Their Brothers’ Keepers

By Philip Friedman

This book documents the tales of scores of Christian heroes and heroines from all walks of life, in various European countries, who aided the oppressed escape the Nazi terror.

Christians in Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Greece, France, Italy, Hungary and Eastern Europe defied Gestapo truncheons to be their brothers’ keepers. Fully documented addition to material which has not been treated before in this way.

“...One of the most thrilling stories of our generation, excitingly written and well-documented...it serves as an inspiration for all those who have the courage to express their love to their fellowman...”—The Very Rev. JAMES A. PIKE, Dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York

“...a major document of human solidarity, this story testifies to the survival of the spirit of heroism, as well as of martyrdom, in behalf of humanitarian ideals.”—Professor SALO W. BARON, Columbia University

“...I commend this work to all who are interested in seeing how people reached up gentle hands and took Christ’s law of love out of the sky and...put it into practice...I hope it is read by millions.”—Rev. JOHN A. O’BRIEN, University of Notre Dame

• Language: English
• Publisher: Borodino Books
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789124682

Philip Friedman

Philip Friedman (1901-1960) was a Polish-Jewish historian and the author of several books on history and economics. Born Filip Friedman on April 27, 1901 in Lwów, he studied at the Jan Kazimierz University, the University of Vienna, and the Jewish Paedagogium under Salo Baron. He moved to Łódź in 1925 after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna. He taught at a leading Hebrew secondary school in Łódź, as well as at the People’s University of that city, at YIVO in Vilna (1935), and at the Taḥkemoni of Warsaw (1938-1939). He also continued his historical research. In autumn of 1939 he returned to Lwów, where he worked in the Science Academy of Ukraine. At the beginning of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Lwów, Friedman went into hiding outside the Lwów Ghetto. Friedman survived World War II, but lost his wife and daughter. After the war he taught Jewish History at the University of Łódź and served as the director of the Central Jewish Historical Committee, collecting testimonies and documentation on Nazi war crimes, including his own on the concentration camp at Auschwitz, which he later published. He published further historical works, including several monographs on various destroyed Jewish communities such as including Białystok and Chełmno, whilst simultaneously teaching Jewish history at the University of Łódź (1945-1946). He was a member of the Polish State Commission to Investigate German War Crimes in Auschwitz and Chełmno. After testifying at the Nuremberg trials, Friedman immigrated to the U.S. in 1948, and from 1951 until his death, he served as lecturer at Columbia University. From 1949, he also headed the Jewish Teachers Seminary and taught courses at the Herzliya Teachers Seminary in Israel and was the Research Director of the YIVO-Yad Vashem Joint Documentary Project, a bibliographical series on the Holocaust, from 1954-1960. Friedman died in New York City on February 7, 1960.

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Text originally published in 1957 under the same title.

© Borodino Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THEIR BROTHERS’ KEEPERS

BY

PHILIP FRIEDMAN

Foreword by Rev. John A. O’Brien, S.J., Ph.D.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

FOREWORD 4

INTRODUCTION 8

CHAPTER ONE—THE HEART OF WOMAN 14

CHAPTER TWO—BATTLE OF THE BADGE 22

CHAPTER THREE—FRANCE 29

CHAPTER FOUR—THE LOW COUNTRIES 41

CHAPTER FIVE—ITALY: THE RELUCTANT ALLY 50

CHAPTER SIX—HUNGARY: THE UNWILLING SATELLITE 55

CHAPTER SEVEN—WE LET GOD WAIT TEN YEARS 65

CHAPTER EIGHT—THE UNVANQUISHED 72

Czechoslovakia 72

Yugoslavia 74

Bulgaria 75

Greece 76

CHAPTER NINE—FOR YOUR FREEDOM AS WELL AS OURS! 79

CHAPTER TEN—EASTERN EUROPE 94

The Ukrainians 94

The Lithuanians 98

Latvia and Estonia 102

Belorussia 102

CHAPTER ELEVEN—WE WILL NOT SURRENDER THE JEWS! 104

CHAPTER TWELVE—MIRACLE OF THE EXODUS 108

CHAPTER THIRTEEN—RAOUL WALLENBERG: HERO OF BUDAPEST 115

CHAPTER FOURTEEN—FELIX KERSTEN AND FOLKE BERNADOTTE 120

CONCLUSION 128

NOTES AND REFERENCES 129

LIST OF ABBREVIATED BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES 131

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 132

FOREWORD

The story of Hitler’s efforts to solve the Jewish problem in Germany and in all the countries which fell under the yoke of the Nazis, by the simple expedient of exterminating them, has often been told. It is a ghastly and shocking tale of brutality, torture, and murder, which in deliberate, systematic savagery on a grand scale is probably unsurpassed in all the annals of human history. From such a rehearsal readers instinctively recoil, for it does not make pleasant reading.

Alongside of this depressing chronicle there is another which has been related only in fragments, and too seldom: it is the story of the compassion, sympathy, bravery, and heroism of the thousands of men and women who shielded and befriended the victims at the risk of imprisonment, torture, and death. This is a story which needs to be told if we are to get a true picture of the moral caliber of the people whose homelands were used for the liquidation of the Jewish population. It is needed to balance the degradation and baseness of the Jew-baiters with the gallantry and heroism of the Jew-aiders.

This is the report which Philip Friedman presents. It is timely, reassuring, and inspiring. It shows that nineteen centuries of Christian teaching were not without results. So deeply had the fundamental law of the Christian religion, the duty to love one’s neighbor, been woven into the warp and woof of the Christian conscience that thousands in all lands defied the sternest edicts and threats of the Gestapo and sheltered Jews in their homes, in monasteries, churches, convents, orphanages, and rectories. They proved that they were their brothers’ keepers and that not in vain had Jesus of Nazareth related the parable of the Good Samaritan.

This was the faith which prompted Jozefek, the cattle dealer in Lwów, to shelter thirty-five Jews even though it led to his being hanged in the public square. Such, too, was the belief which motivated the Mother Superior and the nuns of the Benedictine convent at Vilna to hide imperiled Jews in their convent, and to clothe them in their own garb in order to hide them more effectively; it prompted them to scour the countryside for food for them and to offer to die with them in their ghetto. This was the creed which nerved the Protestant minister, Pastor Vergara, to rescue at the risk of his life seventy Jewish children who were in danger of being killed. Such, too, were the ideals which buttressed Edoardo Focherini, editor of the Bologna Catholic daily Avvenire d’Italia, to rescue Jews even though it cost him the lives of his seven children in a concentration camp.

How inspiring it is to see Archbishop Saliège of Toulouse defy the Nazi occupation authorities with the fearless ultimatum: There is a Christian morality...that confers rights and imposes duties. These duties and these rights come from God. One can violate them. But no mortal has the power to suppress them...The Jews are our brethren...No Christian dare forget that...France, which cherishes in the conscience of all its children the tradition of respect for the individual...is not responsible for these horrors.

In that brave utterance the Archbishop was but echoing the words of Pope Pius XI, spoken to a great gathering when Hitler was seeking to press his anti-Semitic measures upon Italy. Pointing out the close kinship between the Hebrew tradition and Christian culture, the Pontiff stressed our spiritual descendence from Abraham: Anti-Semitism is a repugnant movement in which we Christians can have no part...We are the spiritual offspring of Abraham. So stirred was the venerable prelate as he pleaded for the protection of Jews from the cruel measures of the Nazis that tears came into his eyes, and he ended his address with the memorable statement: "Anti-Semitism is inadmissible. Spiritually we are Semites. In using the term Semites," he wished to identify himself with the persecuted victims of the anti-Semitic campaign then darkening the skies of Europe.

That the pronouncements of church authorities were no idle utterances but found lodgment in the minds, hearts, and actions of their members is evident from the accusation hurled at the Church by the pro-Nazi journalist, Jacques Marcy: Every Catholic family shelters a Jew...Priests help them across the Swiss frontier...Jewish children have been concealed in Catholic schools; the civilian Catholic officials receive intelligence of a scheduled deportation of Jews, advise a great number of refugee Jews about it, and the result is that about 50 per cent of the undesirables escape.

How inspiring it is to see Protestant, Greek Orthodox, and Catholic clergymen and members of their respective flocks thunder their protests against the anti-Semitic measures of the Nazis and risk their lives in the attempt to rescue Jews from the claws of the prowling Gestapo!

Alas! all too often the Christian people of the countries under the Nazi heel were compelled to undergo the horror of watching in stunned silence and agonizing impotence as their Jewish neighbors were seized and shipped to the gas ovens of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau. Why? Because they could not fight armored tanks and machine guns with bare hands. Such was the predicament of millions who loathed the Nazi creed and all its works.

It is not the least of the merits of this book that the author not only refrains from any sweeping indictment of the captor peoples, but is eager to point out numerous typical instances of high heroism on the part of the population in rescuing Jews from the terrible fate which the Nazis had in store for them. The work shows clearly that they were more sinned against than sinning This verdict is confirmed by the horror and revulsion experienced by most Europeans in learning only after the war of the extent of the Nazi success in liquidating approximately six million of the eight million Jews in the countries groaning under Hitler’s domination.

This is a work not of heat, but of light. It seeks not to inflame the passions of vengeance but to throw the spotlight upon the mercy, compassion, decency, and honor which flowered in the action of so many people in all walks of life. They were peasants, housewives, factory workers, teachers, professional men, and clergy of all faiths, who fought with bare hands against the mightiest military juggernaut in modern times; they fought for the despised and persecuted Jew, and by their sacrifices and heroism they have enriched all humanity and strengthened the solidarity of human brotherhood. They make us proud of our common humanity and give ground for the hope that the ultimate victory will rest on the side of decency and honor. These are the true heroes of our time and they will be enshrined in the hearts and minds of men as long as memory endures.

While the work is narrative in character, and rarely wanders into the detours of reflection, some conclusions of peculiar timeliness and relevance can scarcely fail to make their impact upon the reader. Foremost among these is the enormous hazard inherent in the very nature of the totalitarian state. How else can one explain the immeasurable destruction, suffering, and death inflicted upon the world by the ascent to power of a Hitler or of a Stalin? The whole gigantic machinery of government is perverted into the execution of their sadistic urges, blood-lusts, and irrational hatreds. What a silent but eloquent plea for the principles of democracy with its system of checks and balances, and its widespread distribution of power, rooted in the franchises of its citizens!

Another truth which emerges from this narrative in an impressive manner is this: racial and religious hatred is a luxury in which no nation or group can indulge without the danger of setting its own house on fire. It is like playing with dynamite or—even worse!—with hydrogen bombs. The insensate fury which such hatred releases comes back to plague and bestialize the hater: it degrades, demoralizes, and dehumanizes him as no external enemy can possibly do.

It affords a striking illustration of the inescapable fact that we are all traveling in the same boat. The occupant who drives a hole under the part where his neighbor is seated, finds that the water engulfs him as well and carries him to destruction. This little book teaches us to purge our hearts of all the hatreds which blight our common humanity: such is an altruism which pays rich dividends; it is good patriotism, good Judaism, good Christianity and plain common sense.

The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly fine. The Third Reich which Hitler boasted was to last for a thousand years went down into the rubble under the shells of Russian guns and bombs from American planes. It has faded from the earth like an ugly memory, a poisonous gas, a hideous nightmare. Out of the holocaust arose the remaining persecuted, decimated Jews who were to have been exterminated forever; with them arose the Republic of Israel and nationhood for the outcast children of Israel in their ancestral homeland. Here is retribution on a cosmic scale for Nazi hatred, oppression and cruelty: the unwritten final chapter in Mein Kampf.

The cannons of war are silenced now. Subdued, if not altogether banished, is the hatred of the Jews which the Nazis whipped into a frenzy never witnessed before. Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald live only as symbols of horror and infamy. Can such an outrage happen again? Civilization must build up its defenses—social, cultural and spiritual—so that the massacre of any people will never again be attempted. The struggle will not be an easy one. It must be waged with courage, determination, and with all the light which science and religion can throw upon man’s groping efforts to emancipate himself from the strait jacket of racial and religious hatreds in order to see in every man his brother.

This book encourages, guides, and helps us in that enterprise. Although the author personally experienced the lash of Nazi cruelty, he writes in a calm, objective manner, and seeks with surprising magnanimity to focus attention chiefly upon the humane, noble, and heroic deeds of mercy, self-sacrifice, and love which relieve the horror of the Nazi nightmare. He thus sets an example for each of us. I commend this work to all who are interested in seeing how people reached up gentle hands and took Christ’s law of love out of the sky and, even in the fiery ordeal of war, put it into practice; how, in fact, they became their brothers’ keepers. It is a stimulating and inspiring story and I hope it is read by millions.

Father John A. O’Brien

University of Notre Dame

INTRODUCTION

The vast area of Europe seized and held by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II contained approximately 8,300,000 Jews. It is estimated that 6,000,000 perished by Nazi lethal devices, disease, or starvation. Considering that Hitler mobilized all of Germany’s resources for the avowed purpose of annihilating the Jews, and that in this work he found helpers and collaborators among the native population in almost all Nazi-occupied countries, it is indeed a miracle that more than 2,000,000 remained alive. Those surviving were saved by flight, emigration, or evacuation before the arrival of the Germans and the changeable fortunes of war. But at least a million Jews survived in the very crucible of the Nazi hell, the occupied areas.

How this million survived is the theme of our story. These candidates for the Nazi crematoria could not have lived to witness the collapse of the Reich that was to endure a thousand years if they had relied on their own resources. The miracle could not have been accomplished without the active assistance of the Christian population.

We will never know how many of the approximately 300,000,000 Europeans who lived briefly under the Nazi heel helped Jews. It is not the number that matters. What matters is that a small army of valorous men and women opened their hearts and their homes to a people marked for extinction, defying the invader and death itself. In the words of the Jewish writer, Sholem Asch:

"It is of the highest importance not only to record and recount, both for ourselves and for the future, the evidences of human degradation, but side by side with them to set forth the evidences of human exaltation and nobility. Let the epic of heroic deeds of love, as opposed by those of hatred, of rescue as opposed to destruction, bear equal witness to unborn generations.

On the flood of sin, hatred and blood let loose by Hitler upon the world, there swam a small ark which preserved intact the common heritage of a Judeo-Christian outlook, that outlook which is founded on the double principle of love of God and love of one’s fellow men. The demonism of Hitler had sought to overturn and overwhelm it in the floods of hate. It was saved by the heroism of a handful of saints.

In European countries occupied or dominated by Germany, the reaction to anti-Semitic laws and the policy of extermination varied considerably. Many factors were responsible for this. First, there were the conditions prevailing in the individual countries before the Nazi assault. Some countries—the Western and Scandinavian—had a long history of liberal and democratic traditions so that the general population tended to be sympathetic to countrymen of Jewish origin. Similarly, the Greeks, the Bulgarians, and the Czechs tried to help the Jews. In other countries, particularly in Eastern Europe, where centuries of serfdom, drudgery, and oppression by foreign occupying powers gave root to exaggerated nationalistic feeling, xenophobia, and hatred, the general population was least likely to risk Nazi displeasure. Here only a small, though significant, minority dared to help the Jews or even to manifest feelings of sympathy for the persecuted. In all countries, large groups of people were neutral or just indifferent to the sufferings of their fellow citizens of Jewish origin. In some countries, passive humanitarians—those who were sympathetic but too afraid to dare to express their opinions or to help the Jews—constituted a large group of the population. Considering this background, one must regard the gallant few whose bravery rescued so many of the doomed as even greater heroes.

Hiding a Jew was not an easy matter. It required more than willingness, courage, and readiness to imperil the lives of one’s family; a proper place was necessary, an ability to camouflage the hide-out, contact with like-minded individuals who would risk taking the Jew in the event of an imminent raid. Experience had taught the host as well as the one in hiding that movement of and frequent changes in hiding places were essential for survival. Thus, the saving of one Jew or a whole family often involved the co-operation of many Christians. Frequently a Jewish family was divided among several hosts. Hiding a large family or a group of Jews in a private home, particularly in urban areas, almost inevitably ended in disaster. Sizable groups found shelter in monasteries, convents, mountain hide-outs, or bunkers in the woods; they fared less well in cities or even small towns. It was difficult to buy provisions for those in hiding; tongues would begin to wag, neighbors grow suspicious. In the large cities it was possible to buy small quantities of food in scattered black-market centers and thus avoid arousing suspicion, but in smaller localities this technique was difficult to apply. Many homes did not have inside toilets, and so there was the problem of disposing of refuse. A great deal of ingenuity was required when a guest became ill or died, or when a pregnant woman was about to give birth. The presence of small children increased the danger of being found out. Sleeping pills were used liberally to keep children from crying excessively.{1}

The building and arrangement of hiding places became an art. People built double walls and hanging ceilings behind which Jews sometimes lived for years. Attics and cellars were camouflaged. Used also were annexes in old office buildings, as was done in the case of the Franks in Amsterdam. Jews were hidden in pigsties, cowsheds, stables, haystacks, or cemetery graves. Emanuel Ringelblum, martyred historian and archivist of Warsaw, his family, and a score of Jews who had escaped the last agonizing moments of the burning ghetto were accommodated in a specially prepared underground bunker of a Polish gardener, Pan Wolski. On top of this ingenious hide-out a sprouting greenhouse was planted as a disguise. Had not an informer carried word to the Gestapo, the eminent Ringelblum and the saintly Polish gardener, Wolski, might be alive today.

Hiding places were often so cramped that the Jews inside took turns lying down. Some places were so crowded those in hiding were forced to stand immobile for hours, and were permitted to exercise their limbs only in the dark of night when their host let them out for a brief period. A Jewish woman hiding in Warsaw lived for eighteen months in a standing position. After the Nazis were driven out, she required hospitalization to cure her legs. There are two recorded cases of pigeon houses being used as places to hide. Meir Stein of Warsaw lived in a pigeon house located near a forest. The Polish Underground supplied him with food and water. Stein, who was named The Eagle by his friends, survived the Nazis; his inspiring story was put into verse by a Jewish poet in Brazil. Gusia Obler of Halicz, who escaped the pogroms of September, 1942, found shelter in a pigeon house in a suburb of Lwów. Her host, a Polish brush-maker, eventually became fearful of reprisals and induced her to leave. But she survived and now lives in Israel.{2}

There are known cases of hospital personnel hiding Jewish women. On occasion, even a Jewish male desperate for shelter was accommodated in a hospital bed, although the presence of a circumcised patient imperiled the whole staff. During the Nazi reign of terror in Kraków, a Jewish mother brought her small boy to St. Lazarus Hospital. The boy had a broken leg. Both mother and child had Aryan documents, but Dr. Lachowicz, the chief physician, and the admitting nurse both took note of the fact that the prospective patient was circumcised. His presence at the hospital would be deemed by the Germans a crime punishable by death. However, the doctor and nurse admitted the boy but sent the mother away. The boy’s leg was treated, and his belly bandaged as a precaution against Gestapo visits. During one such raid, Dr. Lachowicz refused to remove his young patient’s bandages, pleading with the Gestapo that the boy was a Christian, assuring the Germans that on their next visit he would show them proof. Two weeks later the Gestapo returned, but the boy was no longer on the premises. The staff had removed him to a convent in the neighborhood of Miechow. The Germans, who did not neglect making periodic searches among the nuns also, found the boy and threatened to execute him. The nuns insisted the boy was a Christian. They presented an official statement, signed by