Trudy Gold
Rescuers in Poland: A Dark and Complex Story

Trudy Gold - Rescuers in Poland A Dark and Complex Story

- Morning, Trudy.

• Good morning, Wendy. The weather looks beautiful.

• It is beautiful. It’s actually very hot. Yesterday was extremely, extremely hot. Morning, everybody else, whoever I can see. People are coming on very quickly, wow. This is astonishing. You open up, you think how long it takes to walk into a lecture hall.

• Oh, it’s so much better, isn’t it?

• Yeah, you just remember when you’re sort of queuing outside the great hall at university or you’re going to an art fair. You have so many people outside, it takes ages for everybody to get inside, and now…

• Life is going to change dramatically, isn’t it? Everything we do is going to be different.

• Yeah. Well, just talking about university, I just don’t think that we can start today without, just our absolute thoughts are with everybody in Cape Town. Terrible fires in Cape Town, what’s happened at the university, the burning of the library. I think we should- Trudy, I’m going to hand that over to you ‘cause absolutely devastating.

• Yes, it is.

• Manuscripts. And it’s just heartbreaking to see.

• And it’s part of the Kaplan Library. Yeah, yeah. It’s terrible, terrible.

• Shocking. Shocking. I’ve been thinking about Adam as well. Adam, you know.

• Adam Mendelsohn.

• And all our…

• All our friends.

• And all our Cape Town- All of us, all of us. All of us who’ve spent time at UCT. And just the heritage, and history, and wow. I hope the fires are under control. I’m going to hand over to you now too, Tru.

Visuals are displayed throughout the presentation.

• All right, thank you very much, Wendy. And just to reiterate what Wendy said, just support and thoughts, all of you in South Africa, particularly to Adam at the university, and just hope it’s over soon. Now, today I’m going to be addressing the issue of rescuers and I’m specifically going to Poland. Now, why? Because it was the largest Jewish community in the world. In Europe, I should say. Actually, it was the largest Jewish community in the world. Warsaw had been the largest Jewish city, just overtaken by New York. And as of the 1st of January, 2020, of the nearly 28,000 people recognised as righteous by Yad Vashem, over a quarter of them are Polish and it’s such a complicated story. But before I get onto that, I’ve been discussing something with Wendy and I’d like just to point something out to all of you. One or two of you have written about the banter that was between Dennis and David on Sunday, on Saturday.

I just want to say that I’ve discussed this with quite a few Holocaust survivors. Every one of us who’s involved in the field of Holocaust studies, and I can speak for my colleagues, takes it terribly, terribly seriously. But as Anita said to me and as other friends have said to me, somehow there has to be a relief valve. So please don’t take it as anything else. We are so respectful of our own families and of all the families, and I know how many of you online have suffered as a result of the Shoah. Perhaps the whole of the Jewish world. So please take it as it’s intended, that once in a while a little bit of steam has to be let off. And can I also say that I had a couple of calls say, “Who is Elisha Wiesel?” We are so excited. Elisha Wiesel is at Elie Wiesel’s son, and Dennis and David will be interviewing him on Sunday. And Wendy, it’s brilliant of you to have managed to ask him to come on. So we are really looking forward to that. Now, before I actually talk about rescuers, one of the most extraordinary aspects of this whole dark story, and you could also say that about any terrible tragedy, is why aren’t there more rescuers?

This is the area we really do need to study, and I suppose because, of course, Prince Philip has died, we could talk a little bit about his mother to get us into the psychology of rescuers. Most of the rescuers that I’ve read about, or studied, or actually had the opportunity to meet, they don’t see themselves as anything special. The other issue is that most of them had a kind of self-confidence that came from being loved as a child. Another interesting factor is that the majority of them are Mavericks. If you take Princess Alice, although she had an easy childhood, she married, she married the King of Greece. Tragically they lost their throne. She went into deep depression that pushed her tragically into a mental home. She had a terrible, terrible time. And she saw herself- She was deaf, so she was, if you like, the double outsider. And it was she who saved the Cohen family in Athens, and after the war, also kept an eye on them. So it’s the double outsider. She was also a religious Christian.

So religious Christian, that’s another interesting one because a lot of work has been done on why people rescued, what was their belief system? Well, frankly, some were religious, some were atheists, some were rich, some were poor, men, women, but most of them, as I said, they seems to be outsiders. And when we looked at the life of Jack Kagan, I think that came up very strongly as well. If you remember, we talked about the Dog Catcher. The Dog Catcher who escorted Jews back to the villages, from the villages to the Bielski. He was the total outsider. Jack told me that nobody ever wanted to meet him, nobody ever wanted to see him. But the outsider. And the other comment that I’ve had from outsiders is, “We got angry. Something in us got angry.” Before we can get onto the rescuers though, there’s a few very profound comments that I want to read to you, is that I think these are the issues that we really have to think about. And this is from Solzhenitsyn. The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and who is willing to destroy the piece of his own heart? Solzhenitsyn also said evil comes because we don’t know how to think. Now Simon Wiesenthal, in the last pages of the “The Murderers Are Amongst Us,” this is actually, this is written by Primo Levi in “The Drowned and the Saved,” he’s quoting Wiesenthal and he’s telling the story of what the SS said to some of the prisoners. So what you have is Primo Levi paraphrasing, “However this war may end, we have won the war against you. None of you will be left to bear witness.

But even if someone were to survive, the world will not believe him. There will perhaps be suspicious discussions researched by historians, but there will be no certainties because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proofs should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events are too monstrous to be believed. They will say they are exaggerations of Allied propaganda and believe us, who will deny everything. Not you, we will be the ones to dictate history.” Now of course they weren’t, because the Jews are the people of the book and because, of course, you have the wonderful Oneg Shabbat Archives and enough people did survive to tell the story. But it must be said. At first, those stories were not believed by Jews as well as Gentiles. A very close friend of mine, Trude Levi, when she told her story to a WIZO group, she survived Auschwitz, she was told, “Oh, we had a horrible time. We had rationing too. I’ll tell you what, I’ll take you shopping,” because when something is so horrific, do you believe it? And I’m going to come onto the whole issue of belief in a minute.

And “When asked by the young,” I’m quoting again from Primo Levi. “When asked by the young about our torturers,” the term is inappropriate, “it brings to mind twisted individuals, sadists afflicted by an original flaw. Instead they were made of the same cloth as we.” This is very much what Dennis and David were talking about when they discussed Hannah Arendt. “They were average human beings. Averagely intelligent, averagely wicked. Save the exceptions, they were not monsters. They had our faces, but they have been reared very badly.” Now, this is another very important point that I want to bring up now. And it’s something that we have no answer to, that’s why I keep on saying to Wendy, “Psychology, psychology, psychology.” Is conscience an acquired characteristic, or is it innate? Never forget the famous quote of Hitler’s, “I can never forgive the Jews for inventing moral conscience.” “They were, for the greater part, diligent followers and functionaries. Some fanatically convinced of the Nazi doctrine. Many indifferent or fearful of punishment or desirous of a new career, or too obedient.”

You see, again, obedience. The majority of the rescuers didn’t obey orders easily. Many of them had very- They didn’t have very good lives after the war because they didn’t fit into any structures. But going on about the Nazis or those who followed them, “All of them have been subjected to terrifying miseducation provided for and imposed by the schools created in accordance with the wishes of Hitler and his collaborators.” That is why school syllabus are so, so important. You have to be very, very careful as to how your children are being taught and what they are being taught. “Drill. Many have joined this… Many have joined this militia because of the prestige, it’s confirmed,” he’s talking now about the SS, “because of its omnipotence or even just to escape problems. Some, very true in truth, had changes of heart, requested transfers, gave cautious help to prisoners, or committed suicide.” And then this is his most savage indictment. “Let it be clear, to a greater or lesser degree all were responsible, but it made just as clear that behind the responsibility stands the great majority of Germans who accepted it in the beginning out of mental laziness, myopic calculation, stupidity, and national pride. The beautiful words of Corporal Hitler, followed him as long as luck and the lack of scruples favoured him, were swept away by his ruin, afflicted by death, misery, and remorse, and rehabilitated a few years later as the result of an unprincipled political game,” because as we have already discussed, the majority of those guilty of crimes against humanity were never brought to justice, and what a terrible indictment it does make of the world.

Now, in juxtaposition, this is Mordecai Paldiel who was once the director at Yad Vashem. This is a very interesting article he wrote in the “Jerusalem Post.” “The righteous person considers themselves as anything but heroes and regard their behaviour during the Holocaust is quite normal. How to resolve this enigma? For centuries, we have undergone a brainwashing process by philosophers who have emphasised man’s despicable character, highlighting his egoistic and evil disposition. Goodness leads us gasping, for refuse to see it as a natural human attribute. Evil by contrast is less painfully assimilated. We have come to terms with evil. TV movies, printed word have made evil, aggression, and egotism household terms and unconsciously acceptable to the extent of making us immune to displays of evil. In searching for an explanation of the motivation for rescuers, are we not really saying, 'What was wrong with them?’ Are we not implying that their behaviour was something other than normal? Is acting altruistically such an outlandish type of behaviour, supposedly at odds with man’s inherent characteristics?”

And of course, to finish with a quote from the Talmud. “In a place where there are no human beings, be one.” Yad Vashem honoured 28,000. That’s not many out of the population of Europe. There were thousands though who didn’t even want to be honoured and it’s been estimated that for everyone who saved, there were at least another five who had to be part of that salvation. So what I’ve really done to start with is to humanise the oppressors and to say those who saved were very much in the minority. The small amount of work that’s been done on them is really saying that they seemed to have almost… They didn’t believe they did anything special. They behaved like human beings. A very good friend of mine who was saved in Holland, I’ll never forget his story. He was saved by a man who had children of his own, and he was very carefully saved because my friend looked slightly Indonesian. And this chap, the man who saved him, passed him off as a relative from the Dutch Indonesia. He also had children of his own. When my friend was old enough, he was sent to Israel because the man said, “I looked after you, but now you must go back to your own people.”

And they stayed close all the man’s life. He never allowed himself to be honoured and my friend said to him, “Why on earth didn’t you… Why on earth did you take that terrible risk? Because if you’d been found out, your children would’ve been killed.” And he said, “I didn’t want my children to live in a world where you couldn’t.” I wonder how many of us though forget now the definition of good and evil. I think when you are a single person, you can make these decisions. But when you are in a family group, how much bravery do you have to have inside you to make that decision for your family? Or is it foolhardy? Remember what happened to the Dog Catcher. When he was betrayed to the Nazis, all his family were killed except one who survived in a concentration camp and so there is a line of descent. Now, Poland. I’ve decided to begin to address the issue of Poland again because I know from the comments I get from students and from many of you online, it’s such a complex story, isn’t it?

And remember Felix Scharf, the title of his book, “Poland, What Do I Have to Do With You?” Remember just how Jewish Poland was. Warsaw, a third Jewish. Krakow, a quarter Jewish. If you think of Bialystok, a third Jewish, and I can go on and on and on. I think Vilnius was 40% Jewish. So basically, and also the shtetls, the little towns, 50% Jewish, 60% Jewish. Jewish life in Poland with its 40 different newspapers in Vilnius, every aspect of the Jewish world. The Bund, the Zionists, left, right. Those, the assimilationist, not a large number. The Bund is incredibly important, and I want you to think also of the various religious parties, those who believe they could cooperate with Poland, those who believe they couldn’t. The vibrant life, the Yiddish theatre. The cinema, the Yiddish cinema, which was the best in the world. The literature that was pouring out. So that was the Poland against a backdrop of antisemitism. Now, the other point to make is that Poland is a deeply Catholic country.

We had a very, very interesting presentation the other week from Rabbi David Rosen when he told us quite carefully that the Catholic church, and then the record of Pius XII is complicated and I’m going to come onto that again later on in another presentation. When he told us quite carefully that the Vatican forgave us for the crime of deicide for all generations in 1965. However, they didn’t forgive the Jews of the time. So think about it. Up until 1965, the Jews were found guilty of the crime of deicide. There is that Matthews verse, “May his blood be upon our heads and upon our children.” Now, historians like Westridge, historians like Hyam Maccoby think this is the turning point. This is actually what stopped many people, who were “decent,” saving. Because the church, this negative image of the Jew, which persists from generation to generation, was not destroyed by the Enlightenment.

And if you add to it all the economic upheaval at the end of the First World War, and something else, the horrific fear as communism which was seen by many Polish nationalists, Lithuanian nationalists, Dystonian nationalists, Ukrainian nationalist, as a Jewish disease. I can speak until I’ve gone purple and say to you the majority of Jews were never communists. Nevertheless, the majority of those who disliked Jews believed that they had taken over communism. Part of that mad world Jewish conspiracy. How can I be talking this fantasy? The tragedy is that this fantasy is- We are not rational beings. If you think about this notion of the protocols and the elders of Zion, in the middle of a COIVD epidemic it’s with us again! It doesn’t go away. Look, antisemitism is a form of hatred like any other hatred. It has commonalities, but it has differences and the real difference between antisemitism and any other form of hatred is that the Jew is always ascribed power.

To say that you kill a God, that gives you a huge amount of power. That’s the deicide that Jews are accused of, the killing of God. That makes you a devil. Look, I’m not completely insane. I do not believe that non-Jews, Christians go around thinking Jews are devils and murder God, I don’t think that at all, but what I do believe, it’s so there in the, if you like, in the fabric of Western civilization that always that button can also be pressed. And with Poland, so we are talking about Catholic Poland and we’re also talking about the Poland that particularly after the death of Pilsudski had adopted a chauvinist antisemitism. What is also interesting about that chauvinist antisemitism, which I’m going to be talking about tomorrow when I talk about Zionism, it led to the Poles actually training the Hagenaar and the Irgun to fight in Palestine because that’s how they wanted to get rid of their Jews. There were pogroms in the late ‘30s. So basically you are dealing with a very antisemitic society anyway, and I’m going to start by looking at Alexander Donat. He was the publisher of Warsaw’s largest daily newspaper and he had this to say.

He was actually born Michal Berg in Warsaw and when the war broke out, he was deported into, he was forced into the ghetto, he was deported to several labour camps, and finally to Majdanek. Another point to mention about Poland is of course the major death camps were all on Polish soil. The Nazi death camps, let’s be very careful, but they were all on Polish soil and that in itself led to this kind of image. So Majdanek was both a labour camp and a death camp. He actually met another prisoner called Alexander Donat. This was to do with going out on transports for work and they agreed to swap names. Soon after, Alexander Donat was murdered and Berg decided he was going to change his name so that Alexander Donat would live forever. Now he was finally liberated from Dachau. He went to many, many camps and he found his wife and son alive. Now ironically, this again gives you the issue. His son had been placed in a Catholic orphanage and spared. When his son was reunited with his parents, he didn’t want them. He didn’t want them again anymore. He actually accused his father of being a Christ killer. However, in the end, the son did have to go with him to America.

There was a reconciliation, I mean, it was only a child. And he opened a very important printing business in America, and in 1977, he was one of the people who started The Holocaust Library which was a nonprofit organisation to tell personal stories. And his son, who became William, he became a noted publisher. He was president of Warden Press. But you see, look at the stories within a story there. Now, this is Alexander Donat’s description of the Polish response to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Now remember, when the Nazis went in after a month, longer than the whole of Poland they held out, and General Stroop with canon, with flame throwers destroyed, this is how Alexander Donat wrote about it. “Then came Easter Sunday, mass was over. The holiday crowds poured into the sun-drenched streets, heart filled with Christian love. People went to look at the new unprecedented attraction that lay halfway across the city to the north on the other side of the ghetto wall where Christ’s Jewish brethren suffered a new terrible calvary. Not by crucifixion, but by fire. What a unique spectacle.

Bemused, the crowd stared at the hanging curtain of flame, listened to the roar of conflagration and whispered to one another, that, 'The Jews, they’re being roasted alive.’ There was also awe and relief that not they, but the others, the fury and vengeance of the conqueror, there was also satisfaction.” And another point just to make the issue even more complicated. Many rescuers honoured by Yad Vashem had to leave the country because it was too uncomfortable for them to remain behind in Poland, Lithuania, et cetera. And over 40 of the Polish rescuers lived in Israel. And it must be said, they did receive help from the Israeli state. One of them, her daughter was actually killed. And so there are layers. And the other point post-war that I want to bring up now. It’s important to remember what happened at the end of the war. When the Poles finally rose up, the Warsaw Uprising, the Russians were the other side of the Vistula. Stalin just wanted them to fight it out, the Nazis and the Polish fighters. Because the Polish fighters, of course, were working for the Polish government-in-exile in London.

At the end of the war, Stalin just rolled in. 50% of the Polish Communist Party that was established was in fact of Jewish birth. They didn’t see themselves- I’m talking about the leadership. They didn’t see themselves as Jewish, but the point was they were. So in the end, it kind of stokes that particular fire of horror. So against all the complexities, let’s have a look at some of the really brave and let’s start with Jan Karski. Now I’ve already mentioned Jan Karski and I had the honour of meeting him. He was an extraordinary fine individual. He was born Jan, and I’m afraid my pronunciations are not very good so I’m going to try, Kozielewski, in Lodz on June the 24th, 1914. He came from a very strong Catholic family. His father died when he was young. Lodz was 1/3 Jewish and he grew up in a Jewish area. I think this is also important. The fact that they knew Jews. Quite a few of the rescuers tended to have relationships with Jewish people. He went into the military. He graduated first in his class. He was in the fifth regiment of mounted artillery. When the Nazis rolled in with their tanks against the Uhlani brigade as so many of these brave soldiers on horseback. It’s a tragedy.

Anyway, having graduated, he went into the diplomatic corps. He was stationed in Romania, in Germany, Switzerland, and in Britain. Gave him a very good training, and he passed out first in the Grand Diplomatic practise exams and went to work on the 1st of January, 1939 in the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the war, he was in the Cavalry Brigade. And after defeat, he tried with his army to reach Hungary. He was captured by the Red Army. He was held prisoner in a camp which is now in the Ukraine and he was transferred to the Germans because he’d been born in Lodz. He was transferred to the general government, and thus escapes that terrible massacre in Katyn when 22,000 Polish officers were murdered by Stalin. You see, that is the other issue. Poland sees itself as a tragic victim. You know, at the end of the war, when Berman, who was number two in the Russian Communist Party- I beg your pardon, the Polish Communist Party, Jewish, when he realised the death toll of over three million Jews, he also said, “We have to say three million Poles died because we have to make the balance.” So the Poles saw the war as a terrible tragedy. 22,000 of the officer class.

The Nazis destroyed the Polish Intelligentsia, remember. The whole notion was that the Poles are to be the Slavs of the Third Reich. And the Nazis thought they should be the slaves, that’s what Slav is, slave of the Third Reich. So from a Polish point of view, a horror story is unfolding. He was also, and I should also mention that along with the 22,000 at Katyn, the chief rabbi of the Polish Army, Baruch Steinberg, was murdered. So again, even though there’s antisemitism in Poland, there are Jewish officers fighting in the Polish army, including, of course, some of those who later became the heroes of the Warsaw ghetto fighting. So he escaped in 1939 and joined the first resistance movement in occupied Europe, which was the predecessor of the Polish Home Army. He adopted the nom de guerre Jan Karski, so I’m going to refer to him as Karski from now on, and he began, he was working- Remember, his loyalty is to the Polish government-in-exile and he begins to organise dispatches to the Polish government.

And remember, Europe is porous, it’s dangerous, but he makes trips to France, Britain, Poland. He is taking news. And on one of his trips, he’s arrested in Slovakia which was allied to Germany. Much more about Slovakia next week. He was captured by the Gestapo in the Tatra Mountains. He was seriously, severely tortured, but he was helped to escape. And he was backwards and forwards. He knew what was going on with the Jews and he had himself smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto where he, and I’ve mentioned this to you already when I looked at the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, he met, of course, the Bundist, Leon Feiner, to discuss what was happening in the Warsaw ghetto, smuggled him in where he also meets up with Zionist leaders. Feiner was a very interesting Polish Jewish lawyer and he is going to be involved in the Polish health organisation called Zegota, which is going to be set up to help Jews and this is the message that Karski was to take with him to London. He also smuggled himself to the edge of a camp.

There’s been a lot of dispute about that. We now know that it was really an outlying camp. It was not Treblinka, but he had enough of an information to know what was going on, and he writes incredibly movingly of the scenes that met him in the Warsaw ghetto. And this is the message that Feiner sent with Karski. “Tell the Jewish leaders they must find the strength to make sacrifices no other statesmen have ever had to make. Sacrifices as painful as the fate of my dying people and as unique.” And it was Karski who took the report to Szmul Zygielbojm and to Ignacy Schwarzbart, who were the two Jews working with the Polish government-in-exile in London. He was twice smuggled into the ghetto. His reports were actually transcribed by Walentyna Stocker, who was the personal secretary to General Sikorski. And it was actually Karski’s report that was part of the basis for the declaration that we looked at last week. There was another man who was absolutely extraordinary, a man called Witold Pilecki. He was the member of the Polish army, and then after the defeat he became part of the Polish Underground. And he actually had volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz.

Now Auschwitz, when it was set up originally, was a labour camp for Poles. He actually was imprisoned in Auschwitz in March, 1941. And he sent numerous reports. And Jan Karski actually met- Jan Karski also used his reports so he could report back to the Polish government in London as to what was going on. He met with an Anthony Eden. He also met up with Arthur Koestler, the important Hungarian Jewish writer in London. And later on he went to America, he met with Brandeis, he met with Roosevelt. And what broke his heart is that in fact he wasn’t really believed. And that is something all his life that haunted him. He brought back what he considered to be incontrovertible evidence. Yes, there was the Allied Declaration, and what they said was that they were going to punish the guilty. But in the end, we are going to find out that very, very few measures were taken to actually save. And this man, of course, he never could go back to Poland. He was from the Polish Home Army. And he finished up in America, where he became a professor at Georgetown University. He was honoured by the Yad Vashem. After the collapse of communism, of course, he was also honoured by the Polish state. He is really a hero of Poland, and really, I think, anyone’s hero. He married a Jewish woman, by the way. He knew Jews. He was a man of huge rectitude, and obviously incredibly brave. Reckless brave. That’s another feature that many rescuers have.

They are reckless. I’d like now to show you some pictures. This is Sikorski. He’d been put Commander of the Polish Army, he founded the Armia Krajowa, and of course he is in London throughout the war. Tragically, he was killed in 1943. After the Russians entered the war, he tried to patch up relations with the Russians through their ambassador, Ivan Maisky, who ironically was a Polish Jew, but he was killed in a plane crash with his daughter in 1943. And can we also see the next. This is Edward Racynski, who was the Foreign Minister, and he was the one who made the broadcast talking about what was happening to the Jews of Europe. And it’s his letter to the Allies. Remember, from Karski that leads to the Allied Declaration. But what about in Poland itself? In Poland, a committee had been set up, the Provisional Committee to Aid the Jews. It was actually set up by Polish Catholic activists. Two women, Zofia Kossak-Szczucka- I hope I pronounced it correctly.

And I really hope that Fredery is online to help me. And Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. And now, also a Jew was involved, a man called Henryk Wolinski of the Home Army. Now this is Henryk Wolinski. He was integrated into the Polish Underground state. He was a fascinating character. He had been a lawyer in the Warsaw administration before the German invasion. Sorry, he wasn’t Jewish. He had a Jewish wife. That’s right. And he mixed with many Jews. Many from the Jewish Bar Association. And he mixed a lot with the Jewish Intelligentsia. You’ve got to remember that in Warsaw, there was a small number of Jews who were integrating, who were assimilationists because there was a Polish Intelligentsia and he was very much one of them. On the 1st of February, 1942, he is made head of the Jewish Department of the Armia Krajowa, the Home Army. And he was also part of the report that was smuggled to the Polish government-in-exile. During the Great Deportations of 1942, July the 22nd to September ‘42, he received daily reports from whom? From Polish railway men of the trains going to the death camps. And also he received the reports from Pilecki, that Pole who had smuggled himself into Auschwitz. He served as the Polish government-in-exile’s liaison with ZOB, working with Arie Wilner, who I’ve already talked about.

And he was one of the people who was behind Zegota. He himself harboured in his apartment over 25 people, sometimes for a few days, sometimes for weeks. Because the idea was if you could get people out of the ghetto, you would then keep them in safe houses and then send them on. After the war, he remained in communist Poland. He worked as a lawyer. He retired in '76, he died in '86. He was recognised by Yad Vashem. And in 2008, he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. So you see, the Poles are also proud of these characters. But now, can we have a look at the women, if you don’t mind. Now, she is a fascinating woman. She was the daughter of Tadeusz Kossak, who was the twin brother of the painter, and a granddaughter of a very famous artist. She was a very important writer. She married twice. And both her husbands were intellectuals. She wrote mainly for the Catholic press. She wrote a memoir on the Russian Revolution.

She was violently anti-communist. And in 1936, she received the Gold Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature. She wrote many popular historical novels. Her most famous, “Blessed are The Meek,” which deals with the Crusades, and another book, “Francis of Assisi,” which was translated into several languages. Most of her books are on religious themes. Now, during the German occupation, she worked for the Underground press. She co-edited “Poland Lives.” Now, she first founded the Catholic organisation, Front for the Rebirth of Poland, and edited the newspaper, “Prawda.” “Truth.” And when the liquidation of the ghetto began in the summer, the big deportation, she wrote something called “Protest.” Now, she was antisemitic. She blamed the Jews for the death of Jesus. She was a staunch Catholic, but she wrote- And she’s one of Poland’s most important writers. She wrote, “All will perish… Poor and rich, old, women, men, youngsters, infants, Catholics dying with the name of Jesus and Mary together with Jews. Their only guilt is that they were born into the Jewish nation condemned to extermination by Hitler.” She’s talking about those Jews who had converted to Catholicism.

They were the ones that particularly upset her. And that also brings me to the case of Edith Stein. Again, misunderstandings between the Poles and the Jews. Edith Stein was a Polish nun who died in Auschwitz. The Polish Catholics said she was a Catholic martyr. The Jews said she died because she had Jewish parents. So again, the misunderstanding. But this is what this woman wrote. “England is silent, so is America, even the influential international Jewry, so sensitive in its reaction to any transgression against its people, is silent.” So it’s fascinating. To me that’s tinged with antisemitism. Let me repeat it. “England is silent, so is America, even the influential international Jewry, so sensitive in its reaction to any transgression against its people… Poland is silent. Dying Jews are surrounded only by a host of Pilates washing their hands in innocence. Those who are silent in the face of murder become accomplices to the crime.” Is that true? If you are silent in the face of murder and you do nothing, are you an accomplice? “Our feelings towards the Jews have not changed. We do not stop thinking of them as political, economic, and ideological enemies of Poland, but this does not relieve Catholics of their duties to oppose the crimes being committed in their country.”

I found that absolutely fascinating. Let me repeat it. “Our feelings towards the Jews have not changed. We do not stop thinking of them as political, economic, and ideological enemies of Poland, but this does not relieve Catholics of their duties to oppose the crimes being committed in their country.” She was arrested, sent to Auschwitz. Her real identity was revealed, so she’s sent back- She’s important, so she’s sent back to Warsaw. The Polish Underground managed to get her out. She participated in the what Warsaw Uprising. Under the communist government, Jacob Berman, remember I’ve told you, he’s Jewish. He’s the Jewish Minister of the Interior. He told her to leave the country because he knew from his brother, Adolf, who’d been very involved in Jewish affairs, how much she’d helped the Jews. So she returned, she went to America. But then she returned to Poland in 1957. In 1964, she signed a letter asking for the freedom of Poland.

She was honoured by Yad Vashem. And in the introduction to “Rethinking Poles and Jews,” without at all whitewashing her antisemitism, in the document, she vehemently calls for active intercession on behalf of the Jews, precisely in the name of Polish Roman Catholicism and Polish patriotism. The deportations precipitated her co-founding Zegota. So this is an antisemitic woman who founds Zegota. Now, let me come on to other great figures, please. Now, this is Matylda Getter. I should mention she founded it with Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz, who was also a great zealot. But Matylda Getter, she was a fascinating woman. Her dates were 1870 to 1968. And as you can see, she was a nun. She was a Franciscan. A sister of the family of Mary in Warsaw, she was a social worker in pre-war Poland. She saved hundreds of Jewish children. Before the war, she’d already founded over 20 institutional and care facilities for children. And not only did she save Jewish children, she took on the responsibility of obtaining birth certificates and hiding them in the orders of educational institutions.

Why? Because if their families ever came for them, she wanted them to know that they were born Jews. She was a very, very special woman. She lived a long life and she also was honoured in Israel. Now, Wanda Filipowicz. Interesting, unlike her co-founder of Zegota, she was very left wing. She had fought for Polish independence. She’d been born in 1886. She took part in an assassination attempt on the Russian government. And she became involved in left wing politics. She published a magazine called “Arkady,” and again, worked for orphaned children. She was very interested in the environment. She wanted a good environment for the poor. Involved in the creation of public parks and gardens in Warsaw, wrote many books, translated into many languages. She was on the Gestapo’s hit list. She had to keep on changing her address. After the war, she was imprisoned by the Soviets, but she managed to, they let her out and she went into exile in Sweden, penniless. She had a huge influence on Jan Karski, who adored her. She would smuggle herself into the ghetto to help.

She was very much a socialist intellectual. And when she fled to Sweden with no money, her daughter also survived, they found out there’d been so many royalties from their books that they managed to live a reasonable life. She was very well connected. She was actually the wife of a former Polish ambassador to Washington. And now I’d like to come on to the saintly Irena Sendler. There’s a film about on Prime. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a very good film, and it doesn’t really do justice to Irena Sendler, who saved thousands of people. And look at that wonderful face. She was born in 1910, and she survived to 98 in 2008. She was the daughter of the doctor from Warsaw. She grew up quite close to the Jewish community. And remember, there were as many poor Jews in Warsaw as there were poor Gentiles. Her father treated the very poor, including Jews, free of charge. She had a father who obviously had a huge moral compass. He actually died in 1917 from Typhus, which he contracted from his patients.

And after his death, the Jewish community tried to support her and her mother, but they refused the help. They were very proud. But that’s how loved he was. This was a man who devoted his time to help. And he was an intellectual, just as the other two women were intellectuals. One left wing, the other right wing. 1927, she’s very bright, she studied law and literature at the University of Warsaw as a woman, and it was the height of the ghetto bench system. This is when Jewish students had to sit separately from Poles and there was a lot of antisemitism at the universities. Right wing antisemitism. A lot of attacks on Jews. And the non-Jewish students had a non-Jewish identification on their grade card, and she defaced hers. And she reportedly suffered a lot of academic disciplinary charges, measures because of her reputation as a Jew lover and a communist. In 1928, she joined the Polish Socialist Party. She repeatedly was refused work because of negative reports from the university, “She was a Jew lover, she was a troublemaker.” And she was also very much influenced by a group of women at the Polish University. These women were social workers.

There was a group of very splendid social workers. They were led by Professor Helena Radlinska. About a dozen of these women are later going to be involved in rescuing Jews. And she talked a lot about the poverty of the Jews that she encountered, very much smashing the myth of Jewish money. In the '30s, she was employed in legal counselling for mothers and children. She was very much- So she’s a left wing activist, she has a huge social conscience, she is a feminist, she publishes two pieces of literature in 1934, talking about the dangers, how illegitimate children- How many children are born out of wedlock and there is no care for them, how the mothers are being scorned by the state and by their families, and the terrible situation they find themselves in. In 1935, the government abolished this section. So she went to work for the Department of Social Welfare. She married, she married twice. In fact, her second husband was a Jew. Now in World War II, of course the Germans banned any assistance to Jews. And she was involved, first of all, in helping sick and wounded Polish soldiers.

She generated false medical documents, but what she then did, working for this commission, because there was Typhus in the ghetto, that was her entry and she would go into the ghetto to try and see if the epidemic would spread to the Aryan side, that was her excuse. But she bought clothes in, food, necessities, and she smuggled out babies, small children. It became the priority by 1942. And remember since October '41, giving any assistance to Jews was punishable by death. And basically, it’s estimated she saved thousands of Jewish children. And later on she worked with Zegota. In 1963, she listed 29 people who helped with Zegota in the ghettos, and added that 15 more had perished. She said this, “Every child saved by my help is the justification by my existence on this earth and is not a title of glory.” October '43, she took over the section. And what she also did was she kept the records of all the children. Now, this is a very complicated area, because she was arrested and she managed to pass those records onto somebody else. She survived, and these records were important because did the Catholic church want to return Jewish children who had been baptised?

It’s a huge story. She was about to be executed when a German guard was bribed and she was let out. She was in the Warsaw Uprising. And in December, 1945, under the communists, she became the Department Head of Social Welfare in the Municipal National Government. An extraordinary woman. I hope I haven’t rushed her too much, because I really did want to tell her story properly and I think she’s an extraordinary woman. So let’s have a look at the time and questions, Wendy. Let’s have a look at some of the questions.

Q&A and Comments:

Now, people are talking about the fires, which is so sorry… And this is from Michael. “I’m a child of survivors. I often ask myself, 'What would I have done?’”

“Princess Alice did not marry the King. The King of Greece was her husband’s brother.” No, I don’t think so. I think Princess Alice was- I think he was the King of Greece. I think he became the King of Greece. Check that out, will you?

“Alice married Prince Andrew, son of the King.” We must check this out.

Now, this is from Marilyn. “I had given the rescuers a lot of thought. My conclusion is often something in a person’s background which enables the person to be a rescuer.” Well, Irena Sendler obviously had a father with a huge moral compass. She also herself had huge conscience from a young age. She mixed a lot with Jews. She helped them at university.

This is from Arlene Goldberg. “I have a lot of difficulty understanding how people thrive on being evil or unnecessarily mean. Can you explain why people behave badly?” Oi, if I could, if I could. If any of us could. This is why it’s so important with a group such as ours to look at these stories.

“There are two people involved, Oscar Schindler-” Oh yes, there are many survivors. There are many rescuers. I had to choose. Look, there are, according to Yad Vashem, there are 28,000 rescuers. And every story should be told.

“Prince Philip’s father was Prince Andrew, the heir to the Greek throne, not the King.” All right, I will take your words for it.

Q: “Which country was the first to fall under the Nazi invasion?”

A: Poland. Well, Czechoslovakia in a way, but war begins- Well, it depends, you could say the Sudetenland, then he goes home to Austria. War begins with the invasion of Poland. When he went into Czechoslovakia, he wasn’t stopped. So it depends how you are defining it.

“Also, many of the rescuers did not survive.” No. A Danish participant in the rescuers, remember the fishing fleet did manage to get most of the Danes to Sweden.

“We allowed ourselves to be decent. My father was recognised by Yad Vashem, but he too felt that he’d not do anything special.” Oh, Gida, maybe you could tell that story. That’s extraordinary. Also with Denmark, you’ve got to remember that the Jews were very well integrated. It was near Sweden. If you think about it, so they could get them across the water. Sweden was neutral. The other point to make is that in Belarus, when I talked about the Bielski, the forests, there was somewhere to escape to. And these are people liking what Dennis and David did.

Q: This is a hard one. “Why didn’t the Polish Underground help the Jews, providing them weapons so that they could rebel?”

A: Well, that’s a complicated question. And when I talked about the Warsaw ghetto, there was a certain amount of arms. In fact, the revisionist got more than the others. Look, there was good old fashioned antisemitism. The Poles themselves felt that they needed the arms. Look, there’s so much distrust between Jews and Poles. I’m trying to hold the balance. Never forget that Poland is the only country in the world, as far as I know, that has an ambassador to the diaspora.

Q: Thelma, “Were the Polish antisemites mainly for the cities or the small villages?”

A; Thelma, I’m afraid it’s most- But then if you actually think about, what does antisemitism mean? Look, I showed you last week some of the comments of the British Foreign Office figures. I needed you to see that because I didn’t think you’d believe it without seeing it, because it’s absolutely extraordinary. Look, if you are cynical, like me, one of the reasons I used to work in China before it tightened up, was that antisemitism is a completely unknown factor in China, as it is in Hindu, India. Tragically, it is a product of the world of monotheism. It’s a deep, complicated story. And if you want to study the history of antisemitism, there are thousands of books. My favourite historian is actually the late great Professor Robert Wistrich. Okay, I’m biassed, he was my mentor, but I think his last great work is the one to read. But there are so many, I mean, you can start with Raul Hilberg. Look, maybe we should give you a book list on this, a bibliography, but it’s such a dark, dark subject.

Q: Now, this is from Marilyn. “Poland was occupied by the Germans and the Russians. Do you not think that the Poles’ objective was to free their country from the occupiers, not the Jews?”

A: Yeah, sure. I mean, self-interest, Marilyn. Good point. And it was a time of great shortages. We know that when there’s trouble, we blame the other. So yeah, I mean, it didn’t mean they were evil, you know? This is the problem. How do you define evil?

This is Anna. This is from Anna, “When I interviewed my beloved mother, a blessed memory, the only survivor or extended family, I learned that the local priest helped to hide her for a few days, secured a new identity, and told her to tell people she was an orphan and told her how to pray in a church. After a few days, since it was very dangerous for anyone to help Jewish people, the priest explained she had to leave. And it was a miracle my mother survived.” So you see, there were good Catholics. One of the problems with Pius XII, if he had issued an encyclical, thousands more priests would have obeyed him. So I’m afraid when I talk about Pius XII and the Vatican, I don’t think I’m going to say the same… Although I greatly respect Rabbi Rosen and I very much, I thought his presentation was superb, I don’t quite take the same line.

Q: “Were people moved from camp to camp?

A: Yes, they were.

Judith Hayman, "Austria was also a Catholic country. A 100,000 ecstatic Austrians welcomed Hitler.” Yeah. You see, I think one of the great tragedies of the Jews, if you think particularly those working in the German language, they thought they’d taken the culture, the music, every aspect of Austrian and German culture and improved it. Theirs was such a terrible tragedy.

This is from Jackie Rudin. “My late mother-in-law had three cousins, a mother, and two daughters in a farm in Poland till the end of the war. How brave the farmer must have been to hide them. After the war, these cousins went to live in Paris.” Yes, and I wonder if he realised what he’d done! Because so many of these people were just decent.

Cheryl, “You spoke about the killing of a Polish daughter of one of the Polish-” Yes, she was killed by other young teenagers.

“Trudy and Judy, well, this is really for Wendy, could we have someone to discuss the origins of human evil and origins of good conscience?” That is something that Wendy and I have been talking about and we are working towards it. It’s a very, very, very, very difficult one because we are at a very early stage of understanding.

Q: “A few weeks ago I asked the question, ‘In the light of what is happening to Jews in Poland with antisemitism still so ingrained, how can Jews still want to live there?’”

A: Okay. When I first visited Poland under communism, I was told that there were about 6,000 there. Now I’m told the community is about 30,000. There’s some very, very strange things happened. A lot of children were saved by Poles. Brought up as Catholics. I’m talking about babies now. When their parents died, they’re middle-aged people and their deathbed confessions are, “By the way, you are Jewish.” After the collapse of communism, believe it or not, there was a helpline established for all these individuals. There is a festival of Jewish culture in Krakow. There are rabbis. There’s Rabbi Schudrich who’s the rabbi of Poland, there is a rabbi of Galicia, there is the form, there is Habad, there are all sorts of organisations. The Lauder Foundation has done amazing work setting up schools. Some Jews have not revealed their Jewishness under communism, families. Families finding out they are of Jewish roots. There’s probably about 30,000 of them.

Q: Do I believe you can resurrect Jewish life in Poland?

A: No, I don’t think you can. I find it very, very strange, but I do know at the Jagiellonian University, I’ve met a lot of sincere Poles who are studying Jewish literature, Jewish music, Jewish poetry. They know they lost something precious. There are also those who have no problems with the Jews. You have, I think, one of the greatest museums in the world in Poland, but you also have a government which has said that it’s a crime to say the Poles colluded. The work of Dayan Gross, who I used to work with, he’s a fine historian, and he’s been working on the numbers of massacres that Poles themselves initiated. You see, Poland sees itself as a victim. It doesn’t want to hear anything else.

Now, “In London at the Polish Fighters Museum, there’s an archive which includes Polish archival material of Polish soldiers in Palestine. Source of information-” Are you referring to to Anders’ Army? Yeah, there’s a lot of work to be done on that. There’s still a lot of research to be done, yes.

And this is from Myra. “Is it reckless or brave?”

Q: This is from Francine. “Would I speak about Aristides de Sousa Mendes? He saved 30,000.”

A: You know, I’ve had to make choices. He was wonderful. He was the Portuguese. About 20 years ago, we had an exhibition at the London Jewish Cultural Centre of 18 diplomats who saved, and all the ambassadors showed up ‘cause they were so proud. The Japanese ambassador became because of Sugihara. Of course you have the extraordinary Raoul Wallenberg, you have Lutz in Switzerland. I can go on and on and on. You know, Frank Foley. You had the Chinese consul in Vienna who was giving out papers for Shanghai. Honestly, there were always good people. And again, there’s no rule. They came from different backgrounds. And there’s an extraordinary story, you know. When I was in China, we taught a workshop on three rescuers. One was a man called John Rabe, who was a member of the Nazi party, a German. He saved Chinese in the Nanjing massacre. When the Japanese invaded, they murdered over 300,000 Chinese and he saved thousands. There was Sugihara, a Japanese consul in Kaunas who saved thousands of Jews by giving them visas. And then there was Manli Ho in the Chinese consul in Vienna, who saved. So there were always individuals of great spirit and heart. If we could bottle their essence- Look, what have I suggested? A lot of them didn’t do well after the war. Just think about Schindler. Some of them had reckless personalities. Many of them were disobeying orders. But the other thing that I’ve found out researching the lives of many of the rescuers, they really were outsiders in their own ways. They were dafke.

Oh, this is Victoria. Thank you, and my pronunciation is so bad.

Q: Hi, Wilke, “Wish you would talk about your own experiences in 1968. I wonder if Trudy knows Polish antisemitism ended in 1965.”

A: Sorel, I’m quite well aware of what happened in 1967, '68. I’m talking about the war, and one of the things we will be, as we go on in the course, we will be talking about more modern history. Look, at the end of the war, there are about 30,000 Jews who remained in Poland. One of the areas I haven’t talked about is the huge number, over 120,000, who fled at the end of the second World War because of antisemitism. A lot of survivors were murdered. And then in 1967, '68, 20,000 more got out. That’s why I said that when I first went to Poland, I was told there are about 5,000 Jews left.

Thank you, Joanna. “All these Poles in exile you were describing certainly contributed to an understanding.”

I’m sorry, I think, Anita, when I- Most of the people I mentioned, apart from the those who ran the government, have been awarded the medal by Yad Vashem. So I take the Yad Vashem as the benchmark.

“The Polish government-in-exile provided money and intelligence to Zegota, which was not in exile. Zegota members were active in occupied Poland.” Yes, thank you for that clarification. Yes, that’s right.

Jonathan. “Menachem Begin reached Palestine from General Anders’ Army. That was after spending two years in the Gulag.” Yes he had an extraordinary life, didn’t he?

Risa Bar comments, “If we remain silent, then we are complicit.”

Okay. Wendy, I think that’s… People are talking about the fires. I’m just trying to see if there’s any more questions that should be answered.

This is from Barbara, because I think I better answer this if you don’t mind. “I have a hard time with Rabbi Stephen Wise, who prevented hundreds of rabbis asking President FDR for the railway lines bombed.”

Barbara, when we come to America and Hungary, I promise you I will be addressing this issue. Wendy and I made the decision that we would have to go chronologically because there is so much information. And as Patrick said yesterday, we are really skimming the surface because obviously this is such a deep, dark issue that has affected so many of us. But what we are trying to do is to give honour and at the same time not go too deeply into the heart of darkness.

• [Wendy] Trudy, thanks so much. Yes, I agree, and you know, I know that there was a comment yesterday or the day before that David and Dennis were a little bit frivolous, but as you quite rightly said, “You know what? Times are so dark.” And how difficult it is for you also. How many times have we discussed between us that you actually didn’t want to do the Holocaust ‘cause it’s too stressful and too depressing. So just apologies to anybody and everybody who felt offended. It was totally unintended. And also just to say to all of you that initially when we started lockdown, everybody was able to participate and talk to each other. And that is how we maintain the feeling of family and connectedness. And a number of people have said to me, 'cause sometimes I think, “Oh, well, it’s just really so frivolous. I’m coming on and having this chat in the beginning,” but so many people online initially said, “Wendy, we are so isolated and so alone, the only continuity that we have really is seeing you and Trudy and a couple of people. So please continue that.” So I’m sorry that some of you have to listen to frivolous banter or nothingness about my children or what’s going on in our lives, but this is just really to continue the thread of connectedness and family, and yeah, just being together. And now that we’ve grown to 12,000 people, it’d be so cool if we all could talk, but unfortunately it just doesn’t work. Before that- I was just about to say, before that. Before that we had people getting dressed, remember? Doing gym, doing all kinds of things that we saw on Zoom and they interrupted all these presentations with these distractions. I won’t go onto other things that we saw. But in a nutshell, that is why we changed to the webinars and we just managed to maintain it that way.

• And can I echo everything that Wendy has said. What she has tried to do, what we’ve tried to do is to create a kind of family community. And I know it’s easier for those of you who’ve been on a long time because you’ve got to know us and how we operate, but every one of you are welcome and we want you to feel a community, and I just want to echo everything that Wendy said. And also she’s done this with such amazing heart, and don’t forget that. So bless you all. And those of you in Cape Town, we’re all so worried and I just hope that things are all right. And let’s keep safe. And tomorrow I’m slightly changing tack because I’m looking at Zionism in the Shoah, which is quite interesting. And if you got cross over the Foreign Office, you wait to hear what I’ve got to talk about tomorrow. Anyway, Wendy, lots of love and I’ll see you tomorrow.

• [Wendy] Yep. Fantastic. Enjoy the rest of your day everybody. Thank you. And to you, thanks, Trudy. Bye-bye.

• Bye-bye.