The citizens of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized by

Yad Vashem Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...

of Jerusalem as the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, for saving

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

from extermination during

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europ ...

in World War II. There are Polish men and women recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, over a quarter of the recognized by Yad Vashem in total. The list of Righteous is not comprehensive and it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Poles concealed and aided hundreds of thousands of their Polish-Jewish neighbors. Many of these initiatives were carried out by individuals, but there also existed organized networks of Polish resistance which were dedicated to aiding Jews – most notably, the '' Żegota'' organization. In German-occupied Poland, the task of rescuing Jews was difficult and dangerous. All household members were subject to

capital punishment Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

if a Jew was found concealed in their home or on their property.

Activities

Before

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, Poland's Jewish community had numbered between 3,300,000 and 3,500,000 people – about 10 percent of the country's total population. Following the

invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland (1 September – 6 October 1939) was a joint attack on the Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union which marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week af ...

, Germany's Nazi regime sent millions of deportees from every European country to the concentration and forced-labor camps set up in the General Government territory of occupied Poland and across the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany. Most Jews were imprisoned in the Nazi ghettos, which they were forbidden to leave. Soon after the German–Soviet war had broken out in 1941, the Germans began their extermination of Polish Jews on either side of the

Curzon Line The Curzon Line was a proposed demarcation line between the Second Polish Republic and the Soviet Union, two new states emerging after World War I. It was first proposed by The 1st Earl Curzon of Kedleston, the British Foreign Secretary, ...

, parallel to the ethnic cleansing of the Polish population including

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

and other minorities of Poland. As it became apparent that, not only were conditions in the ghettos terrible (hunger, diseases, executions), but that the Jews were being singled out for extermination at the Nazi death camps, they increasingly tried to escape from the ghettos and hide in order to survive the war. Many Polish

Gentile Gentile () is a word that usually means "someone who is not a Jew". Other groups that claim Israelite heritage, notably Mormons, sometimes use the term ''gentile'' to describe outsiders. More rarely, the term is generally used as a synonym fo ...

s concealed hundreds of thousands of their Jewish neighbors. Many of these efforts arose spontaneously from individual initiatives, but there were also organized networks dedicated to aiding the Jews. Most notably, in September 1942 a

Provisional Committee to Aid Jews The Provisional Committee to Aid Jews ( pl, Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom) was founded on September 27, 1942, by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. The founding body consisted of Polish democratic Catholic activists associate ...

(''Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom'') was founded on the initiative of Polish novelist Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, of the famous artistic and literary

Kossak Kossak is the surname of 4 generations of notable Polish painters, writers and poets, descending from the historical painter Juliusz Kossak. Notable people with this surname include: * Progenitor, Juliusz Kossak (1824–99), Polish painter from the ...

family. This body soon became the

Council for Aid to Jews A council is a group of people who come together to consult, deliberate, or make decisions. A council may function as a legislature, especially at a town, city or county/shire level, but most legislative bodies at the state/provincial or nat ...

(''Rada Pomocy Żydom''), known by the codename '' Żegota'', with

Julian Grobelny Julian Grobelny (16 February 1893 – 5 December 1944) was an activist in the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) from 1915, in the lead-up to Poland's return to independence. During the interwar period he was a social activist. After the German-Soviet ...

as its president and Irena Sendler as head of its children's section. It is not exactly known how many Jews were helped by ''Żegota'', but at one point in 1943 it had 2,500 Jewish children under its care in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...

alone. At the end of the war, Sendler attempted to locate their parents but nearly all of them had been murdered at Treblinka. It is estimated that about half of the Jews who survived the war (thus over 50,000) were aided in some shape or form by Żegota. In numerous instances, Jews were saved by entire communities, with everyone engaged, such as in the villages of

Markowa Markowa is a village in Łańcut County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, in south-eastern Poland. It is the seat of the gmina (administrative district) called Gmina Markowa. It lies approximately south-east of Łańcut and east of the regional ...

and Głuchów near

Łańcut Łańcut (, approximately "wine-suit"; yi, לאַנצוט, Lantzut; uk, Ла́ньцут, Lánʹtsut; german: Landshut) is a town in south-eastern Poland, with 18,004 inhabitants, as of 2 June 2009. Situated in the Subcarpathian Voivodeship ( ...

, Główne, Ozorków, Borkowo near Sierpc, Dąbrowica near

Ulanów Ulanów is a town in Nisko County, Subcarpathian Voivodeship, Poland, with 1,491 inhabitants (02.06.2009). It has grammar schools and high schools along with 2 churches. One of the churches was set on fire in 2004, and was closed for repairs. ...

, in Głupianka near Otwock, Teresin near Chełm, Rudka, Jedlanka, Makoszka, Tyśmienica, and Bójki in Parczew- Ostrów Lubelski area, and Mętów, near Głusk. Numerous families who concealed their Jewish neighbours were killed for doing so.

Risk

During the occupation of Poland (1939–1945), the Nazi German administration created hundreds of ghettos surrounded by walls and barbed-wire fences in most metropolitan cities and towns, with gentile Poles on the 'Aryan side' and the Polish Jews crammed into a fraction of the city space. Anyone from the Aryan side caught assisting those on the Jewish side in obtaining food was subject to the death penalty.Donald L. Niewyk, Francis R. Nicosia, ''The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust'', Columbia University Press, 2000,
Google Print, p.114
/ref>Antony Polonsky, '' 'My Brother's Keeper?': Recent Polish Debates on the Holocaust'', Routledge, 1990,
Google Print, p.149
/ref> The usual punishment for aiding Jews was death, applied to entire families. On 10 November 1941, the death penalty was expanded by

Hans Frank Hans Michael Frank (23 May 1900 – 16 October 1946) was a German politician and lawyer who served as head of the General Government in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. Frank was an early member of the German Workers' Par ...

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 ngrunaway Jews or sell ngthem foodstuffs". The law was made public by posters distributed in all major cities. Polish rescuers were fully conscious of the dangers facing them and their families, not only from the invading Germans, but also from betrayers (''see'': '' szmalcowniks'') within the local, multi-ethnic population and the

Volksdeutsche In Nazi German terminology, ''Volksdeutsche'' () were "people whose language and culture had German origins but who did not hold German citizenship". The term is the nominalised plural of ''volksdeutsch'', with ''Volksdeutsche'' denoting a sing ...

. The Nazis implemented a law forbidding all non-Jews from buying from Jewish shops under the maximum penalty of death.Iwo Pogonowski, ''Jews in Poland'', Hippocrene, 1998. . Page 99. Gunnar S. Paulsson, in his work on history of the Warsaw Jews during the Holocaust, has demonstrated that, despite the much harsher conditions, Warsaw's Polish residents managed to support and conceal the same percentage of Jews as did the residents of cities in safer countries of Western Europe, where no death penalty for saving them existed.

Numbers

There are officially recognized Polish Righteous – the highest count among nations of the world. At a 1979 international historical conference dedicated to Holocaust rescuers, J. Friedman said in reference to Poland: "If we knew the names of all the noble people who risked their lives to save the Jews, the area around

would be full of trees and would turn into a forest."

Hans G. Furth Hans Gerhard Fürth or Hans G. Furth (December 2, 1920, Vienna – November 7, 1999, Takoma Park, Maryland) was a Professor emeritus in the Faculty of Psychology of the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Early life in Europe Han ...

holds that the number of Poles who helped Jews is greatly underestimated and there might have been as many as 1,200,000 Polish rescuers. Father John T. Pawlikowski (a Servite priest from Chicago) remarked that the hundreds of thousands of rescuers strike him as inflated.

Notable rescuers

Irena Adamowicz Irena Adamowicz (11 May 1910 – 12 August 1973), was a Polish-born scout leader and a resistance member during World War II. She was a courier for the underground Home Army (''Armia Krajowa''). In 1985, Adamowicz was posthumously bestowed the ti ...

, liaison between several Jewish ghettos providing communication and moral support * Wincenty Antonowicz with wife Jadwiga and daughter Lucyna, food and transport *

Ferdynand Arczyński Ferdynand Marek Arczyński (December 8, 1900 in Kraków – 1979 in Warsaw), cryptonym "Marek" or "Lukowski", was one of the founding members of an underground organization Żegota (Council for Aid to Jews) in German-occupied Poland, from 1942 t ...

, took care of 4,000 Jews on the "Aryan" side of Warsaw ( Zegota treasurer) *

Zofia Baniecka Zofia Baniecka (12 May 1917 in Warsaw – 1993) was a Polish member of the Resistance during World War II. In addition to relaying guns and other materials to resistance fighters, Baniecka and her mother sheltered over 50 Jews in their hom ...

and her mother rescued more than 50 Jews in their Warsaw apartment in 1941–1944 * Władysław Bartoszewski, Jewish Uprising assistance ( Delegatura) * Anna Borkowska, saved 17 young Jewish Zionists in her Vilna convent * Franciszek and Magdalena Banasiewicz with children, saved families of 15 in a bunker near Przemyśl * Szczepan Bradło and family, saved three families of 16 in a dugout * Krystyna Dańko, hid and supplied a Jewish family of four with food, clothing and money *

Jan Dobraczyński Jan Dobraczyński ( Warsaw, 20 April 1910 – 5 March 1994, Warsaw) was a Polish writer, novelist, politician and Catholic publicist.Encyklopedia PWN (2017)Dobraczyński, Jan.Internetowa encyklopedia PWN In the Second Polish Republic between ...

, placed several hundred Jewish children in

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

convents * Maria Fedecka, saved 12 members of close Jewish families in Wilno *

Mieczysław Fogg Mieczysław Fogg (born Mieczysław Fogiel; 30 May 1901, Warsaw3 September 1990, Warsaw) was a Polish singer and artist. His popularity started well before World War II and continued well into the 1980s. He had a characteristic way of staying ...

, hid a Jewish family in his apartment till the end of World War II * Andrzej Garbuliński and son, killed for sheltering Alfenbeins family * Antoni Gawryłkiewicz, saved three Jewish families consisting of 16 members *

Matylda Getter Matylda Getter (1870–1968) was a Polish Catholic nun, mother provincial of CSFFM (lat. ''Congregatio Sororum Franciscalium Familiae Mariae'') - Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary in Warsaw and social worker in pre-war Poland. In German ...

, hid 550 Jewish children from the Warsaw getto in Polish orphanages * Zofia Glazer, saved Cypora with her baby from the

Siedlce Ghetto The Siedlce Ghetto ( pl, Getto w Siedlcach), was a World War II Jewish ghetto set up by Nazi Germany in the city of Siedlce in occupied Poland, east of Warsaw. The ghetto was closed from the outside in early October 1941. Some 12,000 Polish Je ...

before massacre Cypora (Jablon) Zonszajn in Siedlce, Poland.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. *

with wife Halina, rescued a large number of Jewish children (President of Zegota) *

Irena Gut Irene Gut Opdyke (born Irena Gut, 5 May 1922 – 17 May 2003) was a Polish nurse who gained international recognition for aiding Polish Jews persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. She was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations b ...

, rescued sixteen Jews by becoming

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

* Henryk Iwański, arms and military support for the Jewish Uprising, ( AK) * Stefan Jagodziński, saved Dr. Tenenwurzel's family of three member of resistance * Stanisław Jasiński and daughter Emilia, hid Jews who escaped the Volhynian massacres * Jerzy and Eugenia Latoszyński, temporarily adopting Artur Citryn * Aleksander Kamiński, helped organize Jewish resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto (

Home Army The Home Army ( pl, Armia Krajowa, abbreviated AK; ) was the dominant resistance movement in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The Home Army was formed in February 1942 from the earlier Związek Walki Zbrojnej (Armed Resistance) es ...

representative) * Jan Karski, first reported the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

to President Franklin D. Roosevelt * Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, helped save several thousand Jews, especially children (co-founder of Żegota) * Maria Kotarba, "Angel of Auschwitz" delivering food and medicine, cooking for Jewish female prisoners * Władysław Kowalski, hid 50 Jews around Warsaw * Stefan Korboński * Jerzy and Irena Krępeć saved over 30 Jews on their two rented estates near Płock * Jerzy Jan Lerski (George J. Lerski), informed political circles abroad about the extermination and persecution of Jews * Eryk Lipiński, involved in production of forged documents for the Jews in hiding * Wanda Makuch-Korulska * Igor Newerly, saved

Janusz Korczak Janusz Korczak, the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit (22 July 1878 or 1879 – 7 August 1942), was a Polish Jewish educator, children's author and pedagogue known as ''Pan Doktor'' ("Mr. Doctor") or ''Stary Doktor'' ("Old Doctor"). After spending m ...

's diary of martyrdom, harboured several Warsaw Ghetto journalists * Janina Oyrzanowska-Poplewska and her sister Maria Oyrzanowska provided aid and housing to the Linfeld and Sterling families; their gardener, Jerzy Glinicki; and others, including Wiktoria Szczawińska and Franciszka Tusk (later known as Natalia Obrębka) * Tadeusz Pankiewicz, operated the only pharmacy in the

Jewish Ghetto In the Jewish diaspora, a Jewish quarter (also known as jewry, ''juiverie'', ''Judengasse'', Jewynstreet, Jewtown, or proto-ghetto) is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were ...

Kraków Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula, Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland un ...

and distributed free medicine * Alfreda and Bolesław Pietraszek, rescued several Jewish families consisting of 18 people *The Podgórski sisters: Stefania (16, now Burzminski) and Helena (6), hid 13 Jews for two and a half years in an attic in Przemyśl; Stefania married one of the rescued who later changed his name to Burzminski. Television film "Hidden in Silence" was made about this rescue mission * Jan and Anna Puchalski hid 6 Jews at their house for 17 months in Łosośna * Maria Roszak (Sister Cecylia) Dominican nun with

Anna Borkowska (Sister Bertranda) Mother Bertranda, O.P. (''née'' Janina Siestrzewitowska; 1900–1988), later known as Anna Borkowska, was a Polish cloistered Dominican nun who served as the prioress of her monastery in Kolonia Wileńska near Wilno (now Pavilnys near Vilni ...

sheltered Jews from Vilnius Ghetto * Konrad Rudnicki and his mother Maria harbored the Weintraubs family during World War II * Irena Sendler, helped rescue at least 2,500 Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto * Henryk Sławik, helped save over 5,000 Polish Jews in

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population o ...

by giving them false 'arian' passports *Jadwiga and Stanislaw Solecki, hid a Jewish girl, Marlena Wagner, at their house for at least 24 months in Korczyna *Barbara and son Jerzy Szacki, harboured a pregnant

Ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished ...

fugitive with a 5-year-old, helped with the newborn *

Józef and Wiktoria Ulma Józef and Wiktoria Ulma were a Polish Catholic husband and wife in Markowa, Poland during the Nazi German occupation in World War II who attempted to rescue Polish Jewish families by hiding them in their own home during the Holocaust. They a ...

from

, harbored 8 Jews, killed together with them, and their own 6 children by German police *

Czesław Miłosz Czesław Miłosz (, also , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation, ...

, took in Tross family and supported them financially * Rudolf Weigl, made and supplied vaccines to two Jewish ghettos, employed Jews in hiding * Henryk Woliński, harbored 25 Jews in his apartment, helped 283 ( AK BIP) * Paweł Zenon Woś, together with his parents, Paweł and Anna, smuggled 12 Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto * Jerzy Zagórski and wife Maria, harbored 18 Jews in their home before the Warsaw Uprising *

Jan Żabiński Jan Żabiński () (8 April 1897 – 26 July 1974) and his wife Antonina Żabińska (née Erdman) (1908–1971) were a Polish couple from Warsaw, recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for their heroic rescue of Jews during the H ...

and wife Antonina, sheltered hundreds of displaced Jews at his

Warsaw Zoo The Warsaw Zoological Garden, known simply as the Warsaw Zoo ( pl, Miejski Ogród Zoologiczny w Warszawie ), is a scientific zoo located alongside the Vistula River in Warsaw, Poland. The zoo covers about in central Warsaw, and sees over 700,000 ...

File:20070212 Wladyslaw Bartoszewski by Kubik.jpg, Bartoszewski File:Jan Dobraczyński.jpg, Dobraczyński File:Zofia Glazer & Rachela in 1940s.jpg, Glazer File:Julian Grobelny.JPG, Grobelny File:Aleksander Kamiński - Kamyk.jpg, Kamiński File:Jan Karski - Instytut w Rudzie Śląskiej.jpg, Karski File:ZOFIA KOSSAK.jpg,

File:Maria-Kotarba-Auschwitz.jpg, Kotarba File:Stefan Korboński.jpg, Korboński File:Jerzy Lerski.jpg, Lerski File:Igor Newerly.jpg, Newerly File:Irena Sendlerowa 2005-02-13 zoom.jpg, Sendler File:Weigl-Lwow.jpg, Weigl File:Jan Zabinski Polish scientist.jpg, Żabiński

Notes

References

Polish Righteous
at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews * Anna Poray, with photographs and bibliography, 2004. List of Poles recognized as "Righteous among the Nations" by

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...