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Under the Nazi German occupation of Poland in World War II, where conditions for both Jews and Poles were extraordinarily cruel, many Polish individuals, organizations and communities attempted to rescue Polish Jews. Some estimates put the number of Poles involved in rescue efforts of Jews in the hundreds of thousands, and credit them with helping to save tens of thousands of Jews; many Poles were murdered by the Nazi occupiers for offering assistance to Jews, which was a capital crime.

Background to rescue efforts

Poland’s total pre-World War II population is estimated at 35,100,000, of which 3.1 million were Jewish. The responses of non-Jewish Poles to the Holocaust against their Jewish fellow Poles covered an extremely wide spectrum, ranging from acts of altruism at the risk of endangering their own and often their families’ lives, to indifference, to active participation in killings.

The number of Polish Christians who rescued their Jewish countrymen from the Nazi prosecution has never been determined, and it is the subject of scholarly debate. Poles provided varying degrees of assistance to Jews, in organized fashion and through individual efforts. Some Poles gave food to Jews or left food in places Jews would pass on their way to work. Others directed Jews who managed to escape from the ghettos to people who could help them. Some Poles sheltered Jews for one or a few nights before telling them to leave. Many fewer assumed full responsibility for the Jews' survival, knowing that the Nazis punished those Poles who helped Jews by killing them and their families. It is mostly the last group who qualify for the title of the Righteous Among the Nations. To date, a total of 6,066 Poles have been officially recognized by Israel as the Polish Righteous among the Nations for their efforts in rescuing Polish Jews during the Holocaust, making Poland the country with the highest number of Righteous in the world.

According to Gunnar S. Paulsson, the number of rescuers that meet Yad Vashem's criteria is perhaps 100,000, and there may have been two or three times as many who offered minor forms of help, while the majority "were passively protective." In an article published in the Journal of Genocide Research, Hans G. Furth estimated that there may have been as many as 1,200,000 Polish rescuers. Władysław Bartoszewski, a wartime member of Żegota, has estimated that 1 to 3 percent of the Polish population was involved in rescue efforts; elsewhere, Bartoszewski is cited as having estimated that "at least several hundred thousand Poles ... participated in various ways and forms in the rescue action." Richard C. Lukas estimated that upwards of 1,000,000 Poles were involved in such rescue efforts, "but some estimates go as high as three million."

John T. Pawlikowski, referring to claims by Polish and Polish-American writers, wrote that claims of hundreds of thousands of rescuers struck him as "highly inflated and without sufficient documentary evidence." Martin Gilbert has written that under Nazi regime, rescuers were an exception, albeit one that could be found in towns and villages throughout Poland.

Likewise, there is no official number of how many Polish Jews were hidden by their Christian countrymen during wartime. Lukas estimated that the number of Jews sheltered by Poles at one time might have been "as high as 450,000." However, concealment did not automatically assure complete safety from the Nazis, and the number of Jews in hiding who were caught has been estimated variously from 40,000 to 200,000.

An average Jew who survived in occupied Poland depended not on the actions of a single person, but on many acts of assistance and tolerance. As Paulsson notes: "nearly every Jew that was rescued was rescued by the cooperative efforts of dozen or more people". During the six years of wartime and occupation, the average Jew was sheltered in seven different locations, had three or four sets of documents, two or three encounters with blackmailers, and faced recognition as a Jew multiple times.

Efforts at rescue were encumbered by several factors. The threat of the death penalty for aiding Jews was one of them; it was responsible for the fact that some Poles refused to help Jews, or even informed Germans about them. There is general consensus among scholars that Polish collaboration with the Nazis was not commonplace. However, there were elements among the populace who blackmailed the hiding Jews or turned them over to the Nazis, and as Paulsson notes, "a single hooligan or blackmailer could wreak severe damage on Jews in hiding, but it took the silent passivity of a whole crowd to maintain their cover." He also notes that "hunters" were outnumbered by "helpers" by a ratio of one to 20 or 30.

Michael C. Steinlauf writes that even more than the fear of the death penalty for aiding the Jews, the major obstacle limiting Polish aid to Jews was popular attitudes towards Jews, which made individuals uncertain of what their neighbors' responses would be to attempts at assistance. A number of authors have noted the negative effects of the significant hostility towards Jews by Poles in the general population and within the the organizations and parties that comprised the Polish underground, the majority of which favored a policy of eventual removal of Jews from Poland. According to Mordecai Paldiel, former Director of the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, Polish landscape at the time contained "a widespread antisemitism that militated against a serious attempt to render succor to the afflicted Jews — difficult as such undertakings would have been in light of the Nazi terror machine which operated with a special brutality against the Polish population." Paldiel writes that the notion that Poles stood only to profit at the disappearance of Jews was "commonplace," and that a feeling of both relief at the disappearance of Polish Jewry was as widespread as the revulsion at the methods employed by the Nazis. Nechama Tec, who herself survived the war aided by a group of Catholic Poles, noted that some Polish rescuers worked within an environment that was hostile to Jews, in which rescuers feared both the disapproval of their neighbors and reprisals that such disapproval might bring. Tec also noted that Jews, for many complex and practical reasons, were not always prepared to accept assistance that was available to them. Some Jews did not expect help from their neighbors — in fact, some were surprised to have been aided by people who expressed antisemitic attitudes before the war. Steinlauf notes that despite these uncertainties, Jews were helped by thousands of individual Poles throughout the country. He writes that "not the informing or the indifference, but the existence of such individuals is one of the most remarkable features of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust." Overall, according to Paulsson and Pawlikowski, such negative attitudes were not a major factor impeding the survival of sheltered Jews, or the work of the rescue organization Żegota.

Emanuel Ringelblum, author of the Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto, praised the dedication of the Poles who risked their lives to save Jews. While offering praise (Ringelblum and his family were themselves sheltered by Poles until their betrayal to the Nazis), he had a harsher judgment of the behavior of Polish civil society and the underground, who, he argued, should have done more to save the Jews. Indeed, the fact that the Polish Jewish community was decimated during World War II, coupled with stories about Polish collaborators, has contributed to a lingering stereotype that the Polish population has been passive in regard to, or even supportive of, Jewish suffering.

Jews in Polish villages

Some Polish villages that provided shelter from Nazi apprehension offered protection for their Jewish neighbors, and also offered aid for refugees from other villages and escapees from the ghettos. Postwar research has confirmed that communal protection occurred in Głuchów near Łańcut with everyone engaged, as well as in the villages of Główne, Ozorków, Borkowo near Sierpc, Dąbrowica near Ulanów, in Głupianka near Otwock, and Teresin near Chełm.

The forms of protection varied from village to village. In Gołąbki, the farm of Jerzy and Irena Krępeć provided a hiding place for as many as 30 Jews; years after the war, the couple's son recalled in an interview with the Montreal Gazette that their actions were "an open secret in the village everyone knew they had to keep quiet" and that the other villagers helped, "if only to provide a meal." Another farm couple, Alfreda and Bolesław Pietraszek, provided shelter for Jewish families in Ceranów near Sokołów Podlaski, and their neighbors brought food to those being rescued.

Two decades after the end of the war, a Jewish partisan named Gustaw Alef-Bolkowiak identified the following villages in the Parczew-Ostrów Lubelski area where "almost the entire population" assisted Jews: Rudka, Jedlanka, Makoszka, Tyśmienica, and Bójki. Historians have documented that a dozen villagers of Mętów near Głusk outside Lublin sheltered Polish Jews.

In some documented cases, Polish Jews who were hidden were circulated between locations in a village. Farmers in Zdziebórz near Wyszków, by turns, sheltered two Jewish men who later joined the Armia Krajowa (Home Army) Polish resistance. The entire village of Mulawicze near Bielsk Podlaski took responsibility for the survival of an orphaned nine-year-old Jewish boy. Different families took turns hiding a Jewish girl at various homes in Wola Przybysławska near Lublin, and around Jabłoń near Parczew many Polish Jews successfully sought refuge.

Impoverished Polish Jews, unable to offer any money in return, were nonetheless provided with food, clothing, shelter and money by some small communities; historians have confirmed this took place in the villages of Czajków near Staszów as well as several villages near Łowicz, in Korzeniówka near Grójec, near Żyrardów, in Łaskarzew, and across Kielce Voivodship.

In tiny villages where there was no permanent Nazi military presence, such as Dąbrowa Rzeczycka, Kępa Rzeczycka and Wola Rzeczycka near Stalowa Wola, some Jews were able to openly participate in the lives of their communities. Olga Lilien, recalling her wartime experience in the 2000 book To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue, was sheltered by a Polish family in a village near Tarnobrzeg, where she survived the war despite the posting of a 200 deutsche mark reward by the Nazi occupiers for information on Jews in hiding. Chava Grinberg-Brown from Gmina Wiskitki recalled in a postwar interview that some farmers used the threat of violence against a fellow villager who intimated the desire to betray her safety. Polish-born Israeli writer and Holocaust survivor Natan Gross, in his 2001 book Who Are You, Mr. Grymek?, told of a village near Warsaw where a local Nazi collaborator was forced to flee when it became known he reported the location of a hidden Jew.

Jews in Polish cities

In Poland's cities and larger towns, the Nazi occupiers created ghettos that were designed to imprison the local Jewish populations. The food rations allocated by the Germans to the ghettos condemned their inhabitants to starvation. Smuggling of food into the ghettos and smuggling of goods out of the ghettos, organized by Jews and Poles, was the only means of subsistence of the Jewish population in the ghettos. The price difference between the Aryan and Jewish sides was large, reaching as much as 100%, but the risk was also great. Hundreds of Polish and Jewish smugglers would come in and out the ghettos, usually at night or at dawn, through openings in the walls, underground tunnels and sewers or through the guardposts by paying bribes. The Polish Underground urges the Poles to support smuggling. The punishment for smuggling was death, carried out on the spot. Among the Jewish smuggler victims were scores of Jewish children aged five or six, whom the German shot down en masse at the ghetto exits and near the walls. While communal rescue was impossible under these circumstances, many Polish Christians concealed their Jewish neighbors. Paulsson, in his research on the Jews of Warsaw, documented that Warsaw's Polish residents managed to support and conceal the same percentage of Jews as did residents in other European cities under Nazi occupation. Ten percent of Warsaw's Polish population was actively engaged in sheltering their Jewish neighbors. It is estimated that the number of Jews living in hiding on the Aryan side of the capital city in 1944 was at least 15,000 to 30,000 and relied on the network of 50,000–60,000 Poles who provided shelter, and about half as many assisting in other ways.

Organizations dedicated to saving the Jews

Among the organizations created and run by ethnic Poles and Jewish underground activists dedicated to saving the Polish Jewish community, Żegota, the Council to Aid Jews, was the most prominent. It was unique not only in Poland, but in all of Nazi-occupied Europe, as there was no other organization dedicated solely to that goal. Żegota concentrated its efforts on saving Jewish children toward whom the Germans were especially cruel. It is estimated that about half of the Jews who survived the war (more than 50,000) were aided by Żegota with various forms of assistance – financial, legalization, medical, child care, and help against blackmailers. Perhaps the most famous member of Żegota was Irena Sendler, who managed to successfully smuggle 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Besides Żegota, there were few smaller, less effective organizations, which on their actions agenda included help to the Jews. Some were associated with Zegota.

Jews and the Church

The Roman Catholic Church in Poland provided many Jews with food and shelter during the war. Clerical frocks gave no immunity to Polish priests and monks who faced the death penalty for aiding persecuted Jews, just as ordinary Poles did. Nearly every Catholic institution in Poland looked after a few Jews, usually children with forged Christian birth certificates and an assumed or vague identity. In particular, convents of Catholic nuns in Poland played a major role in the effort to rescue and shelter Polish Jews, with the Franciscan Sisters credited with the largest number of Jewish children saved. These efforts were supported by local Polish bishops and the Vatican itself. The convent leaders never disclosed the exact number of children saved in their institutions, and for security reasons the rescued children were never registered. Jewish institutions have no statistics that could clarify the matter. Systematic recording of testimonies did not begin until the early 1970s. In the villages of Ożarów, Ignaców, Szymanów, and Grodzisko near Leżajsk, the Jewish children were cared for by Catholic convents and by the surrounding communities. In these villages, Christian parents did not remove their children from schools where Jewish children were in attendance.

Historians have determined that in some villages, Jewish families survived the Holocaust by living under assumed identities as Christians — with the knowledge of their neighbors, who did not betray their identities. This has been confirmed in the villages of Bielsko (Upper Silesia), in Dziurków near Radom, in Olsztyn Village near Częstochowa, in Korzeniówka near Grójec, in Łaskarzew, Sobolew, and Wilga triangle, and in several villages near Łowicz.

Unfortunately, classical types of Catholic antisemitism and religious nationalism existed in wartime Poland; particularly antisemitic right-wing Christian propaganda and church sermons were a negative influence with some in the senior Polish priesthood still hostile toward the Jews — an attitude well-known before the war. After the war the convents were often unwilling to return children to Jewish institutions that asked for them and refused to disclose the adoptive parents' identities, forcing government agencies and courts to intervene.

Jews and the Polish government

The Polish government in exile informed the Western Allies about the Holocaust, although early reports were often met with disbelief and disregarded. Witold Pilecki, member of Polish Armia Krajowa resistance, and the only person who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, begun sending his reports as early as 1940.

In 1942, Directorate of Civil Resistance, part of the Polish Underground State, issued a declaration:

For nearly a year now, in addition to the tragedy of the Polish people, which is being slaughtered by the enemy, our country has been the scene of a terrible, planned massacre of the Jews. This mass murder has no parallel in the annals of mankind; compared to it, the most infamous atrocities known to history pale into insignificance. Unable to act against this situation, we, in the name of the entire Polish people, protest the crime being perpetrated against the Jews; all political and public organizations join in this protest.

In 1943 a Jewish affairs section was set up by the Government Delegation for Poland of the Underground State; it was headed by Witold Bienkowski and Wladyslaw Bartoszewski. Its purpose was to organize activities concerning the Jewish population, to keep in touch with Zegota, and to process material regarding the fate of the Jews for transmission to the government in exile in London.

The government in exile also provided funds, arms and other supplies to Żegota and Jewish resistance organizations (like ŻOB and ŻZW).

Punishment for aiding the Jews

On November 10, 1941, the death penalty was expanded by Hans Frank, governor of occupied Poland, to apply to Poles who helped Jews "in any way: by taking them in for the night, giving them a lift in a vehicle of any kind" or "feed runaway Jews or sell them foodstuffs." The law was made public by posters distributed in all major cities. Nazi death squads carried out the mass executions of entire villages that were discovered to be aiding Jews on a communal level.

The residents of the village of Markowa, near Łańcut, where many families concealed their Jewish neighbors, were executed by the Nazis. In the villages of Białka near Parczew and Sterdyń near Sokołów Podlaski, 150 villagers were massacred for sheltering Jews. In November 1942, the Ukrainian SS squad executed 20 villagers from Berecz in Wołyń Voivodeship for giving aid to Jewish escapees from the ghetto in Povorsk.

Entire communities that helped shelter Jews were killed in the now-extinct village of Huta Werchobuska near Złoczów, in Zahorze near Łachwa, and in Huta Pieniacka near Brody. The same fate met the villagers of Stara Huta near Szumsk.

Several hundred Poles were massacred with their priest, Adam Sztark, in Słonim on December 18, 1942, for sheltering Jews in a church. In Huta Stara near Buczacz, Polish Christians and the Jewish countrymen they protected were herded into a church by the Nazis and burned alive on March 4, 1944.

Individual testimonies

In the postwar years, Polish Jewish survivors of the Holocaust recalled their experiences with the nation's villages in interviews and autobiographies. Emanuel Ringelblum, who chronicled the deportation of Jews from the town of Zbąszyń and later documented Jewish life in the Warsaw Ghetto wrote that in Głowno, Jews "who went out to a village in search of food usually returned with a bag of potatoes." Eva Safszycka, who escaped from the ghetto in Siedlce, said: "I met with so much kindness from the Poles, so many were decent and helpful that it is unbelievable."

Leon Kahn, who traveled with his father around Powiłańce near Lida, recalled: "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." Zygmunt Srul Warszawer, who survived by hiding near the village of Wielki Las, frequently requested assistance from farmers. Asked in interview if he had ever been refused, Warszawer indicated that though some farmers feared to allow him into their homes or barns, when it came to food, no one turned him down; "In twenty-six months, not once."

Luba Wrobel Goldberg, a Holocaust survivor, recalled in her autobiography that Lendowo in Brańsk "became a refuge for a lot of wandering Jews, they called this village the Garden of Eden."

Partial list of communities

Below is the partial list of Polish communities engaged in collective rescuing of Jews during the Holocaust, as described in literature mentioned below. Spelling of some of the names of settlements and counties has been revised in accordance with the currently available geodata. Occasionally, the below links lead to disambiguation pages listing villages known by the same name in the same geographical area of prewar and postwar Poland.

For list of settlements and their gminas in alphabetical order, please use table-sort buttons.

Notes

1. Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). "Assistance to Jews". Poland’s Holocaust. McFarland & Company. pp. p. 112. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
2. Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). "Assistance to Jews". Poland’s Holocaust. McFarland & Company. pp. p. 119. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
3. London Nakl. Stowarzyszenia Prawników Polskich w Zjednoczonym Królestwie , Polska w liczbach. Poland in numbers. Zebrali i opracowali Jan Jankowski i Antoni Serafinski. Przedmowa zaopatrzyl Stainslaw Szurlej.
4. Michael C. Steinlauf. Bondage to the Dead. Syracuse University Press, p. 30.
5. Krakowski, Shmuel. "Difficulties in Rescue Attempts in Occupied Poland" (PDF). Yad Vashem Archives.
6. ^ "Righteous Among the Nations by country" (HTML). Jewish Virtual Library.
7. ^ Gunnar S. Paulsson, “The Rescue of Jews by Non-Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland,” published in The Journal of Holocaust Education, volume 7, nos. 1 & 2 (summer/autumn 1998): pp.19–44.
8. Furth, Hans G. One million Polish rescuers of hunted Jews?. Journal of Genocide Research, Jun99, Vol. 1 Issue 2, p227, 6p; (AN 6025705)
9. Michael Phayer. The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930-1965. Indiana University Press, 2000. Pages 113, 250.
10. ^ Richard C. Lukas, Out of the Inferno: Poles Remember the Holocaust, University Press of Kentucky 1989 - 201 pages. Page 13; also in Richard C. Lukas, The Forgotten Holocaust: The Poles Under German Occupation, 1939-1944, University Press of Kentucky, 1986, Google Print, p.13. Cite error: The named reference "Lukas" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
11. John T. Pawlikowski. Polish Catholics and the Jews during the Holocaust. In: Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003. Page 110
12. Martin Gilbert. The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust. Macmillan, 2003. pp 102-103.
13. Carla Tonini, The Polish underground press and the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, 1939-1944, European Review of History: Revue Europeenne d'Histoire, Volume 15, Issue 2 April 2008 , pages 193 - 205
14. Klaus-Peter Friedrich. Collaboration in a "Land without a Quisling": Patterns of Cooperation with the Nazi German Occupation Regime in Poland during World War II. Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4, (Winter, 2005), pp. 711-746. JSTOR
15. John Connelly, Why the Poles Collaborated so Little: And Why That Is No Reason for Nationalist Hubris, Slavic Review, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 771-781, JSTOR
16. ^ Unveiling the Secret City H-Net Review: John Radzilowski
17. ^ Michael C. Steinlauf. Bondage to the Dead. Syracuse University Press, pp 41-42.
18. David Cesarani, Sarah Kavanaugh. . Routledge, 2004, pages 41ff.
19. Israel Gutman. The Jews of Warsaw, 1939-1943. Indiana University Press, 1982. Pages 27ff.
20. Antony Polonsky. "Beyond Condemnation, Apologetics and Apologies: On the Complexity of Polish Behavior Towards the Jews During the Second World War." In: Jonathan Frankel, ed. Studies in Contemporary Jewry 13. (1997):190-224.
21. Jan T. Gross. A Tangled Web: Confronting Stereotypes Concerning Relations between Poles, Germans, Jews, and Communists. In: István Deák, Jan Tomasz Gross, Tony Judt. The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath. Princeton University Press, 2000. P. 84ff
22. Mordecai Paldiel. The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust. KTAV Publishing House, Inc., 1993.
23. HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR DR. NECHAMA TEC TO ADDRESS SRU COMMUNITY AT REMEMBRANCE
24. Nechama Tec. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland. Oxford University Press US, 1987.
25. Nechama Tec. When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland. Oxford University Press US, 1987.
26. ^ John T. Pawlikowski, Polish Catholics and the Jews during the Holocaust, in , Google Print, p. 113 in Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003, ISBN 0813531586
27. http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/PDF_Articles/Activites_Zegota.pdf
28. Samuel D. Kassow. Who Will Write Our History?: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive. Indiana University Press, 2007.
29. Robert Cherry, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, Rethinking Poles and Jews, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, ISBN 0742546667, Google Print, p.25
30. ^ Bartoszewski and Lewinówna, Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, Kraków: Wydawnictwo Znak, 1969, pp.533–34.
31. Template:Pl icon Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Wystawa „Sprawiedliwi wśród Narodów Świata”– 15 czerwca 2004 r., Rzeszów. „Polacy pomagali Żydom podczas wojny, choć groziła za to kara śmierci – o tym wie większość z nas.” (Exhibition "Righteous among the Nations." Rzeszów, June 15, 2004. Subtitled: "The Poles were helping Jews during the war - most of us already know that.") Last actualization November 8, 2008.
32. Template:Pl icon Jolanta Chodorska, ed., "Godni synowie naszej Ojczyzny: Świadectwa," Warsaw, Wydawnictwo Sióstr Loretanek, 2002, Part Two, pp.161–62. ISBN 8372571031
33. 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.
34. Peggy Curran, "Decent people: Polish couple honored for saving Jews from Nazis," Montreal Gazette, 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.
35. Template:Pl icon "Odznaczenia dla Sprawiedliwych," Magazyn Internetowy Forum 26,09,2007.
36. Template:Pl icon Dariusz Libionka, "Polska ludność chrześcijańska wobec eksterminacji Żydów—dystrykt lubelski," in Dariusz Libionka, Akcja Reinhardt: Zagłada Żydów w Generalnym Gubernatorstwie (Warsaw: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej–Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, 2004), p.325.
37. Template:Pl icon Krystian Brodacki, "Musimy ich uszanować!" Tygodnik Solidarność, December 17, 2004.
38. Alina Cała, The Image of the Jew in Polish Folk Culture, Jerusalem, Magnes Press, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 1995, pp.209–10.
39. Shiye Goldberg (Szie Czechever), The Undefeated Tel Aviv, H. Leivick Publishing House, 1985, pp.166–67.
40. “Marian Małowist on History and Historians,” in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, vol. 13, 2000, p.338.
41. 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).
42. Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin, eds., Righteous Among Nations: How Poles Helped the Jews, 1939–1945, ibidem, p.361.; Gedaliah Shaiak, ed., Lowicz, A Town in Mazovia: Memorial Book, Tel Aviv: Lowitcher Landsmanshaften in Melbourne and Sydney, Australia, 1966, pp.xvi–xvii.; Wiktoria Śliwowska, ed., The Last Eyewitnesses: Children of the Holocaust Speak, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998, pp.120–23.; Małgorzata Niezabitowska, Remnants: The Last Jews of Poland, New York: Friendly Press, 1986, pp.118–124.
43. Ellen Land-Weber, To Save a Life: Stories of Holocaust Rescue (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), pp.204–206, 246.
44. ^ Nechama Tec, Resilience and Courage: Women, Men, and the Holocaust. Ibid., pp.224–27, p.29.
45. Natan Gross, Who Are You, Mr Grymek?, London and Portland, Oregon: Vallentine Mitchell, 2001, pp.248–49. ISBN 0853034117
46. http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/temporary_exhibitions/childsplay/lexicon/ghetto.html
47. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205108.pdf
48. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205108.pdf
49. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%205108.pdf
50. http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/PDF_Articles/Activites_Zegota.pdf
51. ^ Andrzej Sławiński, Those who helped Polish Jews during WWII. Translated from Polish by Antoni Bohdanowicz. Article on the pages of the London Branch of the Polish Home Army Ex-Servicemen Association. Last accessed on March 14 2008.
52. http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous_new/PDF_Articles/Activites_Zegota.pdf
53. ^ Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). "Assistance to Jews". Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. pp. p.118. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
54. ^ Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). "Assistance to Jews". Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. pp. p.117. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
55. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202308.pdf
56. Your Life is Worth Mine: How Polish Nuns Saved Hundreds of Jewish Children in German-occupied Poland, 1939-1945 By Ewa Kurek
57. ^ John T. Pawlikowski, Polish Catholics and the Jews during the Holocaust, in , Google Print, p. 113 in Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003, ISBN 0813531586
58. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202308.pdf
59. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202308.pdf
60. Zofia Szymańska, Byłam tylko lekarzem..., Warsaw: Pax, 1979, pp.149–76.; Bertha Ferderber-Salz, And the Sun Kept Shining..., New York: Holocaust Library, 1980, 233 pages; p.199.
61. Al Sokol, "Holocaust theme underscores work of artist," Toronto Star, November 7, 1996.
    ^ Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewinówna, eds., Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej, Second revised and expanded edition, Kraków: Znak, 1969, pp.741–42.
    ^ Tadeusz Kozłowski, "Spotkanie z żydowskim kolegą po 50 latach," Gazeta (Toronto), May 12–14, 1995.
    ^ Frank Morgens, Years at the Edge of Existence: War Memoirs, 1939–1945, Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1996, pp.97, 99.
    ^ Władysław Bartoszewski and Zofia Lewin, eds., Righteous Among Nations: How Poles Helped the Jews, 1939–1945, London: Earlscourt Publications, 1969, p.361.
62. John T. Pawlikowski. Polish Catholics and the Jews during the Holocaust. In: Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003
64. http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%202308.pdf
65. David Engel. Facing a Holocaust: The Polish Government-in-exile and the Jews, 1943-1945. University of North Carolina Press, 1993.
66. Template:Pl icon Detailed biography of Witold Pilecki on Whatfor. Last accessed on 21 November 2006.
67. ^ http://www1.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/microsoft%20word%20-%20138.pdf
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69. Mordecai Paldiel, The Path of the Righteous: Gentile Rescuers of Jews, page 184. Published by KTAV Publishing House Inc.
70. Robert Cherry, Annamaria Orla-Bukowska, Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007, ISBN 0742546667, Google Print, p.5
71. The Righteous and their world. Markowa through the lens of Józef Ulma, by Mateusz Szpytma, Institute of National Remembrance
72. Zajączkowski, Martyrs of Charity, Part One, pp.123–24, 228; quoted in Wartime Rescue, p.261, ibidem.
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77. Moroz and Datko, Męczennicy za wiarę 1939–1945, pp.385–86 and 390–91. Stanisław Łukomski, “Wspomnienia,” in Rozporządzenia urzędowe Łomżyńskiej Kurii Diecezjalnej, no. 5–7 (May–July) 1974: p.62; Witold Jemielity, “Martyrologium księży diecezji łomżyńskiej 1939–1945,” in Rozporządzenia urzędowe Łomżyńskiej Kurii Diecezjalnej, no. 8–9 (August-September) 1974: p.55; Jan Żaryn, “Przez pomyłkę: Ziemia łomżyńska w latach 1939–1945.” Conversation with Rev. Kazimierz Łupiński from Szumowo parish, Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, no. 8–9 (September–October 2002): pp.112–17. In Mark Paul, Wartime Rescue of Jews. Page 252.
78. Philip Friedman, Their Brothers’ Keepers, New York: Holocaust Library, 1978, 232 pages, p.116. ISBN 089604002X
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Further reading

• Malgorzata Melchior, The Holocaust Survivors who passed as non-Jews – in Nazi occupied Poland and France. The comparison of the Survivors’ experience1, Warsaw University
• Gunnar S. Paulsson, “The Demography of Jews in Hiding in Warsaw, 1943–1945,” Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, volume 13 (2000), at pages 78–103.
• 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, p. 257, in an Age of Genocide (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001), volume 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.
• Gunnar S. Paulsson, Secret City: The Hidden Jews of Warsaw, 1940–1945 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002). Monograph.
• John T. Pawlikowski, Polish Catholics and the Jews during the Holocaust, in , Google Print, p. 107-123 in Joshua D. Zimmerman, Contested Memories: Poles and Jews During the Holocaust and Its Aftermath, Rutgers University Press, 2003, ISBN 0813531586
• Tadeusz Piotrowski (1997). "Assistance to Jews". Poland's Holocaust. McFarland & Company. pp. p.112-128. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help); Cite has empty unknown parameters: |chapterurl= and |coauthors= (help)
• Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, Oxford University Press US, 1987, ISBN 0195051947, Google Print
• Irene Tomaszewski, Tecia Werbowski, Zegota: The Rescue of Jews in Wartime Poland, Price-Patterson, 1994, ISBN 0969577168

• Rescue of Jews in the Holocaust
• Righteous Among the Nations