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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