The Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) presented on 23 March, on the eve of the National Day of Remembrance of Poles Saving Jews under the German occupation, the results of research on the role and participation of the Polish clergy in saving Jews.

The Catholic University of Lublin (KUL) reported that almost 100 religious orders in more than 500 institutions and more than 700 diocesan priests in at least 580 localities in occupied Poland provided aid to Jews during the Holocaust. The role of the Polish clergy in saving Jews was discussed by scholars from Poland and Israel, as well as by counsellor Ryszard Tyndorf, author of the new publication „Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy”.

The presentation of the two-volume monograph by counsellor Ryszard Tyndorf, who lives permanently in Canada and has been dealing with issues relating to the attitudes of Catholic Church people towards Jews for many years, took place at the Abraham J. Heschel Centre for Catholic-Jewish Relations of the Catholic University of Lublin, as part of the academic conference “Rescuing people doomed to non-existence. Help given to Jews by priests and nuns during the Holocaust in occupied Polish territories”.

The monograph ‘Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Clergy’, printed by the Publishing House of the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), was presented by Prof. Wacław Wierzbieniec from the University of Rzeszów. This historian specialises in the history and culture of Jews in nineteenth and twentieth century Poland, the history of the Catholic Church in the twentieth century and the subject of charity and philanthropy in social life. 

The book is a study of rescue of Jews carried out by the Catholic Church and its clergy in German-occupied Poland during World War II. The study is based primarily on the testimonies of Jewish survivors and Poles giving them aid, supplemented by Church documentation. 

Adrian Andrzejewski