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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