Some estimates put the number of Poles involved in rescue at up to 3 million, and

credit Poles with saving up to around 450,000 Jews from certain death. [2] The rescue
efforts were aided by one of the largest anti-Nazi resistance movements in Europe,
the Polish Underground State and its military arm, the Armia Krajowa. Supported by
the Polish government in exile, these organizations operated special units dedicated
to helping Jews; of those, the most notable was egota Council based
in Warsaw with branches in Krakw, Wilno and Lww.[4]
Polish citizens were hampered by the most extreme conditions in all of Germanoccupied Europe. Occupied Poland was the only territory where the Germans
decreed that any kind of help for Jews was punishable by death for the helper and
their entire family. Of the estimated 3 million non-Jewish Poles killed in World War II,
up to 50,000 were executed by Nazi Germany solely as penalty for saving Jews.
[2]
After the War most of this information was suppressed by the Soviet-installed
satellite regime in an attempt to discredit Polish prewar society and its wartime
government as reactionary.[5] Before World War II, 3,300,000 Jewish people lived in
Poland ten percent of the general population of some 33 million. Poland was the
center of the European Jewish world.[6]
The response of the Polish majority to the Jewish Holocaust covered an extremely
wide spectrum, often ranging from acts of altruism at the risk of endangering their
own and their families lives, through compassion, to passivity, indifference, and
blackmail.[9] Polish rescuers also faced threats from unsympathetic neighbours, the
Polish-German Volksdeutsche,[9] the ethnic Ukrainian pro-Nazis,[10] as well as
blackmailers called szmalcowniks along with
Jewish collaborators from agiew andGroup 13. Holocaust testimonies confirm that
the Jewish criminal underworld took advantage of inside information about the
socio-economic standing of their own compatriots who were trapped in the ghettos.
Jewish looters knew much better than anyone else "where to dig for valuables"
wrote Isaiah Trunk and Rubin Katz.[11]There were cases of denunciations or even
participation in Nazi German "cleansing" actions such as the Jedwabne pogrom. The
operational guidelines for the implementation of the anti-Jewish actions were
formulated by Reinhard Heydrich,[12] who ordered his Einsatzkommando chiefs to
induce them on territories newly occupied by the German forces. [13][14] Nevertheless,
statistics of the Israeli War Crimes Commission indicate that less than one tenth of 1
per cent of Poles collaborated with the Nazis. [15]

Rudolf Weigl
NonJewish Poles provided assistance to the Jews in an organised fashion as well as
through varying degrees of individual efforts. Many Poles offered food to Polish Jews
and left food in places Jews would pass on their way to forced labour. Others
directed Jews who managed to escape from the ghettos to people who could

help them. Some sheltered Jews for only one or a few nights, others assumed full
responsibility for the Jews' survival, well aware that the Nazis punished those who
helped Jews by summary killings. A special role fell to the Polish medical doctors
who alone saved thousands of Jews through their subversive practise. For
example, Dr. Eugeniusz azowski, known as Polish 'Schindler', saved 8,000 Polish
Jews from deportation to death camps, by faking an epidemic of typhus in the town
of Rozwadw.[16][17] Free medicine was given out in the Krakw Ghetto byTadeusz
Pankiewicz saving unspecified number of Jews.[18] Rudolf Weigl employed and
protected Jews in his Institute in Lww. His vaccines were smuggled into the local
ghetto as well as the ghetto in Warsaw saving countless lives.[19] It is mostly those
who took full responsibility who qualify for the title of the Righteous Among the
Nations.[20] To date, a total of 6,066 Poles have been officially recognized by Israel as
the Polish Righteous among the Nations for their efforts in rescuing Polish Jews
during the Holocaust, making Poland the country with the highest number of
Righteous in the world.[21][22]
Statistics[edit]
The number of Poles who rescued Jews from the Nazi persecution would be hard to
determine in black-and-white terms, and is still the subject of scholarly debate.
According to Gunnar S. Paulsson, the number of rescuers that meet Yad Vashem's
criteria is perhaps 100,000 and there may have been two or three times as many
who offered minor help; the majority "were passively protective." [22] In an article
published in the Journal of Genocide Research, Hans G. Furth estimated that there
may have been as many as 1,200,000 Polish rescuers.[23] Richard C. Lukas estimated
that upwards of 1,000,000 Poles were involved in such rescue efforts, [2]"but some
estimates go as high as three million."[2] Lukas also cites Wadysaw Bartoszewski, a
wartime member of egota, as having estimated that "at least several hundred
thousand Poles ... participated in various ways and forms in the rescue
action."[2] Elsewhere, Bartoszewski has estimated that between 1 and 3 percent of
the Polish population was actively involved in rescue efforts; [24] Marcin
Urynowicz estimates that a minimum of from 500 thousand to over a million Poles
actively tried to help Jews.[25] The lower number was proposed by Teresa
Prekerowa who claimed that between 160,000 and 360,000 Poles assisted in hiding
Jews, amounting to between 1% and 2.5% of the 15 million adult Poles she
categorized as "those who could offer help." Her estimation counts only those who
were involved in hiding Jews directly. It also assumes that each Jew who hid among
the non-Jewish populace stayed throughout the war in only one hiding place and as
such had only one set of helpers.[26] However, other historians indicate that a much
higher number was involved. Paulsson estimates that it might have taken a "dozen
or more" people for each person hidden. [27][28] Polish-Jewish historian Szymon
Datner confirmed that usually more than a dozen were involved. [29] Paulsson wrote
that, according to his research, an average Jew in hiding stayed in seven different
places throughout the war.[22]

An average Jew who survived in occupied Poland depended not on the actions of a
single rescuer, but on many acts of assistance and tolerance, wrote Paulsson.
[22]
"Nearly every Jew that was rescued, was rescued by the cooperative efforts of
dozen or more people."[22] Paulsson notes that during the six years of wartime and
occupation, the average Jew was sheltered in seven different locations, had three or
four sets of documents, two or three encounters with blackmailers, and faced
recognition as a Jew multiple times.[22] Datner explains also that hiding a Jew by a
dozen or more Christians lasted often for several years thus increasing the risk
involved for each family exponentially.[29] Polish-Jewish writer and Holocaust
survivor Hanna Krall has identified 45 Poles who helped to shelter her from the
Nazis[29] and Wadysaw Szpilman, the Polish musician of Jewish origin whose
wartime experiences were chronicled in his memoir The Pianistand the film of the
same title identified 30 Poles who helped him to survive the Holocaust. [30]
Meanwhile, Father John T. Pawlikowski referring to work by other historians,
speculated that claims of hundreds of thousands of rescuers struck him as inflated.
[31]
Likewise, Martin Gilbert has written that under Nazi regime, rescuers were an
exception, albeit one that could be found in towns and villages throughout Poland.
[32]

There is no official number of how many Polish Jews were hidden by their Christian
countrymen during wartime. Lukas estimated that the number of Jews sheltered by
Poles at one time might have been "as high as 450,000." [2] However, concealment
did not automatically assure complete safety from the Nazis, and the number of
Jews in hiding who were caught has been estimated variously from 40,000 to
200,000.[2]
Difficulties[edit]

The wall of ghetto in Warsaw, being constructed by Nazi German order in August
1940
Efforts at rescue were encumbered by several factors. The threat of the death
penalty for aiding Jews and limited ability to provide for the escapees were often
responsible for the fact that many Poles were unwilling to provide direct help to a
person of Jewish origin.[2] This was exacerbated by the fact that the people who
were in hiding did not have official ration cards and hence food for them had to be
purchased on the black market at high prices. [2][33] According to Emmanuel
Ringelblum in most cases the money that Poles accepted from Jews they helped to
hide, was taken not out of greed, but out of poverty which Poles had to endure
during the German occupation. Israel Gutman has written that the majority of Jews
who were sheltered by Poles paid for their own up-keep, [34] but thousands of Polish
protectors perished along with the people they were hiding. [35]

There is general consensus among scholars that, unlike in Western Europe, Polish
collaboration with the Nazis was insignificant.[2][36][37][38] However, the Nazi terror
combined with inadequacy of food rations, as well as German greed and the system
of corruption as the only "one language the Germans understood well", [39] wrecked
traditional values. Poles helping Jews faced unparalleled dangers not only from the
German occupiers but also from their own ethnically diverse countrymen
including Volksdeutsche,[9] and Polish Ukrainians,[40] many of whom were antiSemitic and morally disoriented by the war. [41]There were people, the socalled szmalcownicy[42] ("shmalts people" from shmalts or szmalec, Yiddish and
Polish for grease and slang term for money), who blackmailed the hiding Jews and
Poles helping the Jews, or who turned them to the Germans for a reward. Outside
the cities there were peasants of various ethnic backgrounds looking for Jews who
hid in the forests, to demand money.[39] There were also Jews turning in other Jews
and non-Jewish Poles for profit, [11] or in order to alleviate hunger with the awarded
prize.[43] The vast majority of these individuals joined the criminal underworld after
the German occupation and were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of
people, both Jews and the Poles who were trying to save them. [44][45][46] The fear of
denunciation not only deterred many Jews from attempting to find shelter among
Poles, but also discouraged well-intentioned Poles who feared denunciators and
slanderers.[47]
According to one reviewer of Paulsson, with regard to the extortionists, "a single
hooligan or blackmailer could wreak severe damage on Jews in hiding, but it took
the silent passivity of a whole crowd to maintain their cover." [44] He also notes that
"hunters" were outnumbered by "helpers" by a ratio of one to 20 or 30. [22]According
to Lukas the number of renegades who blackmailed and denounced Jews and their
Polish protectors probably did not number more than 1,000 individuals out of the
1,300,000 people living in Warsaw in 1939.[2][48]

Public execution of Micha Kruk and several other ethnic Poles in Przemyl as
punishment for helping Jews, 1943
Michael C. Steinlauf writes that not only the fear of the death penalty was an
obstacle limiting Polish aid to Jews, but also some prewar attitudes towards Jews,
which made many individuals uncertain of their neighbors' reaction to their
attempts at rescue.[49] Number of authors have noted the negative consequences of
the hostility towards Jews by extremists advocating their eventual removal from
Poland.[50][51][52][53] Meanwhile, Alina Cala in her study of Jews in Polish folk culture
argued also for the persistence of traditional religious antisemitism and anti-Jewish
propaganda before and during the war both leading to indifference. [54][55] Steinlauf
however notes that despite these uncertainties, Jews were helped by countless
thousands of individual Poles throughout the country. He writes that "not the
informing or the indifference, but the existence of such individuals is one of the

most remarkable features of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust." [49]

[54]
Nechama Tec, who herself survived the war aided by a group of Catholic Poles,
[56]
noted that Polish rescuers worked within an environment that was hostile to Jews
and unfavorable to their protection, in which rescuers feared both the disapproval of
their neighbors and reprisals that such disapproval might bring. [57] Tec also noted
that Jews, for many complex and practical reasons, were not always prepared to
accept assistance that was available to them.[58] Some Jews did not expect help from
the Poles in fact, some were surprised to have been aided by some people who
expressed antisemitic attitudes before the war. [22][59] Similar sentiment was
expressed by Mordecai Paldiel, former Director of the Department of
the Righteous at Yad Vashem, who writes that the widespread revulsion at the
murders being committed by the Nazis was sometimes accompanied by a feeling of
relief at the disappearance of Jews. [60] A Yad Vashem study of egota cites an
interview, in which the organization's Deputy Chairman, Tadeusz Rek, mentions his
report to the representatives of the Polish government-in-exile claiming "that the
overwhelming majority of Polish society are hostile toward those extending
relief."[61] Paulsson and Pawlikowski write that overall, such negative attitudes were
not a major factor impeding the survival of sheltered Jews, or the work of the rescue
organization egota.[22][59]
The fact that the Polish Jewish community was destroyed during World War II,
coupled with stories about Polish collaborators, has contributed, especially among
Israelis and American Jews, to a lingering stereotype that the Polish population has
been passive in regard to, or even supportive of, Jewish suffering. [22] However,
modern scholarship has not validated the claim that Polish antisemitism was
irredeemable or different from contemporary Western antisemitism; it has also
found that such claims are among the stereotypes that comprise anti-Polonism.
[62]
The presenting of selective evidence in support of preconceived notions have led
some popular press to draw overly simplistic and often misleading conclusions
regarding the role played by Poles at the time of the Holocaust. [22][62]
Punishment for aiding the Jews[edit]

Announcement of death penalty for Jews captured outside the Ghetto and for Poles
helping Jews
In an attempt to discourage Poles from helping the Jews and to destroy any efforts
of the resistance, the Germans applied a ruthless retaliation policy. On November
10, 1941, the death penalty was introduced by Hans Frank, governor of the General
Government, to apply to Poles who helped Jews "in any way: by taking them in for
the night, giving them a lift in a vehicle of any kind" or "feed[ing] runaway Jews or
sell[ing] them foodstuffs." The law was made public by posters distributed in all
major cities.[63]

The imposition of the death penalty for Poles aiding Jews was unique to Poland
among all German occupied countries, and was a result of the conspicuous and
spontaneous nature of such an aid.[64] For example, the Ulma family (father, mother
and six children) of the village of Markowa near acut where many families
concealed their Jewish neighbors were executed jointly by the Nazis with the eight
Jews they hid.[65] The entire Woyniec family in Romaszkace was massacred for
sheltering three Jewish refugees from a ghetto. In Maciuce, for hiding Jews, the
Germans shot eight members of Jzef Borowski family along with him and four
guests who happened to be there.[66] Nazi death squads carried out mass executions
of the entire villages that were discovered to be aiding Jews on a communal level. [21]
[67]
In the villages of Biakanear Parczew and Sterdy near Sokow Podlaski, 150
villagers were massacred for sheltering Jews. [68] In November 1942, the Ukrainian SS
squad executed 20 villagers from Berecz in Woy Voivodeship for giving aid to
Jewish escapees from the ghetto in Povorsk.[69] According to Peter Jaroszczak "Micha
Kruk and several other people in Przemyl were executed on September 6, 1943
(pictured) for the assistance they had rendered to the Jews. Altogether, in the town
and its environs 415 Jews (including 60 children) were saved, in return for which the
Germans killed 568 people of Polish nationality." [70] Several hundred Poles were
massacred with their priest, Adam Sztark, in Sonim on December 18, 1942, for
sheltering Jews in a church. In Huta Stara near Buczacz, Polish Christians and the
Jewish countrymen they protected, were herded into a church by the Nazis and
burned alive on March 4, 1944.[71] In the years 1942-1944 about 200 peasants were
shot dead and burned alive as punishment in the Kielce region alone.[72]
Entire communities that helped shelter Jews were annihilated, such as the nowextinct village of Huta Werchobuska near Zoczw, Zahorze near achwa,[73] Huta
Pieniacka near Brody[74] or Stara Huta near Szumsk.[75]
Additionally, after the end of the war Poles who saved Jews during the Nazi
occupation very often became the victims of repression at the hands of
the Communist security apparatus, due to their instinctive devotion to social justice
which they saw as being abused by the government. [72]