Polish Righteous Among the Nations: About Poles Who Saved Jews
Righteous Among the Nations is a title that Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance centre, awards to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Poland has more recognised Righteous than any other country, over 7,200 people. They include organised underground workers, social workers, priests, nuns and farming families. In occupied Poland, helping a Jew could be punished by death, and the punishment was often carried out on the rescuer’s whole family. The rescuers were a minority in a society living under terror, and many of their actions became known only decades later, through testimonies, court files and family accounts.
Death penalty for helping Jews in occupied Poland
In the General Government, the part of occupied Poland under direct German civil administration, Governor-General Hans Frank issued a decree on 15 October 1941. It made leaving a ghetto without permission a crime punishable by death. The same penalty applied to anyone who knowingly gave shelter to a Jew who had left one. In November 1941 local police orders stated that any form of help, including giving food or transport, would be punished in the same way.
The penalty was carried out in practice. Rescuers were shot together with the people they hid, and often with their spouses, children and neighbours as well. The Institute of National Remembrance and other researchers have documented hundreds of Poles who were killed or repressed for helping Jews. Western Europe had no equivalent law of this severity, and this is one of the main differences in the conditions rescuers faced in Poland and in other occupied countries.
Żegota, the Council to Aid Jews
Żegota was the cover name of the Council to Aid Jews (Rada Pomocy Żydom). It was the only organisation in occupied Europe created and funded by a government-in-exile specifically to help Jews. It grew out of the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews, which the writer Zofia Kossak-Szczucka and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowicz founded in September 1942. The Council itself was set up on 4 December 1942 under the Government Delegation for Poland, the civilian arm of the Polish Underground State.
Members came from Polish and Jewish political groups, among them Julian Grobelny, Władysław Bartoszewski, Adolf Berman and Leon Feiner. Żegota provided:
- forged identity documents and baptismal certificates,
- monthly financial support for people in hiding,
- hiding places in Warsaw and the surrounding countryside,
- placement of Jewish children with families, in convents and in orphanages,
- medical care given by trusted doctors.
Its branches worked in Warsaw, Kraków and Lwów. At its peak, Żegota supported several thousand people.
Irena Sendler and the Ulma family
Irena Sendler (1910 to 2008) was a Warsaw social worker. Using passes issued for epidemic control, she and her colleagues entered the ghetto and brought children out. The children were hidden under new identities with families, in convents and in orphanages. From 1943 she ran the children’s section of Żegota. The figure most often cited is about 2,500 children rescued, though historians consider the exact number uncertain. She was arrested by the Gestapo in October 1943 and sentenced to death, and Żegota freed her by bribing a guard. Yad Vashem recognised her in 1965.
The Ulma family lived in Markowa, a village in south-eastern Poland. Józef and Wiktoria Ulma hid eight Jews from the Goldman (Szall), Grünfeld and Didner families in their house. On 24 March 1944 German gendarmes, acting on a denunciation, killed the eight Jews, then Józef, Wiktoria, who was heavily pregnant, and their six children. The Ulmas were recognised as Righteous in 1995 and beatified by the Catholic Church in 2023. The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II opened in Markowa in 2016.
Why Poland has the most Righteous Among the Nations titles?
The number of recognised Righteous in Poland comes from several historical factors:
- Size of the Jewish population. About 3.3 million Jews lived in Poland in 1939, roughly 10 percent of the population and the largest Jewish community in Europe.
- Location of the Holocaust. The Germans built the main death camps, Treblinka, Sobibór, Bełżec, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno and Majdanek, on occupied Polish territory.
- Recognition counts individuals. Each member of a rescuing family is listed separately.
- Documentation. Survivors and their families gave testimony to Yad Vashem over many decades.
Historians, including those at the POLIN Museum, point out that the number has to be read in context. Rescuers made up a small part of Polish society. Many Jews who were hiding were denounced or killed by blackmailers and informers. Many rescuers were never recognised because no Jewish witness survived to testify, and some rescuers hid their wartime help after 1945 out of fear of their neighbours.
How Yad Vashem recognises rescuers?
Recognition is granted by the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous Among the Nations, which is chaired by a retired justice of Israel’s Supreme Court. The programme has run since 1963 under the Yad Vashem Law of 1953. The Commission applies four criteria:
- The rescuer was not Jewish.
- The rescuer risked life, liberty or position.
- The main aim was to save Jews from deportation or death.
- No payment or other reward was a condition of the help.
The basis of every case is testimony from a rescued person or a direct witness, supported by documents. Recognised rescuers receive a medal and a certificate. Their names are inscribed on the Wall of Honour in the Garden of the Righteous in Jerusalem. As of 1 January 2023, more than 28,000 people from over 50 countries had been recognised, and 7,232 of them were from Poland.
Checking whether your family helped Jews
Family stories of wartime help can often be checked against documented sources:
- The Yad Vashem Righteous Database lists recognised rescuers by name and place, with summaries of their cases.
- The Polish Righteous portal of the POLIN Museum (sprawiedliwi.org.pl) publishes rescuer stories, testimonies and records arranged by locality.
- Jewish Historical Institute testimonies contain accounts written by survivors after 1944, many of which name the people who helped them.
- Ulma Family Museum archives cover the Subcarpathian region and the wider history of rescue.
- German court and police files in Polish State Archives sometimes record rescuers who were tried or executed.
If your family’s story has not been documented, start by writing down every name, village and date that relatives remember. Then search the databases for those places. A local parish register, a population register or a land record can confirm who lived in the house at the time.
Researching family wartime history with GenealogyTour
The history of the Polish Righteous survives largely in local records, testimonies and family memory. At GenealogyTour we have spent more than 15 years researching Polish family history in state, parish and institutional archives. When a family has a wartime account to verify, we look for the people and places it names in vital records, population registers and testimony collections, and we describe the evidence as it stands. We also organise visits to the villages and towns connected with these events, including museums such as the Ulma Family Museum in Markowa.
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