Zofia Kossak-Szczucka was a Polish writer and World War II resistance fighter. She co-founded two wartime Polish organizations: Front for the Rebirth of Poland and Żegota, set up to assist Polish Jews to escape the Holocaust. In 1943, she was arrested by the Germans and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp, but survived the war.
Żegota was the Polish Council to Aid Jews with the Government Delegation for Poland, an underground Polish resistance organization, and part of the Polish Underground State, active 1942–45 in German-occupied Poland. Żegota was the successor institution to the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews and was established specifically to save Jews. Poland was the only country in German-occupied Europe where such a government-established and -supported underground organization existed.
Irena Stanisława Sendler (née Krzyżanowska), also referred to as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, nom de guerreJolanta, was a Polish humanitarian, social worker, and nurse who served in the Polish Underground Resistance during World War II in German-occupied Warsaw. From October 1943 she was head of the children's section of Żegota, the Polish Council to Aid Jews.
The Kraków Ghetto was one of five major metropolitan Nazi ghettos created by Germany in the new General Government territory during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It was established for the purpose of exploitation, terror, and persecution of local Polish Jews. The ghetto was later used as a staging area for separating the "able workers" from those to be deported to extermination camps in Operation Reinhard. The ghetto was liquidated between June 1942 and March 1943, with most of its inhabitants deported to the Belzec extermination camp as well as to Płaszów slave-labor camp, and Auschwitz concentration camp, 60 kilometres (37 mi) rail distance.
In Poland, the resistance movement during World War II was led by the Home Army. The Polish resistance is notable among others for disrupting German supply lines to the Eastern Front, and providing intelligence reports to the British intelligence agencies. It was a part of the Polish Underground State.
Irene Tomaszewski is a Canadian writer, editor and translator of Polish descent living in Montreal, Canada.
The Provisional Committee to Aid Jews was founded on September 27, 1942, by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz. The founding body consisted of Polish democratic Catholic activists associated with the Front Odrodzenia Polski, Polska Organizacja Demokratyczna, Związek Syndykalistów Polskich and PPS-WRN. The codename for the organization was "Konrad Żegota Committee" and the same codename was retained for the direct successor, the underground Council to Aid Jews.
Szmalcownik ; in English, also sometimes spelled shmaltsovnik) is a pejorative Polish slang expression that originated during the Holocaust in Poland in World War II and refers to a person who blackmailed Jews who were in hiding, or who blackmailed Poles who aided Jews, during the German occupation. By stripping Jews of their financial resources, blackmailers added substantially to the danger that Jews and their rescuers faced and increased their chances of being caught and killed.
Polish Jews were the primary victims of the Nazi Germany-organized Holocaust in Poland. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, Jews were rescued from the Holocaust by Polish people, at risk to their lives and the lives of their families. According to Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons identified as rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. By January 2022, 7,232 people in Poland have been recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations.
Zofia Baniecka was a Polish member of the Resistance during World War II. In addition to relaying guns and other materials to resistance fighters, Baniecka and her mother sheltered over 50 Jews in their home between 1941 and 1944. Later, Baniecka was an activist with the Intervention Bureau of the Polish Workers' Defence Committee in 1977. She and her husband were active participants in the Solidarity movement in the 1980s, distributing underground press. In her professional capacity, Baniecka was a long-time member of the Warsaw chapter of the Association of Polish Artists and Designers (ZPAP).
Halina Krahelska was a Polish activist, publicist and writer.
Jerzy and Irena Krępeć, a Polish husband and wife, living in Gołąbki near Warsaw during Nazi German occupation of Poland in World War II, were the Righteous who rescued Polish Jews with families including refugees from the Ghetto in Warsaw during the Holocaust.
The Częstochowa Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the purpose of persecution and exploitation of local Jews in the city of Częstochowa during the German occupation of Poland. The approximate number of people confined to the ghetto was around 40,000 at the beginning and in late 1942 at its peak, immediately before mass deportations, 48,000. Most ghetto inmates were delivered by the Holocaust trains to Treblinka extermination camp, where they were murdered. In June 1943, the remaining ghetto inhabitants launched the Częstochowa Ghetto uprising, which was extinguished by the SS after a few days of fighting.
The Będzin Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi Germany for the Polish Jews in the town of Będzin in occupied south-western Poland. The formation of the 'Jewish Quarter' was pronounced by the German authorities in July 1940. Over 20,000 local Jews from Będzin, along with additional 10,000 Jews expelled from neighbouring communities, were forced to subsist there until the end of the ghetto history during the Holocaust. Most of the able-bodied poor were forced to work in German military factories before being transported aboard Holocaust trains to the nearby concentration camp at Auschwitz where they were exterminated. The last major deportation of the ghetto inmates by the German SS – men, women and children – between 1 and 3 August 1943 was marked by the ghetto uprising by members of the Jewish Combat Organization.
Matylda Getter was a Polish Catholic nun, mother provincial of CSFFM in Warsaw and social worker in pre-war Poland. In German-occupied Warsaw during World War II she cooperated with Irena Sendler and the Żegota resistance organization in saving the lives of hundreds of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto. She was recognized as one of Polish Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem for her rescue activities.
Front for the Rebirth of Poland also translated as the Front for a Reborn Poland was a clandestine anti-Fascist organization formed in 1941 in occupied Poland during World War II, by a group of secular Catholics of Warsaw led by Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Father Edmund Krauze. The Front upheld Christian ideals of the prewar Catholic Action movements existing in the Polish Second Republic as part of the cross national European groupings of lay Catholics.
Protest! was a clandestine leaflet issued in 1942 as a protest by Polish Catholics against the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland.
Irena Scheur-Sawicka was a Polish archaeologist, ethnographer, and educational and communist activist. During World War II she joined the Polish Workers' Party. She was active in the Polish resistance during World War II and, together with Żegota, in helping Jewish refugees from the Warsaw Ghetto. She died in the Warsaw Uprising.
The Żegota Monument is a stone monument dedicated to the Żegota organization, which rescued Jews during the Holocaust in Poland. It is on Anielewicza Street in Warsaw in the Muranów neighborhood of Warsaw, Poland, near the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes and the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
