The Religious Orders and the Jews in Nazioccupied Poland

Summary

Work on the problem of the reciprocal relations between Catholic monks and nuns - a religious elite in Christian society - and the Jewish communities condemned to death by Nazi barbarism is beginning in many places. It is a difficult problem on several counts. What should never be forgotten, in considering it, is the general context of the occupation in Poland: the atmosphere of terror which was far greater there than elsewhere, particularly in the West, the universal fear and mistrust, and the Germans’ use everywhere, often effectively, of the practice of ‘divide and rule’ as an instrument of power.

In 1939 before the war, there were forty-four religious orders in Poland, with 350 houses and 6,430 men; there were also eighty-four female congregations, with 2,289 houses and 21,914 nuns. Nazi persecution had very serious effects on this whole world of holy orders: hundreds of houses were closed down especially in the lands annexed to the Reich; thousands of monks and nuns were held in camps and prisons (580 monks and 289 nuns lost their lives); traditional activities everywhere had to be restricted to what was essential and possible in such difficult conditions.

But at the same time the communities of monks and nuns generally worked with sobriety and energy in serving Christian society by maintaining its moral standards, by teaching, and by giving effective help to the poorest, most abandoned people. The latter was particularly true in the case of the nuns whose role has been completely neglected for too long. We are only beginning to grasp the part they played, especially in the cities where poverty was so grinding and so widespread, particularly during the hard winter of 1939-40.

It is within this general framework that the problem of the attitudes of monks and nuns towards the tragedy of the Jews must be discussed. We also need to remember how dangerous it was to provide real help when even a small act of assistance during the time of the final exterminations could be punished by the death penalty. We have evidence about at least a few of the more important clerics who took up a definite position: it was plainly a Christian's duty to help the most unfortunate people of the time, the Jews.