the

ghettoReported Jewish murders to bishops

repeatedlyActed as liaison to obtain information from a

Nazi double agentHelped Jews, who could, to emigrateAs deportations began, helped hide Jews

Czechoslovakia

Nazi occupation of Prague, Czechoslovakia, 1939

Carlo Boromeo Church, Prague

After Czech assassins killed Reinhard Heydrich, author of “The Final Solution,” they hid in the church crypt

After Nazi interrogation and targeting of Prague’s citizens, they were denounced and discovered

Eventually, they were killed while inside the church

The church, now called St. Cyril and Methodious, holds a museum and memorial

Italy and The Vatican

Jewish refugees sail to “Palestine” from Italian port

Italy Rome and The Vatican

Countless priests, nuns and other clergy helped warn Jews and hide Jews throughout Italy

Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, Josef Goebbels, complained that Italians, even under a fascist regime, were protecting Jews

477 Jews were sheltered in the Vatican

4,238 Jews were given sanctuary in monasteries and convents in Rome

Only one-fifth of Rome’s Jews were deported

Hungary

Deportation of Hungarian Jews

Budapest, Hungary

Margit Slachta

• Fed and clothed those in Budapest ghetto

• Hid escaping Jews in houses

• Credited with rescuing 2,000

Monks of the Champanat Institute of the Order of Mary

• Took in a hundred Jewish pupils, with fifty of their parents

• They were discovered and denounced

• The monks were tortured and released

• The Jews were killed

Greece

Greek Jews in front of the Parthenon

Greek Archbishops

In AthensArchibishop

Damaskinos ordered Greek Orthodox leaders to hide Jews and not turn them over

Most of Athens’ Jews were saved

On a Greek islandArchbishop

Crysostomos alerted the island’s Jews to danger

Sent 195 to remote village for hiding

When 62 were caught, he promised to share their fate

By chance, there was not room for them on the transport boat

“It is important that we not only remember the atrocities and violence and murder and terror of that time, but that we also consider the sparks of humanity that glowed in the midst of the darkest of midnights.”

--United States Congressman Tom Lantos, rescued during the Holocaust.

Reunion of survivors

Bibliography

Blevins, Pamela. The Gift of Life: Rescuers of the Holocaust. Self-published, 2002.

Geier, Arnold. Heroes of the Holocaust: Extraordinary True Accounts of Triumph. New York: Berkley Books, 1993.

Gilbert, Martin. The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003.

Halberstam, Yitta and Judith Leventhal. Small Miracles of the Holocaust: Extraordinary Coincidences of Faith, Hope, and Survival. Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2008.

Phayer, Michael. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2000.

Siegel, Rachel. Stories of Moral Courage in the Face of Evil. Addison, Texas: Business Express Press, 2007.

All photos courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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