The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

by Gilbert, Martin

  In June 1943 the Podhajce ghetto was destroyed and almost all its inhabitants were murdered. A Polish shoemaker in the town, Wincenty Rajski, and his wife Stefania hid two members of the Herbst family, from whose leather store he had used to buy his materials before the war. The Rajskis took the risk involved even though they had two small girls of their own. Ziunia Herbst was three years old when she saw her father for the last time. She and her mother Sabina owed their survival, she wrote, most of all to ‘the courageous humanity of a Polish, Catholic family who hid us in the attic of their barn for almost a year. They risked their lives in order to save ours.’33

  At the time of the round-ups, a few of the Jews in the Podhajce ghetto managed to escape to the nearby woods. From there, a group of twenty-three survivors approached two Polish brothers, Lewko and Genko Bilecki, and their teenage sons Roman and Julian, whom they had known before the war. The Bileckis agreed to help. Roman and Julian’s respective sisters, Jaroslawa and Anna, participated in the collective act of rescue. Lewko and Genko showed the Jews where to build a bunker in the woods and for almost a year provided them with food. That winter the snows were very deep, and in order to prevent the Germans finding the bunker, Roman and Julian would bring food to the Jews by jumping from tree to tree so as not to leave footprints in the snow. Despite all the precautions, the bunker was discovered not once but twice, forcing the Jews to flee; each time the Bilecki family showed the fugitives where to build their new bunker, until, in the spring of 1944, they were liberated by Soviet troops. The courage and commitment of the Bilecki family had saved the lives of twenty-three Jewish men, women and children.34

  A Polish couple, Jozef and Antoine Sawko, and their daughter Malwina, went every Sunday into the countryside near Podhajce, taking with them food for two Jews, Israel Friedman and his daughter Berta, who were in hiding in the fields. Israel Friedman’s other two daughters, as well as his wife and father, had been murdered during the liquidation of the Podhajce ghetto in June 1943. That September, when the weather turned cold and the fields no longer provided adequate protection, father and daughter moved to the Sawkos’ farm (they had not wanted to hide there earlier, for fear of endangering their helpers). When winter came they dug a small hole under the pigsty. The hole, which the Sawkos covered with straw and wood, was not deep enough for them to stand up in: the water table was too high to dig any deeper, so father and daughter had to live in the hole in a sitting position. When it rained, they were waist-deep in water. In February 1944, when Soviet forces liberated the region, Israel and Berta Friedman stole away from their hiding place in the middle of the night, so that none of the farmers nearby would know that Jozef, Antoine and Malwina Sawko had given them food and shelter—and life itself.35

  In discussing the story of the rescuers in Podhajce—which he described as ‘this terrible place full of anti-Semitism’—Glenn Richter, a leader of the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in the 1970s who had befriended Berta Friedman (then Mrs Weitz) in New York, reflected: ‘It gives a sense of hope that there is something better among humans, that you can go far beyond yourself.’36

  In the Zborow region of Eastern Galicia, two brothers, Kazimierz and Franciszek Barys, sheltered five Jews on their farm: Golda Schechter and her two children, Fryda, aged five, and Martin, aged one; Maria Nisenbaum; and another Jew by the name of Rozenberg. At first the brothers prepared a hideout in the attic of their home, but when they learned that the Germans frequently raided attics in their searches for Jews, they dug a bunker beneath the barn, and covered it with a box full of heavy tools. Taking care of the five Jews meant huge and sustained effort to bring food and drink each day, to ensure that they were clean and properly clothed, and to remove refuse from the hideout. The brothers had not known any of the five before they had sought shelter at the farm. Nor did they ask for any payment for the help they gave.

  From time to time, German police and Ukrainian collaborators raided the house and farm buildings in search of Jews, but the hiding place was never uncovered. Then, in the summer of 1944, only a few hours before the village was liberated by Soviet troops, Rozenberg left the bunker; he was seen by a Ukrainian and shot on the spot. The Barys brothers were spared punishment for hiding Jews only because the Germans were already fleeing from the approaching Russians.37

  When the ghetto of Brzezany was destroyed, Mark and Klara Zipper managed to flee to a nearby Polish village, where a Polish acquaintance directed them to the home of a basketmaker, Julian Baran, who lived with his wife and three children in one of the village houses. The Barans, devout Catholics, were extremely poor, but did not hesitate to take in the penniless couple who sought their help. Mark Zipper, who knew how to weave, helped the Barans with their work, repaying them to some extent for their kindness. In their testimony, the Zippers subsequently stated: ‘We consider Mr and Mrs Baran to be angels from heaven, and shall remain eternally grateful to them.’ After the war, the Zippers emigrated to the United States. They kept in contact with their benefactors, from time to time sending them money and parcels.38

  The town of Drohobycz had one of the largest Jewish populations in Eastern Galicia—some twenty thousand. With the arrival of the German army on 1 July 1941, a ghetto was established; forced labour and near-starvation rations were imposed, and executions were frequent. Harry Zeimer, a survivor of that time of torment in Drohobycz, described how rare it was for any Jew to escape. The Catholic population in the surrounding area, ‘though hating the German invader, believed that God chose those “brutal Huns” as a tool to eliminate the descendants of the crucifiers of Jesus. Not more than a few per cent of Poles were thinking otherwise. But to think and to act were not the same thing: A Pole hiding a Jew, or helping him to escape, was simply shot by the Germans! Therefore, I consider my late friend Tadeusz Wojtowicz (a true Catholic Pole) as a hero, who has risked his own life to save mine. In addition, he refused my intention to get for him the Yad Vashem (Jerusalem) medal for “The Righteous People”: in his opinion, there was no glory but human duty in what he did!’

  Before the war, Harry Zeimer wrote, he and his rescuer ‘were no more than schoolmates at the Polish State High School in Drohobycz. During the German occupation, his conscience didn’t let him be a passive witness of the Final Solution. As a true Christian, Tadeusz Wojtowicz could not decide to join the Polish underground forces, because to kill—even a German—was a sin. In 1942 he found his solution: he will risk his life to flee with me to Switzerland! The papers necessary to enter the Reich for an Aryan Pole, volunteer to work there, the dangerous twists and turns to get them were incumbent exclusively on my late friend, because I was too much known as a Jew in our small town. At the same time, I bought an Aryan identity card, and as soon as my friend got his papers—we succeeded to add there my (false) name…and we were gone. With a lot of luck, the two “volunteers” reached Singen-am-Hohentwiel, a German town near the Swiss border, where we worked for eight days. There were numerous Polish workers, ex-prisoners of war, a very solidarity-minded group, who helped us to organize our leap into Switzerland. Except my friend, nobody knew that I was a disguised Jew. Among these courageous, hearty young people, I could statistically confirm the deep effects of the anti-Semitic education by the Polish Catholic Church, during the centuries. On 1 November 1942 we were in Switzerland…’39

  Other than his father, who survived incarceration in three camps, all of Harry Zeimer’s family perished. After training as an engineer in Paris, Zeimer left for Israel in 1960. His rescuer, Tadeusz Wojtowicz, his wife and children, went to Australia, where Wojtowicz became Professor of Slavic Literature at the University of Hobart, Tasmania.

  Boryslaw was another East Galician town with a substantial Jewish population. Among those saved there was a future Speaker of the Israeli parliament, Shewach Weiss. On 1 July 1941, when the Germans entered Boryslaw, local Ukrainians, supported by the Germans, started a day-long anti-Jewish pogrom in which three hundred Jews were killed. To escape the slaughter, the Weiss family
sought refuge with a Ukrainian couple, Roman and Julia Schepaniuk, who took them all in: the two parents, their sons—Aaron, aged thirteen, and Shewach, aged six—and their nine-year-old daughter Mila. When the pogrom was over, the Weiss family returned to their home. However, in late November 1941 the Germans started periodic anti-Jewish ‘actions’ in Boryslaw, and at the beginning of 1942, following two mass killings of Jews in the town, the five members of the Weiss family decided to leave the Schepaniuk home and seek shelter with the Goral family. Michael Goral had been a friend of Shewach’s mother, Genya, before the war. Fifty-five years later, Shewach Weiss recalled: ‘On the first night we hid under Michael’s and Maria’s beds in the bedroom. In the following nights, we hid alternatively in the barn and in the stable, between and in the stalls. One day we were hiding in the granary, deep inside the straw, when the Gestapo suddenly entered, with their Ukrainian collaborators. They searched through the straw, picking it with their bayonets, while the Goral family watched. They did not utter a word and did not give us away, despite the certain death they were facing. Later we hid in a small prayer house that was built near the family’s farm, as is the custom among devoted Catholics. There, on a concrete floor, I hid with my mother and sister. My sister and I were hiding under the crucifix’s out-spread arms, wrapped around my mother. To this day I remember the lizards running over the chapel walls, and the envy I felt to these free creatures. I prayed silently. Let God turn me into a lizard.’40

  As German and Ukrainian searches for Jews in hiding intensified—as they were throughout Eastern Galicia—Aaron Weiss and his father went out to look for an alternative hiding place. ‘Mrs Gorlova, a Ukrainian peasant woman,’ as Shewach Weiss recalled, let them hide inside her haystack. ‘We were under the hay,’ he recalled, ‘and over our heads a German soldier checked the contents of the haystack with his bayonet.’41

  The heightened searches and killings culminated in the ‘big action’ on 4 August 1942, when all the remaining Jews of Boryslaw were ordered to leave their homes and live inside the newly designated ghetto. The Weiss family gave their house into the care of the Schepaniuk family and moved into the ghetto. Some time later they decided to leave the ghetto and find a permanent hiding place outside it. Julia Schepaniuk immediately agreed to take them in again. This time, they built a hiding place in the double wall of the storeroom. Two more relatives of the Weiss family joined them there, and later an eighth fugitive, Israel Bakhman. All eight lived in the one hideout, under the Schepaniuks’ devoted care.42

  Schewach Weiss’s father had managed to take two books with him to their hideout: Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, and an encyclopaedia. ‘Thanks to the Count of Monte Cristo,’ Weiss later recalled, ‘I, little Shewach, could become a famous Count right there in the burrow. Thanks to the small atlas attached to the encyclopaedia I could add to my knowledge and roam all over the world. These two books gave me the loveliest moments of light in the darkness that reigned around me. Puntrzela, our good-hearted neighbour, sometimes brought us old newspapers that she had obtained. Through her we tried to guess what was happening in the world out there. I used the clay at the bottom of the burrow to mould my toys—tanks, motorcycles, animals and anything else that I saw through the window in the ceiling.’43

  For her selfless act in housing the fugitive Weisses, Julia Schepaniuk, like all those who had helped the family to survive, was later awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.44

  Also in Boryslaw, a Jewish couple, Zygmunt Kranz and his wife Franciszka, together with their three-year-old son Henryk, were warned by a Polish friend, Jozef Baran, that a deportation was imminent. Baran and his wife Eleonora offered to shelter the family until the danger had subsided; so that night the Kranz family made their way to the Barans’ house. Thereafter, what had begun as a humanitarian gesture became a protracted personal obligation. Zygmunt, who believed that as a worker in the German arms industry he would be able to go on living in the Horodyszcze Hill labour camp even after the ghetto had been liquidated, paid occasional visits to his wife and son in their hiding place. When the danger of discovery increased, Zygmunt and Baran dug a pit under the floor of the house to serve as a refuge. Later, a second hideout was dug in the courtyard of the house, and in January 1943 Zygmunt escaped from the labour camp and joined his wife and son. The fugitives were penniless, but Baran bought them a little food in exchange for their possessions. Eleanora assisted her husband in all that he did; she grew vegetables in the garden, in order to be able to feed the Jews in her care, and kept their existence secret from her children.

  After liberation, for many years, the Kranz family sent the Barans a monthly stipend in gratitude for their ‘heroic selflessness’.45

  Among the Jews who had reached Boryslaw when it was under Soviet rule after the German defeat of Poland in September 1939 was Izabela Hass, known as Zula. She and her brother Eidikus had been sent to Boryslaw by their parents from Bialystok, for safety, to live with their two aunts. But on 1 July 1941, the Germans entered Boryslaw and, as Zula and her brother hid with their aunts, searched for Jews and led them to their deaths. When the Einsatzgruppen returned in the spring of 1942—having killed thousands of Jews four months earlier—Zula’s aunts, one of whom was a doctor, realized they must find a hiding place outside their home. Zula recalled: ‘Aunt Rachela scanned the list of patients in search of those who would be most likely to hide us in their homes. She had ruled out Mr Lemecki who had been overheard saying that the Poles ought to thank Hitler for getting rid of the Jews. But it was that Mr Lemecki who volunteered to hide all of us in trunks kept in his cellar! This time the Jews had anticipated the Aktion and many had hidden. The Germans then resorted to a trick: they discontinued the round-up for twenty-four hours, thereby luring the fugitives, including us, into a trap. My aunts, Eidikus and I immediately returned to the Lemecki residence. But when we knocked on the door, we overheard Lemecki’s anti-Semitic mother say, “Hide these dirty Yids again? Never!’ Yet Lemecki saved our lives once more. When we returned to Boryslaw after two days in Lemecki’s cellar, many of our friends were missing. All of them had been sent to the extermination camp of Belzec. My hopes for survival were completely dashed and I wondered if my parents would ever see me again.’

  Zula survived in the Boryslaw ghetto. But with each ‘action’ the number of Jews who remained alive dwindled, from thousands to only hundreds. A hiding place was constructed in the cellar of her aunts’ home. But it was clear that sooner or later—possibly very soon indeed, as Ukrainian policemen initiated search after search—it would be discovered. Zula recalled: ‘Some time in February 1943, Mrs Kowicki walked into Aunt Rachela’s office. She was clad in black and she told my aunt about the tragic death of her fifteen-year-old daughter. My aunt then asked Mrs Kowicki if she would be willing to save the life of a Jewish mother’s daughter in memory of her own daughter. When the bereaved mother said yes, I became the Kowickis’ “niece”, and they took me into their home. To legitimise the enterprise, all kinds of original and forged Aryan documents were purchased for me. These documents included the birth certificate of a dead Polish girl and I became Irena Borek.’

  Zula’s account continued: ‘I loved my “Uncle Emil” and my “Aunt Sophie” but my stay there became precarious. Uncle Emil built a hideout for me over the veranda whose boards would be moved in the evening so that I could come in for the night. But one day neighbours inquired if it was true that the Kowickis were hiding a Jew in their house. In view of this new danger, a decision was made to have me live with Uncle Emil’s relatives in the town of Sanok. On 3 June 1943, I was secretly baptized, given the rosary beads and prayer books of Janka, the Kowickis’ daughter, and taught the essentials of the catechism. I was told that St Mary would now save me. I was only fourteen years old and I had to pretend so many things. Would I be able to do it? I was now the daughter of Wladyslaw and Olga Borek née Partyka, Polish patriots whom the Soviets had exiled to Siberia.’

  Danger lurked
at every stage. ‘When Uncle Emil and I entered the train to Sanok, I found a patient of my aunt staring at me. Will she give me away? Please, St Mary, don’t let her do it! Then a German gendarme boarded the train, took one look at me and declared, “Du bist doch eine Jüdin!” (You surely are a Jewess!) Over and over, Uncle Emil insisted that I was a Polish Catholic girl, his niece. My papers were carefully checked while Aunt Rachela’s patient remained quiet. The documents passed the test, yet when I saw the quizzical expressions on the other passengers’ faces I thought, “They all know that I’m Jewish.” But I said, “This is not the first time that I’ve been mistaken for a Jew.” Then I stood by the window and felt nothing, nothing at all until we arrived in Sanok.’

  Each moment of rescue could have its terrors, of the soul as well as of the body. ‘Walking uphill towards my new home, I saw that the pavement beneath our feet bore Hebrew inscriptions. When I realized that these were Jewish gravestones, my soul began to cry. Shocked by the bleak reality, I felt like a trapped animal. There stood an outhouse by the side of the road and I dashed to it, locking myself in. I saw no sense in going on and looked for ways to end my life. But Uncle Emil kept reassuring me that I would be safe. There were trees and flowers around the house, and within this serenity I began to believe that maybe I will survive. The following Sunday I went to church with my new family. I was a careful observer, mimicking the melodious prayers and the cadence of standing and kneeling. That afternoon I returned to the empty church and, standing in front of the statue of St Mary, I pleaded with her for my life, making vows of gratitude: “Save me…please save me…If you do, I will believe in you until the day I die.” Gradually, my fears disappeared. People treated me with kindness but, of course, they were not aware of my true identity. Time and time again, I saw Jews being led to their death. There were no longer any enclaves of Jews in Sanok, so I imagined with dread that they had been discovered in their hideouts in Polish homes.’