stories of polish resistance · the holocaust were polish. in 1939 a third of the capital city...
TRANSCRIPT
Created by With support from
STORIES OF POLISH RESISTANCE
Józef &
Wiktoria
Ulma
Irena
Sendler
Maximilian
Kolbe Emanuel
Ringelblum
Mordechai
Anielewicz
Witold
Pilecki
Janusz
Korczak
Jan
Karski
Father
Marceli
Godlewski
Zofia
Kossak-
Szczucka
Jan &
Antonina
Zabinski
About half of the six million European Jews killed in
the Holocaust were Polish. In 1939 a third of the
capital city Warsaw, and 10% of the entire country was
Jewish. By 1945 97% of Poland's Jews were dead.
These eleven examples of Polish resistance do not proport to give an overview of what happened in
Poland during The Holocaust. They have been chosen
to reflect the unimaginably difficult choices made by
both Jews and non-Jews under German occupation –
where every Jew was marked for death and all non-
Jews who assisted their Jewish neighbours were subject
to the same fate.
These individuals were not typical; they were
exceptional, reflecting the relatively small proportion
of the population who refused to be bystanders. But
neither were they super-human. They would recoil
from being labelled as heroes. They symbolise the
power of the human spirit – their actions show that in
even the darkest of times, good can shine through…
Created by With support from
STORIES OF POLISH RESISTANCE
Józef &
Wiktoria
Ulma
Irena
Sendler
Maximilian
Kolbe Emanuel
Ringelblum
Mordechai
Anielewicz
Witold
Pilecki
Janusz
Korczak
Jan
Karski
Father
Marceli
Godlewski
Zofia
Kossak-
Szczucka
Jan &
Antonina
Zabinski
Irena Sendler
IRENA SENDLER 1910 - 2008
Irena Sendler was an exceptional woman who
coordinated an Underground Network of rescuers
that enabled many Jewish children to escape the
Warsaw Ghetto and survive The Holocaust. Her
father was a doctor who died during a typhus
epidemic in 1917 after helping many sick Jewish
families who were too poor to afford treatment. Out
of gratitude, members of the community offered to
support Irena’s family after his death and
consequently there was a strong bond of friendship
between Irena’s family and her Jewish neighbours.
As a result she learnt to speak Yiddish, a skill that
was invaluable in her later work. “My parents taught me, that if
a man is drowning, no matter what his religion or nationality, you must help him, whether or
not you can swim yourself.”
UNDER OCCUPATION & THE WARSAW GHETTO
Irena was incapable of ignoring injustice and joined Warsaw’s Social Services
department. She was a natural leader and became the heart of a network of women
who had the shared aim of helping Warsaw’s poorest residents. Under German
occupation it was illegal for Warsaw’s Social Services department to help Jews, so Irena
altered client documents to continue supporting them. Although this was a very risky
thing to do neither Irena nor her colleagues were deterred by the dangers.
Irena’s network distributed food and medicines to the poorest members of Warsaw’s Jewish community.
When the Warsaw Ghetto was created
Irena gained entry by obtaining a Health
Inspector pass so she could continue to smuggle in much needed supplies.
Irena was distressed to see so many children suffer from
starvation and was determined to do something
more to help them.
RESCUE
When residents of the Warsaw Ghetto stared to be
deported to Treblinka death camp, Irena’s network
stepped up their rescue operation by smuggling
children out of the ghetto. This was dangerous as
Germans killed those who helped Jews. Babies were
sedated and hidden in tool boxes or medical bags and
older children were smuggled out through the sewer
system. But the risk remained, even after a child was
living in a secret safe-house. If their real identities
were suspected by a neighbour they would have to be
relocated. This happened quite frequently. “How
many mothers do most children have?” one child
asked Irena. “So far I’ve had three.”
Children were taken to ‘safe houses’ and given non-Jewish identities where they acclimatised to their new circumstances.
It was desperately difficult to hand over a child to
a stranger and Jewish families agonised over such
a painful decision . Those who agreed felt it was
the only chance their child had of surviving. Irena
described this heart-wrenching sacrifice as a
parent’s final act of love. “The real heroes were
the mothers” she would say. She hoped to reunite
the Jewish families after the war and kept
meticulous records of each child, burying lists of
their names in jars next to a friend’s apple tree.
In October 1943 she was arrested by the Gestapo and was driven away for interrogation. Although she was brutally tortured,
Irena refused to provide any information and was sentenced to death, but on the morning of her execution she was pulled
out of line and told to run. Her escape had been bought with a bribe from the Polish Underground.
The tree beside which were buried the real names of the hidden children.
DESPERATE CHOICES
RECOGNITION
“I’ve tried to live a human life, which isn’t always easy”
Irena was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations
by Yad Vashem in 1965. Her close friend Lili Pohlman
spoke widely in the UK about Irena’s work and in 1999
students from Kansas made a play about her life -
finally the world got to learn about this amazing woman
and the network she coordinated.
The tree of righteousness planted in Israel in Irena’s honour with the medal she
received
Lili Pohlman, a Holocaust survivor who was born in Krakow and hidden as a child in Lvov, championing the
work of her close friend Irena Sendler.
Created by With support from
STORIES OF POLISH RESISTANCE
Józef &
Wiktoria
Ulma
Irena
Sendler
Maximilian
Kolbe Emanuel
Ringelblum
Mordechai
Anielewicz
Witold
Pilecki
Janusz
Korczak
Jan
Karski
Father
Marceli
Godlewski
Zofia
Kossak-
Szczucka
Jan &
Antonina
Zabinski
Maximilian Kolbe
Father Maximilian Kolbe 1894 - 1941
Raymond Kolbe was born in Zdunska Wola, Poland, to a devout Roman
Catholic family. When he was 12 he had a vision of the Virgin Mary which
changed his life, when he learned that he was to become a martyr. He entered
a seminary at Lvov in 1910 and was ordained as a priest in 1918. He formed a
group called “Knights of the Immaculate” which was dedicated to fighting for
goodness, encouraging people to have an interest in religion and to perform
charitable works. They published a journal which was designed to ‘illuminate
the truth and show the way to true happiness.’ In 1930 he travelled to
Nagasaki, Japan and published the journal in Japanese. Here, he did not try to
impose Christianity, but respected Buddhism and Shintoism looking for ways
to engage in dialogue. He returned to Poland in 1936 and three years later,
when the Germans invaded, he resumed his pamphleteering work and offered
assistance to Polish refugees, both Jewish and non-Jewish.
Kolbe with student priests
His work agitated the Nazi regime and he was imprisoned on many
occasions, eventually being deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. This was the
most notorious concentration camp that the Nazi’s built on Polish soil –
more than a million of the six million European Jews that were murdered in
the Holocaust died there. It was also were approximately 70,000 non-Jewish
Poles were murdered. Although it was a terrible place of death, many
remarkable stories of heroism have emerged from the testimony of
survivors, - one such example is that of prisoner 16770 - Maximilian Kolbe.
Father Maximilian Kolbe 1894 - 1941
Kolbe was incarcerated in a part of the camp where Polish non-Jewish
prisoners were kept. Even in these dreadful surroundings his instinct was to
reach out to his fellow men. Auschwitz Survivors have reported that he shared
his rations of soup or bread with others and, at night-time, moved from bunk
to bunk, saying: 'I am a Catholic priest. Can I do anything for you?'
The prisoner bunks at Auschwitz (this photo was taken many years after the war)
After the war the prisoner that Kolbe replaced said 'I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could
hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and
voluntarily offers his life for me - a stranger. Was this some dream?’
Father Maximilian Kolbe 1894 - 1941
When it was reported that another prisoner had escaped from the camp, the Nazis decide to starve 10 others in
retaliation. One of the selected men broke down and cried “My wife! My children! I will never see them again!”
Hearing this, Maximilian Kolbe stepped forward and asked to die in his place. The Germans granted this request,
probably because the young prisoner was more useful to them as a slave labourer than the much older, frailer Kolbe.
Father Maximilian Kolbe died on 14 August, 1941 and his
body was removed to the crematorium, without dignity or
ceremony, like hundreds of thousands who had gone before
him, and hundreds of thousands more who would follow.
Another survivor declared that the when the news and
circumstances of Father Kolbe's death became known it was
like 'a shock filled with hope - like a powerful shaft of light in
the darkness of the camp.'
The cell in Auschwitz where Father Kolbe died is now a shrine
and he was made a saint by Pope John Paul II in 1981. His
story continues to inspire many people today.
Father Maximilian Kolbe 1894 - 1941