In Germany, for example, ecumenical networks organized the rescue of Jews - the word 'ecumenical' reflecting the fact that Lutherans and Roman Catholics were willing to set aside their differences in order to oppose the Nazis and save as many Jewish lives as possible.
In Poland, however, the situation was different. Poland was, at the outbreak of the war, approximately 95% Roman Catholic and 5% Jewish (exact numbers vary). There was no need for an ecumenical spirit: the Polish underground was seamlessly Roman Catholic. Among the many tales of heroism emerging from wartime Poland is the narrative of a zoo in Warsaw which was used to hide Jews from the Nazis. Historian Diane Ackerman writes:
Jan and Antonina Zabinski were Christian zookeepers horrified by Nazi racism, who capitalized on the Nazis' obsession with rare animals in order to save over three hundred doomed people. Their story has fallen between the seams of history, as radically compassionate acts sometimes do. But in wartime Poland, when even handing thirsty Jew a cup of water was punishable by death, their heroism stands out as all the more startling.
The occupation of Warsaw (and the rest of Poland) was a long affair. Nazis had occupied the city since October 1939. The Nazis would leave in January 1945, as the Soviet Army began its occupation of the city. After more than five years of Nazi oppression, the city of Warsaw would then be subjected to Stalinist oppression. The Nazi occupation was, of course, explicitly anti-Semitic, pursuing its objective of killing as many Jews as possible.
Unlike other occupied countries, where hiding Jews could land you in prison, in Poland harboring a Jew was punishable by immediate death to the rescuer and also to the rescuer's family and neighbors, in a death-frenzy deemed "collective responsibility." Nonetheless, many hospital workers disguised adult Jews as nurses, drugged small children to quiet them before smuggling them out in knapsacks, and planted people in funeral carts under a heap of corpses. Many Christian Poles hid Jewish friends for the whole length of the war, even though it meant reduced rations and relentless vigilance and ingenuity. Any extra food entering the house, unfamiliar silhouettes, or whispers seeping from a cellar or closet might inspire a visiting neighbor to notify the police or tip off the city's underbelly of blackmailers. The wayfarers often spent years in the dark, barely able to move, and when they finally emerged, unfolding their limbs, their weak muscles failed and they needed to be carried like a ventriloquist's dummies.
As the brave citizens of Warsaw continued to preserve the group of Jews hidden in the zoo, the war progressed. The Soviet army was advancing toward Warsaw from the east; the Poles anticipated that the Russians would liberate them from the Nazis. At the same time in 1944, thousands of Polish soldiers, organized as the Home Army, were preparing to stage a massive resistance action, later known as the Warsaw Uprising. This action was to be timed to coincide with the Soviet army's approach to the city. This would have confronted the Nazis simultaneously both with the Soviet attack and with the internal uprising - hastening the liberation of the city. "On July 27, when Russian troops reached the Vistula sixty-five miles south of Warsaw," Ackerman writes that the Nazi
Governor Hans Frank summoned 100,000 Polish men between the ages of seventeen and sixty-five to work nine hours a day building fortifications around the city, or be shot. The Home Army urged everyone to ignore Frank's order and start preparing for battle, a call to arms echoed the next day by the Russians, pushing closer, who broadcast in Polish: "The hour for action has arrived!" By August 3, as the Red Army bivouacked ten miles from the right-bank district that included the zoo, life grew even tenser.
The anticipation was agonizing,
and people kept asking: "When will the Uprising start?"
On August 1, 1944, the Uprising began. The Home Army anticipated that the Soviet soldiers, camped only a few miles away, would attack the Nazi occupational troops at the same time, and make quick work of liberating Warsaw. Instead, the Russians did nothing. Without Soviet support, the Polish resistance was facing the Nazis alone, a difficult or even impossible assignment. Historian Michael Korda places the Warsaw Uprising in the larger context of the European Theater of WWII:
In the east, of course, a war on an even larger scale was taking place - the front line ran from Memel on the Baltic to the Danube in Bulgaria, with a huge, threatening bulge developing in the south, where the army groups of Marshals Malinovsky and Tolbukhin were advancing swiftly to take Belgrade, surround Budapest, and approach within fifty miles of the German-Hungarian border. In the north, fanatical German resistance had stalled the Russians in East Prussia; but in the center the Russians at last held Warsaw. The Russians had paused for two months in sight of Warsaw to allow the Germans to savagely put down an uprising led by the Polish government in exile - which was based in London - so that Stalin could replace the so-called London Poles with his own communist Poles: one of the darkest and most cynical chapters in a war of stygian darkness.
Stalin was willing to let the Home Army die, man by man, at the hands of the Nazis. Once the Polish resistance had been exterminated, the Soviet army would then occupy Warsaw - not liberate it. Once the Poles knew that their defeat was certain, soldiers of the Home Army began to escape from the neighborhoods surrounded by Nazis. They eluded the Nazis by sneaking out through the underground sewer system. Diane Ackerman writes:
By September, 5,000 soldiers in the old town had escaped through the sewers, despite Germans dropping grenades and burning gasoline down the manholes. Elsewhere, the Allies were advancing on all fronts: after liberating France and Belgium, the United States and Britain were pushing into Germany from the Netherlands, Rhineland, and Alsace; and though the Red Army paused near Warsaw, it had already captured Bulgaria and Romania, was prepared to take Belgrade and Budapest, and planned to storm the Reich from the Baltics; the United States had landed on Okinawa and was pounding the South Pacific.
The war seemed to be progressing toward its end in every place except Warsaw. The Uprising continued, with no help from the Soviets and therefore no prospect of success. Yet the Poles fought fiercely and the Nazis found that they could not easily quash the Uprising. Soon negotiations between the leaders of the Home Army and the Nazi officers took place, trying to find terms of a ceasefire. On October 2, 1944, the Home Army surrendered, and Warsaw was once again occupied by the Nazis.
Although the two months of the Uprising were over, life was still very tense for the residents of Warsaw who were hiding and supporting Jews. For three agonizing months, they lived with the knowledge that the Soviet army was camped only a few miles away and yet refusing to drive the Nazis out of Warsaw. Every day was a risk; if the occupying Nazis discovered that a Roman Catholic Pole was helping a Jew, both would be executed. Finally, however, the Soviet army took action, having waited so long to allow the Nazis to eliminate more Poles, and to allow the Poles to eliminate more Nazis. Diane Ackerman writes:
The Red Army finally entered Warsaw on January 17, long after the city's surrender and too late to help. In theory, the Russians were supposed to drive out the Germans, but for political, strategic, and practical reasons (among them, losing 123,000 men en route), they had camped on the east side of the Vistula River and complacently watched the bloodshed for two months solid, as thousands of Poles were massacred, thousands more sent to camps, and the city extinguished.
The relief was minimal: Warsaw did not erupt in joy and celebration. By the time the Nazis left, the horror had been too great and gone on too long to allow for festivities. When the Soviets took over, it soon became clear that their use of the word 'liberation' was insincere indeed. The Soviet communists subjected Poland to a dictatorship that was, if somewhat less anti-Semitic, nearly as harsh as the Nazis had been.
Nonetheless, the bravery of Poland's Roman Catholics saved thousands of Jews. The courage of these Poles has been acknowledged and honored worldwide.
