Abstract
In November 1940, an eighteen-year-old Polish girl went into the Warsaw Ghetto to see how she could help a girl she barely knew. Without initially telling family or friends, she went back a dozen times over the next two months, bringing food and medication to the girl and her family. Why would she go to such great lengths and at such considerable risk to herself to help someone she barely knew? Teresa Prekerowa’s story provides some much needed insight into the psychology of rescuers, shedding light on what makes attempted rescue possible, and why it is impossible for the vast majority of people.
In November 1940, an eighteen-year-old Polish girl went into the Warsaw Ghetto to see how she could help a young woman she barely knew. Without initially telling family or friends, she went back a dozen times over the next two months, bringing food and medication to the girl and her family. Why would she go to such great lengths and at such considerable risk to herself to help someone she barely knew?
In 1968, in the midst of an anti-Jewish campaign waged by the Polish authorities, a Warsaw University student wrote a master’s thesis on Żegota, the wartime Council to Aid the Jews, a taboo topic. In the thesis, she presented both the positive and negative aspects of Polish–Jewish relations during World War II. Why would a person risk reprisal to write a story about a group to which she did not belong?
Unbeknownst to most, except for close family members and friends, the woman in both cases was the same. Her name was Teresa Prekerowa (née Dobrska). After the war she was active as a historian and scholar, but her efforts during the war were little known until she was awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal in 1985. The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations states that “Everything Prekerowa did to save Jews was motivated purely by altruism, for which she neither asked for nor received anything in return.” 1
Teresa Prekerowa did not focus on her personal experiences. An associate director at the Holocaust Museum who interacted with Prekerowa in her capacity as a researcher and historian describes her as a modest person who did not talk about herself. Her passion was to speak and write about Żegota. 2 In a 1994 interview about her wartime experiences, she said, “I did not think I had done anything really special. There was nothing unusual in what I had done.” 3
Michał Grynberg of the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland worked with Prekerowa for a number of years on various projects on Jewish–Polish relations without knowing what she had done during the war. When he finally found out, he asked her why she had not said anything to him about this. She replied that she did not think it was significant. He told her that she should allow others to judge the significance, and he began working toward getting Prekerowa recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations. This effort was successful and Yad Vashem recognized Prekerowa as Righteous Among the Nations on 4 March 1985. 4
Perhaps she downplayed her role because she felt that she did not do enough to help. In 1994, when speaking about being named one of the Righteous, she said, “The medal was really not deserved.” When she spoke about the Poles who helped, it seems as though she thought that Poles on the whole did not do enough to help the Jews. Despite her modesty, it is clear that her actions were extraordinary. 5
Prekerowa was of course not the only researcher interested in the rescue of Jews during World War II. Questions of altruism and the motivations of rescuers have been the subject of study by sociologists, psychologists, and historians. 6 While some rescuers were motivated by familial or social ties, others simply did what they believed was the “normal” or the “right” thing to do. Whether that was because they believed ethical norms dictated such behavior under all circumstances or because they held very firmly to certain principles, they acted in ways in which others were afraid to act. Works by Samuel Oliner, Eva Fogelman, and Nechama Tec indicate that for some people feelings of social responsibility and empathy are among the motivating factors to act. Assuming personal responsibility when others in society do not is challenging. Taking the step from wanting to help to actually helping others is especially difficult—particularly in wartime. 7 Studies of the rescue of Jews during World War II in Poland demonstrate that these people were rare. Prekerowa herself estimated that only 1 to 2.5 percent of the population who could help Jews in Poland did so. 8
Gunnar Paulsson puts the number of Jews hiding in Warsaw during the war at twenty-eight thousand, with seventy to ninety thousand people helping them. 9 Hiding a Jew in Warsaw during World War II required a complex network of contacts who assisted in various ways—providing false documents, employment, food, or a place to hide. In order for the network to succeed, each member only knew a few contacts. The debates of what constitutes rescue and how much assistance is required to be considered rescue have been tied to how Poles and Jews felt about and acted toward each other during the war. 10 In wartime Poland, non-Jewish people were often afraid of being punished for helping Jews or were driven by economic calculations to denounce Jews or to first assist and then eventually denounce them. Some accepted or demanded money to aid Jews. 11 To say that Polish–Jewish relations were complicated during the war is an understatement (and perhaps a euphemism) and much has been written on the subject. 12 Amid the debates around paid “rescue,” Prekerowa’s case appears much more straightforward.
Prekerowa’s story adds a crucial facet to the nature of relations between Polish Christians and Jews, as well as interesting insights into the moral calculations involved in chaotic and life-threatening situations. Nechama Tec writes, “Knowing who would stand up for the persecuted and the helpless, knowing what factors were involved in the protection of the poor, the dependent, and the downtrodden, creates an opportunity for cultivating such positive forces.” 13 In this way, understanding what would allow Prekerowa to stand up for the persecuted both as a young woman and in middle age may allow us to grasp why some people acted with this kind of character and compassion—and perhaps to learn how to foster such behavior at a societal level. Tec also writes, “Mere awareness that in the midst of ultimate human degradation some people were willing to risk their lives for others denies the inevitable supremacy of evil.” 14 Again, Prekerowa provides an example not simply of what should be done, but of the deep goodness that exists at least among some of humankind. In order to fully understand Teresa Prekerowa as an exemplar, we must ask certain questions: What made her do something so daring? What motivated her? Why was she able to act when so many of her peers failed to?
Sources
As a scholar, Teresa Prekerowa wrote about the rescue of Jews in Poland during World War II. Her books and articles cover the work of individuals, as well as of Żegota (the codename for the Council to Aid the Jews or, in Polish, Rada Pomocy Żydom). Though she is best known for her book Konspiracyjna Rada Pomocy Żydom w Warszawie 1942–1945 [The Underground Council to Aid the Jews in Warsaw 1942–1945], which was published in 1982, she also contributed to anthologies and journals. 15
While Prekerowa wrote about Żegota and about Polish–Jewish relations, she did not write or speak much about herself. Little is written about her wartime activities either. In addition to her academic writings, there are two interviews with her. They give some information about and insight into her wartime activities. One was conducted in July 1994 for the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by journalist Anka Grupińska. The other was conducted for the USC Shoah Foundation by historian Zofia Zaks in March 1997, not long before Prekerowa’s death in 1998. The first interview lasted over three and a half hours, while the second lasted 100 minutes. In the 1997 interview Prekerowa sounded tired and occasionally contradicted the dates and chronology she gave in the 1994 interview. Most of the information she gives in the 1994 interview is confirmed by The Encyclopedia of the Righteous Among the Nations: Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, edited by Israel Gutman, and by Michał Grynberg’s 1993 Księga Sprawiedliwych “The Book of the Righteous” as well as by documents in the Yad Vashem Archives. 16
Oral history is a dialogue between the interviewer and the interviewee and creates a new historical source. It does not come without its problems, however. 17 One of the concerns with these interviews—and any oral history—is that over time the interviewee may forget details or have a narrative that is so ingrained that it is told with certainty even if the interviewee was once not entirely certain of all its details. Another is that the interviewer may interrupt the speaker, preventing her from finishing a thought, or ask leading questions, causing her to reply in a way that she might not have fully intended to if allowed to speak at her own pace and in her own words. However, the speaker may also be prompted to recall a detail which she did not mention in an earlier interview or express a reflection which she had not considered earlier.
The relationship between the interviewer and interviewee can also affect how and what the interviewee shares. The Fortunoff interviewer at times interrupted Prekerowa. The USC interviewer mostly allowed Prekerowa to complete her thoughts, even if the interviewer asked leading questions at times. In 1994 and 1997, oral history in Eastern Europe was at its infancy, and apparently remained so into the 2000s. 18 These two interviews were conducted as part of larger projects by the institutions in the United States and Israel. The fact that these were projects of prestigious internationally known institutions may affect the way interviewees present themselves. They may create a better version of themselves, or alternatively, present a worse version if they feel guilty for not doing enough. The objective reality presented by oral histories needs to be confirmed through other source material, but even with discrepancies in the narratives, oral histories provide key pieces of evidence because of their subjectivity. They allow the historian to look into someone’s worldview, and to create a new piece of historical evidence that demonstrates the fluidity of people’s mindsets and their developing personalities. This dual use of oral histories—both as subjective narratives and objective sources—is mirrored by Gunnar Paulsson in his writing about witness statements. There is an objective, “positivist” method that regards witness statements as sources of factual information, and then there is a more subjective method of looking into the “psychology and state of mind of the witnesses.” 19 The historian can look to the oral history as a source of what happened or the historian can analyze what it means and why it matters. Paulsson goes on to declare that he accepts witness testimony as true, even if he does not have evidence to corroborate it. In the case of the interviews with Prekerowa, I am interested in how she explained her actions. Because there are few sources for the events in which she participated—except for her Yad Vashem file and a few encyclopedia entries on her—I use her interviews to understand timelines and events. 20 More importantly, however, I use her interviews to understand what motivated her actions, whether she explicitly stated it or not.
Prekerowa had her own analysis of Polish Jews and Christians during the Holocaust. She devoted her life to studying just that, and her work on the subject is cited by academics. Examining her accounts, we may conclude that her personal history colored her analysis, her reflections of the past were influenced by her later analytical conclusions, or some combination of both. Teasing out a fully objective picture may not be possible here. But it does seem clear, given Prekerowa’s scholarly critique of her fellow citizens’ behavior toward their Jewish compatriots, that she did not paint a rosy picture of her own history. This is further corroborated by accounts of her modesty and her tendency to downplay the good she had done. Rather than seeing this as a potential flaw or weakness in an objective account, this should be seen as a key piece of evidence as to a personality type that allowed the undertaking of such a risk while making it seem ordinary.
Żegota
Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Polish government went into exile. The Polish Army was defeated and the resistance Union for Armed Struggle (Związek Walki Zbrojnej [ZWZ]) was formed in November 1939. In February 1942, the ZWZ became the Armia Krajowa (Home Army [AK]). The German occupiers maintained tight control over all areas of life and kept the population under constant surveillance. Life for the Poles was difficult as rations were decreased over time, poverty increased, terror reigned, and family members and friends disappeared. The plight of Polish Jews, however, was far worse. From the beginning of the occupation they were banned from public spaces, had to participate in forced labor, and soon were forcibly resettled into ghettos, where many starved. 21
A number of individuals, seeing what was happening to the Jews, decided that they needed to help. Most of these people worked on their own, although there were a few political parties involved (including the socialists, the Democratic Front, and the Peasant Party), as well as Catholic groups. After the Germans’ Grossaktion in the Warsaw and Krakow ghettos in the summer of 1942, these groups, as well as others, such as the AK, realized that more had to be done. In September 1942, the Provisional Committee to Aid the Jews, codenamed “Konrad Żegota,” was created. In December, the Council to Aid the Jews, or Żegota, was established in its place. 22 It was governed by representatives from four Polish underground parties as well as the Jewish National Committee and the Bund. 23
Though Teresa Prekerowa joined the Home Army where she acted as a liaison transporting documents, she was never part of Żegota. This was partially because she helped Jews before Żegota was formally created, but she also explained that the people who were helping the Jews often did not fully know who else was working with them. It was too dangerous. There was fear that if someone were to be caught, he would divulge information under torture. 24
The Dobrski Family
Teresa, who was born in December 1921 to Wacław and Halina Dobrski, was one of five children. She had three older brothers and a younger sister. Her parents had both come from landowning families, but her father’s family lost all of its land in the Kresy region (Poland’s eastern borderlands) in 1920 during the Polish–Soviet War. From that time, Wacław Dobrski, who had been trained in law and agronomy, worked as an administrator of large estates. In the 1930s, Halina inherited an estate in the Kujawy region of Poland, approximately one hundred miles from Warsaw, where the family lived until 1939. Teresa attended local schools until she reached high school. Catholicism was very important for Halina and so Teresa attended an all-girls boarding school in Warsaw run by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth. Her parents lived on their Kujawy estate northwest of the capital, and she only visited them on school holidays. 25
Teresa’s family was patriotic and spoke positively of the failed uprisings of 1830 and 1863. Wacław Dobrski considered himself to be a liberal. According to Teresa, he initially supported Jósef Piłsudski, though with some reservations, but he viewed Piłsudski’s later rule as a dictatorship. 26
Growing up, Teresa’s interactions with Jews were extremely limited. Her father had some business contacts who were Jewish. They occasionally came to the house—in some cases for dinner—and they were treated as her parents’ guests, just like any other business contacts. However, being a child, she herself did not have much interaction with them. She explained in an interview that the family was neither anti-Semitic nor did they have close Jewish friends. Her father did not particularly enjoy socializing, so her parents did not have an active social life. This meant that during Teresa’s early life she was surrounded mostly by family and a small group of close family friends. At the boarding school, the other girls were mostly Catholic. There were two Jewish girls in her class, but they took part in the prayers and Teresa did not see them treated differently from the other girls. Teresa did not feel that there was anti-Semitism in the cloister. 27
When the war broke out in September 1939, Teresa was to begin her final year of high school. That September, the Germans arrested the men in the Dobrski family’s community—including Teresa’s father—and ordered the families to leave the area within a few days. They were not allowed to take anything of value with them. Together with her mother and sister, Teresa went to Warsaw. Her three older brothers were in the army, and the two who were officers were arrested and sent to a German POW camp. Her youngest brother managed to come to Warsaw. Her father was released a few days later and joined the family in the city. Their property was taken over by a Volksdeutscher, a person whom the Nazi authorities considered to be ethnically German and who had signed paperwork to benefit from being recognized as such. 28
The family settled in an apartment in midtown Warsaw at 8 Jaworzynska Street. Later her parents were able to buy a small plot of land outside the city where they could cultivate tomatoes and other food both to feed the family and to sell the surplus to make an income. Having access to gardens or farms made survival more likely as food was hard to come by during the war. 29
Entering the Ghetto
One of Teresa’s brothers was three years older than she was. A Jewish girl, Alina Wolman, was in his circle of friends. Teresa knew these friends but she was not close to them. Being—and feeling—younger, Teresa did not feel that she was part of that circle. She also considered herself to be from the countryside. Meanwhile, these friends were from the city. They seemed more sophisticated to her. Alina had spent a year studying in Paris. 30 In some way, Teresa had the complexes of a younger sister and of an outsider.
On 2 October 1940, the Nazi head of the Warsaw district, Ludwig Fischer, signed a decree creating the Warsaw Ghetto. In November, Alina and her family were forced to move into the Ghetto—as their apartment on Szpitalna Street was outside the Ghetto’s boundaries—and the Ghetto was sealed shut. The Wolmans were an assimilated family and were comfortable financially. The reaction of Alina’s friends was one of shock. They were scared of what the Germans might do to the Wolmans, but were afraid to break the German laws against Poles entering the Ghetto, and thus they did not maintain contact with Alina. 31
Teresa was horrified by this initial reaction. She thought that it was indecent behavior. How could they not help a friend in need? At the time, the German penalty for helping Jews in Poland was being sent to a concentration camp or for forced labor. At that point the penalty for assisting Jews was not yet death. It was illegal for non-Jews to enter the Ghetto, but still possible at the beginning of the Ghetto’s existence. However, Teresa knew that it was risky for an eighteen-year-old girl to break German laws and enter the Ghetto on her own. She also knew that her family would have protested that doing so was too dangerous. So Teresa did not tell anyone what she was planning to do. 32
In November 1940, she used her small amount of pocket money to buy butter and other food stuffs and hid them in her pockets and muff. Knowing a little bit of German, she went to a gate of the Ghetto where a young German soldier was stationed. Teresa told the soldier that she wanted to go into the Ghetto to retrieve money that some Jews had borrowed from her before they moved into the Ghetto. At first he told her it was forbidden and he did not want to let her in. She was aware that Polish girls did not talk to the German soldiers and thus the younger soldiers were starved for female attention; and so she continued to converse with him. After some time, he said that even if she went in and got her money, there would be no benefit to him. She offered to give him some of the money. He told her he was not interested in money, but perhaps she would go on a date with him in exchange for him allowing her to enter. After hesitating, she agreed, though she never actually met up with him. She went straight to the Wolmans’ apartment on Twarda Street since the soldier had told her that he would only be on duty for two more hours and if she did not return during his shift, she would have difficulty leaving. Teresa’s social life until this point had been rather sheltered. Having gone to an all-girls high school, she probably did not have much experience with boys other than her brothers. And yet here she was talking to a young German soldier who was holding a weapon and who had the power to send her to prison or possibly kill her. Perhaps she lacked the imagination to understand the potential consequences if this interaction went wrong. 33
The Wolman family was surprised to see Teresa. It was dangerous and difficult to come into the Ghetto. Alina recognized Teresa but she did not know her very well. Before this meeting, they had only seen each other twice at social gatherings of Teresa’s brother’s friends. Alina’s parents did not know Teresa at all. Alina asked if Teresa came representing the friends and was even more surprised when Teresa said no. The family asked about friends outside the Ghetto, about the situation and events there, and about the reactions to developments. Teresa asked what they needed, and they told her that they had more money than she had so they would give her money to purchase food and medications. In some cases they paid her back and Teresa was grateful, but she did not always ask them to do so. 34
Teresa did not tell anyone what she was doing because she knew that her parents would have been very scared for her safety if they knew about her activities. It was particularly difficult to get medications without prescriptions, but she did her best. Teresa only interacted with the Wolmans, but they would also ask for medicine for other families, and she would bring supplies for those families as well. Teresa visited the Wolmans about a dozen times in two months—between November and December 1940. 35
Most of the time Teresa entered the Ghetto through the gates, but a few times she went through the courts. The city courts were on the border of the Ghetto and it was possible, though difficult, to pass through them into and out of the Ghetto. The streets in the Ghetto were crowded since people spent their time there to avoid the overpopulated apartments. Teresa felt tension and fear in the air when she would walk through the streets. The Wolmans had no close contacts in the Ghetto. They felt very isolated there. Teresa said that her first visit was in opposition to the behavior of other young people, but the motive for her following visits was that she knew she was very badly needed. 36
Every time she entered the Ghetto, Teresa would choose a different soldier and use the same story about the borrowed money. Every time, the soldier had her promise to go on a walk or date with him and, though she would promise, she would never meet him. She would suggest meeting places that were far from home so the risk of running into the soldier was lower, and she would avoid those places for a few days after each exchange. She was worried that she would accidently choose a gate with a soldier whom she had already encountered. In their uniforms, they all looked similar to her. It was mostly due to luck that she never had that problem. 37
However, once as she returned to the gate before the end of the soldier’s shift, a jeep pulled up with German officers. They demanded her identification documents and an explanation for what she was doing there. The senior officer told his subordinate to deal with Teresa, which was the worse situation because the subordinate was scared of his superior and thus more rigorous in his interrogation. Teresa told her story and the officers demanded that she give the name and address of the Jews who owed her money. She gave them false information and the German officer ordered a Jewish policeman to go to that address and bring the people who lived there. Fortunately for Teresa—and the residents of that false address—the officer did not like the way the policeman saluted him and began instead to yell at him and to correct his salute. Then the officers decided they needed to go inspect the next post and, taking Teresa’s documents with them, told her to wait. She waited for an hour or two and became very nervous because curfew was fast approaching. When they returned they took her into their car and mentioned Szucha Avenue which was where the Gestapo headquarters was located. This meant that they would be taking her to possibly be tortured or imprisoned. Teresa remembered thinking that this meant she would end up being sent to a concentration camp. 38
Fortunately, when they were a few blocks from the building, the car stopped and the soldiers ordered her out. Once she was on the sidewalk, she realized that she still did not have her documents. She called out asking for her documents as the car sped away, and after a few meters they threw her documents out of the window. Teresa was very lucky to be let go. She believed that on the way they had decided to only scare her. 39
Teresa explained that she had been taught that if she fell off of her bicycle, she should immediately get back on so as to not become permanently scared of it. Keeping this lesson in mind, Teresa returned to the ghetto shortly after this event. 40
By the end of December 1940, Teresa had told some of Alina’s friends about what she was doing, and they wanted to help. 41 At that time, Teresa convinced Alina to leave the Ghetto. In the 1994 interview Teresa explained that she told the Wolmans that a close family friend was ill, close to death, and wanted to see Alina. 42 Alina’s mother encouraged her to leave. Using false Aryan documents for Alina, Teresa and Alina walked through a checkpoint at one of the gates, using the same story about the borrowed money. Teresa took her to Alina’s friend’s apartment where she stayed for a while. The friend, Halina Lisowska, was afraid to enter the Ghetto, but wanted to help. 43
Teresa and other friends helped Alina to find jobs and apartments. Alina worked as a governess, and later she sewed buttons onto German uniforms in a workshop. In October 1941, Hans Frank, the governor of the General Government, decreed that Jews who left their designated districts as well as Poles who helped Jews would be punished by death. Alina had to change apartments twice when the landladies realized Alina was Jewish and blackmailed her. The landlady would tell her that until she paid a large sum of money she could only leave the apartment with her purse, not her other belongings. So Teresa would visit often and, hiding Alina’s belongings on her, would secretly carry out all of them. Alina would then disappear without her documents. Three times she disappeared without her documents, and the Polish underground supplied her with new ones. Alina’s friends in the underground helped her however they could. Teresa was not alone in her efforts. 44
Alina’s brother Wacław and mother Janina wanted to leave the Ghetto, but her father did not. Julian Wolman did not believe that the Germans would murder all of the Jews. He was also terrified of the Germans and afraid that the family would be shot if they tried to leave. 45 It seems somewhat strange from the outside to imagine that the Germans were capable of putting the Jews into horrible conditions in the Ghetto and shooting them if they left, but that the Germans would not actually kill the Jews as long as the Jews followed orders. The lack of humanity shown by the Germans should not have made anyone optimistic about their actions. However, this was the belief of many. Whether due to the fear of consequences, a desperate need for hope, or the inability of the human mind to imagine the Final Solution before seeing the camps or hearing the testimony from the Nuremburg Trials, a huge number of people could not bring themselves to believe that the Germans would work to murder all of the Jews. Perhaps most were simply unable to reconcile their earlier image of a cultured, educated Germany with the horrors that it would inflict upon the world. 46
By April 1942, when 52 people were shot by the Gestapo in one night during the first organized terror Aktion inside the Ghetto, it became clear to some of the Ghetto’s inhabitants that the potential outcomes would be worse than they had imagined. Alina’s brother, Wacław, escaped the Ghetto in early July 1942. Three members of the AK waited for him at the courts. They came as a group to potentially overpower anyone who might try to stop Wacław. The escape was successful, and no use of force was necessary. 47
On 22 July 1942, the Germans started the Grossaktion in Warsaw, during which they deported the majority of the population from the Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp. Julian Wolman finally understood how dangerous the situation was. Having hidden in the attic, he and Janina were the only ones in their apartment building who survived the early wave of deportations. Only then was Julian ready to leave. There was a brief pause in the deportations during which he and his wife escaped by going from the Jewish to the Polish section of the courts. Alina, Teresa, and one other person waited for them there, and the escape was also successful. 48
A Lack of Imagination
Teresa did not want to trouble her parents by telling them about her activities or to put them at any more risk by using their apartment for these activities. Her parents already had enough concerns and lived in fear for their children’s safety. Teresa’s two oldest brothers had been interned and the family did not know if they were still alive. One of these brothers, Jerzy, eventually escaped from the POW camp in 1941—he was one of only a few successful escapees—and returned to Warsaw to be active in the underground. He lived under a pseudonym and the family, not fully knowing where he was, was constantly harassed by the Germans about his whereabouts. He was killed in May 1944—most likely tortured to death by the Gestapo, but the family was never able to find out for certain what happened to him. 49
In addition, one of Teresa’s uncles was a Soviet prisoner of war 50 and another uncle had been killed in battle in October 1939. Two of her teenage cousins were arrested and taken to Auschwitz, where they were killed. The family had to deal with sons, nephews, and brothers disappearing and had to live with not fully knowing what was happening to them. They also had two daughters (including Teresa) and the youngest of the three sons living at home and did not want to put them at risk. In addition, the family’s apartment was under surveillance in case Jerzy returned there. Teresa did not want to add more stress to her parents’ lives. 51
Teresa explained that everyone lived in a state of fear. Her brother and Alina’s circle of friends were happy to help once Alina was out of the Ghetto, but they would not go in. To enter the Ghetto one had to be either very courageous or have a lack of imagination about the consequences. Teresa said, “When you are twenty, you think that everything can happen to everyone else, but not to me. I will not be killed.” 52 But the other young people in Alina’s circle of friends were not much older than Teresa. And yet, they were afraid to enter the Ghetto. They understood that the potential consequence was to be sent to a concentration camp or prison. It was a time when people disappeared and no one was really certain what was happening to them.
Nechama Tec writes that rescuers often downplayed what they had done, describing it as natural. 53 She explains that the rescuers had to make these extraordinary actions “ordinary” in their minds in order to take the risks that they had taken. 54 Teresa certainly seems to have done this. However, in order to make these actions seem ordinary, one had to remove the consequences of the actions from one’s personal reality. Giving food and medicine to the needy is certainly an ordinary act of charity, but not when it is punishable by death. By removing oneself from a world that did not make sense—a world in which the act of giving someone food was punishable—a person could create a new reality where what she was doing was simply normal. While it can be said that this is an easier task for youths who already have difficulties envisioning the consequences of their actions, the majority of youths in Teresa’s circle did not act as she did. Until she showed them the possibility of another reality—one in which aiding another person was not punished—most of these young people were frozen in fear.
Teresa’s “ordinary” acts of charity did not end with the Wolmans. In September or October 1941, she was living in her parents’ apartment in Warsaw while her parents were at their small plot of land outside the city. Walking home one rainy night, she saw a small girl—about three or four years old—crying in the gate of a nearby apartment building. Realizing that the girl was Jewish and seeing that she was alone, Teresa put a coat over her and took her home. The girl was hungry and scared. She would eat but had trouble sleeping. She spoke only Yiddish, and she and Teresa could not understand each other. When asked for her name, it sounded like she said that it was Hannah, so Teresa called her by the more Polish-sounding Hania to protect her. Teresa called her friends and asked for donations of clothing so she could dress the girl in something other than the rags she wore. Teresa wanted to take care of the little girl but the apartment was not suitable for a small child. In addition, her brother had recently escaped from a POW camp, and the family knew that the apartment was being watched. Teresa made the decision to take the child to the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth on Czerniakowska Street where she herself had attended school before the war. 55
Teresa taught the child how to make the sign of the cross and the first words of the prayer “Our Father” as well as some everyday Polish words so that she could more easily pass as a non-Jew. During the week that the little girl stayed with Teresa, she became a bit more comfortable with these phrases. Teresa did not have a thought-out tactic at this point, but she believed that the girl should know these few things for her safety. Then she took the child to the cloister. As none of the nuns to whom she was close were around that day, Teresa waited until the gatekeeper went to fetch the nun who was in charge and, slipping a note into the girl’s pocket, left. The note read “My name is Hania. I don’t know where my parents are. Please take care of me.” Teresa was uncertain how the nuns would react. The school had been closed under the German occupation, so the nuns ran an orphanage instead. Teresa would have felt comfortable leaving the child with a sister whom she knew, but feeling panicked, she decided that they would probably be more likely to take the child if she were alone rather than with someone who looked like she might be able to care for her. Teresa was a little concerned whether they would take the child if they knew she was Jewish. Teresa waited for an hour or two in the gate of the building across the street. Eventually a nun whom she did not recognize came out holding the little girl by the hand and looked around, clearly trying to find whoever had left her. Then the girl started to cry and the nun stroked the child’s head and took her back inside. 56
Years later Teresa inquired about the little girl. All of the children in the orphanage survived, though the war and the Warsaw Uprising had scattered them to convents outside of Warsaw, so it was impossible to track down this particular child. Sister Izabella, the nun Teresa knew best and who had been out of town that fateful day, was crushed when she heard that Teresa had had concerns about the nuns taking in the little girl. She assured Teresa that any nun would have accepted the girl. Teresa believed that Sister Izabella, knowing the atmosphere of the convent, must have been correct. If any one nun had harbored doubts about taking in Jewish children, this would have put all the children, who may or may not have been Jewish, at risk. At the time, Teresa had been unsure about the situation, but later she realized that the nuns took every child: “They wanted to take care of all children. I cannot think of an example where any nuns would have turned away children.” The nuns risked execution for helping Jewish children, but studies indicate that some 189 convents within Poland’s prewar borders sheltered children. 57
The sheltering of Jewish children in convents has been contentious. The children in the convents were raised as Catholics—in order to protect their identities and to blend in with the other children living there. Further, after (and during) the war some of the children were adopted by Catholic families. Identity documents were hidden or lost, and finding the actual parents—if they had survived—was a difficult undertaking. This meant that hundreds of children were saved, but also that hundreds of Jews were converted as children without the consent of their parents. Furthermore, it meant that even after the war, surviving family members were denied the right to regain the children. 58 Teresa’s decision was, perhaps, a little simpler. There was a hungry, lost child who needed help. Questions of what would happen to the child after the war had to take a backseat to the immediate question of how to help the child survive the war. Teresa gave what aid she could and then took the child to the place she saw as most equipped to take care of orphans—the Catholic convent and orphanage. This was perhaps indicative of Teresa’s character whereby she could not allow herself to abandon someone who was helpless even if she herself was limited in what she could do.
Skolimów
In the autumn of 1942, Teresa married Mieczysław Preker and moved with him to his family’s property in Skolimów, outside of Warsaw. They lived in a manor house together with his mother and aunt and ran a farm on what remained of the family’s original property. Several of his friends from school also lived in the house and helped to run the farm. Mieczysław and his friends were involved in the AK. This was at the time of the official creation of Żegota, but, having married and expecting a child, Teresa was less engaged in helping Alina and her family. She still visited them and helped when she was needed, but the help of other friends meant that Teresa’s assistance was not as urgent anymore. 59 She also had disengaged herself from the AK and no longer worked as a liaison. 60
Teresa’s brother Jerzy was very active as an officer in the underground in Warsaw. Teresa found out later that he was in charge of the Warsaw artillery unit in the AK. The Germans were still looking for him and his life was in constant danger. He operated under the assumed name Jerzy Gawroński and had minimal contact with the family so as to not expose them or himself to risk. When Teresa moved to Skolimów, Jerzy visited her occasionally as it was less likely that his movements would be tracked in this rural area. He held a much higher rank than Mieczysław or the other young men in the house, who did not know that he was Teresa’s brother. Before the war, Jerzy had been in the Polish military. In 1943, Jerzy asked Teresa and her husband to hide the father of one of his subordinates from the Polish military who had died at the beginning of the war in 1939. Teresa and Mieczysław agreed. 61
The man had documents listing his name as “Jan Zieliński.” He lived with them from January until August or September 1943. Teresa did not ask questions and she never knew his real name, but to her and Mieczysław, it was clear that Jan was Jewish. To the neighbors, he was Teresa’s cousin and to the other residents of the house, he was “the man from Jerzy Gawroński’s circle.” The risk for the Preker family was great as they had an infant and three extra young men engaged in underground activities who were living in the house. Their activities could draw the Germans’ attention. Teresa lived in fear that one of the young men would make a careless mistake. That September, one of the young men was indeed careless while burying weapons in the yard, and some Germans saw him. He had time to run into the house to warn the others, and everyone split up. Teresa and Mieczysław were afraid to return to the house until the following June. Jan contacted them once to tell them that he was alright, but after that they never heard from him again. 62
1968
After the war, as the Red Army helped install the communist government, Teresa and her family faced new problems. Mieczysław went into hiding. The Soviets searched for him because he had been involved in the underground AK, which the Soviets saw as a threat to their rule. In addition, he was a landowner. Teresa went to her cousins’ apartment in Warsaw with her young son. Wartime events were overshadowed by new risks, and the family was more concerned about surviving than focusing on the past. Teresa explained that “there was no time and the atmosphere was not such that we would talk about my saving of Jewish lives during the war.” When her parents found out what she had done during the war, they treated it as “the right and normal thing to do, although they themselves would be afraid to do it.” Her mother admitted that she had suspected Teresa was doing something along these lines. 63
Mieczysław was arrested twice after the war. The first time he was held briefly, but when he was arrested in 1950, he was falsely accused of spying and sentenced to death. He had maintained contact with his AK connections, and this was the basis of the accusation—that he was too close to the London government. In the politically charged atmosphere and postwar turmoil, people who were not supporters of the new regime became easy targets. Mieczysław’s sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment. He was held in prison until 1956. 64
During this time, Teresa supported their young family. As the wife of an accused “spy,” she had a difficult time finding jobs. After a while, she got a job at the Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe (the National Scientific Publishing House [PWN]), though some employees protested when she was hired. She worked at PWN as an editor and helped Alina get a job there as well, although they were both dismissed in 1968. Following the 1967 Six Day War, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev demanded that the states in the communist bloc denounce Israel. In response, Polish communist leader Władysław Gomułka initiated an anti-Jewish campaign. By March 1968, at the height of student protests against the political situation, the Minister of the Interior Mieczysław Moczar was leading an anti-Semitic campaign to purge Jews from the communist party and other high positions. This led to the expulsion of many Jews from their jobs, and many of them emigrated. At PWN, about forty Jewish employees, including Alina Wolman, were dismissed. Teresa, who was editor-in-chief of her section, and two other non-Jewish employees were dismissed as well. Teresa believed that they were targeted partially because of their views and partially so that the management could demonstrate that not only Jews were targeted. After a few months, the three of them were allowed to return at much lower positions in which they were considered to be less likely to cause ideological harm, though the Jewish former employees were not rehired. Teresa had no choice but to accept the demotion, as no other institution would accept her. 65
During this time, Teresa studied at the University of Warsaw and received a degree in history. She wrote her master’s thesis on Żegota shortly after the events of 1968. She expanded this later into her book, Konspiracyjna Rada Pomocy Żydom w Warszawie 1942–1945, which was published in 1982. She had become interested in the topic since many of her friends after the war were Jewish. Among these friends there were often discussions about the war and what the Poles did and did not do. There was such a variety of opinions that Teresa became interested in studying this more deeply. The timing of her thesis on the subject was a form of protest against the 1968 political situation and current events. As she explained in the 1997 interview, she did not follow trends. She always went against the grain. 66
“Searching for the Truth”
In 1940, Teresa’s protest against the reactions of the other young people led her to visit Alina and her family in the Ghetto. In 1968, her protest against the anti-Semitic actions led her to write a thesis on Żegota and later to produce a body of work on the topic for which she became respected. She was particularly interested in Polish–Jewish relations. In order to study this subject, she realized that she had to know Jewish history in Poland thoroughly. Once she had learned this history of the Polish Jews, she could then look at Polish–Jewish relations and study the views and contacts each group had of and with the other. 67
Prekerowa’s writing was clearly influenced by her activities during the war. First, her rescue of the Wolman family and her closeness with Alina after the war led her to having many Jews in her circle of friends. The discussions with these friends prompted a need within Prekerowa to understand the facts about Polish–Jewish relations and what had happened during the war. She seemed to have a particular need to be able to quantify activities, to be able to show what percentage of Poles helped Jews, which classes were over- or under-represented in their aid, the number of death sentences handed out by the Polish underground for crimes against Jews, etc. Her drive for accuracy and quantification were remarkable as she worked to address the questions that were being asked at the time. Interestingly, Prekerowa’s figures became known for being less favorable to Poles with regard to their aid to Jews than other calculations had been (1–2.5 percent of the adult Poles who could help did—though she believed the numbers to be in line with aid provided across Europe). 68 Whether this was simply due to a desire to maintain accuracy by being very conservative in her figures will have to remain in the realm of speculation. However, it is interesting that she was less optimistic than other researchers about Polish aid to Jews. Perhaps her initial experience aiding Alina out of protest to the inactivity of her friends had colored Prekerowa’s views about the willingness of Poles to aid Jews. 69
Despite this, Prekerowa’s views remained nuanced. She wrote about distrust on both sides, about Jews being welcomed into some units of the AK, and about anti-Semitism in other units. The picture is always complicated, never black and white. As a historian, she was “searching for the truth.” 70 She wanted to know everything, both positive and negative, about relations between Poles and Jews. Throughout her work, Prekerowa tried to remain impartial and objective.
In her studies of Polish–Jewish relations, she explains that as much as one can discuss what the respective underground organizations did, it is important to remember that the members of these underground organizations made up a fraction of the populations. Prekerowa wrote, “The underground parties, both Jewish and Polish, included the most politicized activists, who held the most clear-cut and extreme views: their attitude was not representative of the community as a whole, whose main concern was focused on daily concerns—how to survive and where to get the money to buy food for their starving families.” 71
In her writing, Prekerowa analyzed Polish–Jewish relations in the context of rescue during the war. She described interwar relations, Polish political parties’ attitudes toward Jews, and the challenges of rescue. She wrote not only about aid and cooperation, but also about greed and anti-Semitism. She explained that Żegota’s work was difficult because people were afraid to help not only because of the threat of German reprisals but also because of their neighbors’ negative views toward Jews. The rescuers worked independently and could not depend on others—fearing that someone might accidently or purposefully let information slip—so it was hard to build a community of assistance. Yet she also wrote about the printers, priests, and many others who worked secretly to produce forged documents for Jews who had escaped from the Ghetto. In her book, Prekerowa devoted some thirty pages to how Polish society treated Jews during the war. 72 The members of Żegota realized that their work would be futile without the help of the broader society, so they tried to promote assistance to Jews and condemn harm toward them. Right-wing publications were harming Żegota’s cause by spreading views that Poland was for the Poles and that Poles should not help Jews. Żegota realized that it needed to send positive messages about assisting Jews, but being a secret organization, it could not officially make public statements on its own. Thus, its affiliated publications printed information about what was happening to the Jews. In addition, the AK’s Biuletyn Informacyjny [Information Bulletin], which reached more readers than the other publications, printed reports on how the Jews were being treated. It included declarations such as one on the first anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that “helping every individual who has escaped death and is hiding from the German butchers is the duty of every human, Christian, and Pole. 73 ”
According to Prekerowa, Poles who wanted to help Jews had a difficult time doing so if they did not have acquaintances who were Jewish. Her cousin wanted to help rescue Jews, but he did not have any contacts with anyone Jewish or with any informal group who was helping. When he asked the one Jewish man he knew (who was in hiding), the man did not want to disclose any information about anyone else who was in need. He was afraid that sharing information might end up harming his friends or relatives. It was not that he distrusted Prekerowa’s cousin, but rather that he thought giving any information would expose him to risk. As Prekerowa wrote, “if one did not have the right contacts and acquaintances, the search for a Jew to protect proved under the circumstances of occupation almost as difficult as the search for a protector if one was a Jew.” 74
Yet in the interviews, Prekerowa admitted that she thought Christian Poles should have done more to help Jewish Poles. This message was in her writings as well. Although she explained how difficult it was for Poles to help the Jews, she was clearly disappointed that more was not done. Referring to actions taken by individuals to save Jewish lives, she wrote, “I think that it could have been much more widespread than it was.” 75
“There Was Nothing Unusual in What I Had Done”
In her study of the Christian rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland, Nechama Tec concludes that the rescuers were guided by strong moral values (whether they came from religion, politics, or family) and were strong and independent in standing up for the needy. 76 In the interviews, Prekerowa did not directly discuss having strong moral convictions or what would have influenced the formation of her values. However, she said that she felt she had to act when she thought that the reaction of the young people to Alina’s forced move to the Ghetto was “indecent.” Her family was close and must have influenced her views. 77 She does not mention whether religion played a role in her views, although her mother was very religious. Teresa attended a religious school, befriending a few of the nuns. She told Sister Izabella that she trusted her. 78 The founder of the order, Franciszka Siedliska, said, “But our love must be universal . . . it should be expressed by actions and deeds, and have its source in God whom we know ardently, in faith and love.” 79 The nuns took vows to care for others; perhaps this influenced Teresa. She had worked in the convent in the infirmary with Sister Izabella, taking care of others. She did not mention any other service work, but this may have influenced how she approached helping others. Teresa did not seem to trust many people. Perhaps this was because she had learned to only trust her family circle, and outsiders were to be met with suspicion. This limited trust served Teresa well in her rescue activities as it was better to be cautious when undertaking such illegal activities. 80
Prekerowa saw the people who committed crimes against Jews as criminals. The laws that the Nazis put into place under the occupation were not legitimate in her eyes. She explained that she once mentioned at a conference that Jews were shot by Germans and Polish criminals, because the Polish laws did not allow the murder of people. If she saw actions against Jews not just as immoral but also as illegal, this may explain why it was easier for her to break German laws. Of course she was not the only one who thought that what was happening to the Jews in Poland was awful, but somehow most other people were stopped by something that did not stop Teresa. Her family and friends talked about how what was happening to the Jews was horrible, but few of them took action the way she did. 81
Prekerowa described her actions as stemming not from courage but from a lack of imagination, perhaps even recklessness. When she was caught by the German officers at the Ghetto gate, she thought to herself, “Well, I guess this means I will end up in a concentration camp.” At the time, she could not have fully understood what that meant, but she must have been aware that it was a very dangerous possibility. She may have blocked the consequences in her mind, normalized the situation as she undertook these activities. It is not normal to be shot for giving someone food. So perhaps getting shot for such a thing could not actually happen. This was the sort of “thoughtlessness” needed to take such risks. Otherwise, how can a person cross the line from wanting to help to actually doing it? Halina Lisowska really wanted to help Alina as well, but she did not want to go into the Ghetto. Perhaps she was not brave enough, or perhaps she just could not block all of the risks in her mind. Once Alina was outside of the Ghetto, Halina ended up helping and was recognized for her actions by Yad Vashem. She did not just stand by and observe, but she could not do what Teresa did. 82
Prekerowa had lived a very sheltered life until the war. Home life during her childhood had revolved around the family. Her parents had sent her to a cloister for high school where she was protected from the outside world. A cloister can be seen as a willful attempt to remove the world (and its evils) from oneself. That is what Teresa was doing: removing the realities of the world from her mind. She did not engage in a systematic check of the guards; she did not follow some thought-out strategy. The fact that she was successful was due in some part to luck: she never encountered the same guard at a gate, and the guards never saw her on the streets outside the Ghetto. But her thoughtlessness was not just the thoughtlessness of a young person. Part of it was divorcing herself from this reality. What allowed her to make her actions “normal” was removing the consequences from her consciousness. Fifty years later, she grasped the risks, which is why she described her behavior as reckless, but she blamed it on youth. It could not just be youth. The other young people who wanted to help did not go as far as she did, and older people also rescued Jews during the war in similar extremely dangerous situations. 83
Tec also notes that the Christians whom she interviewed perceived their actions as “natural and obvious,” and insisted that their rescue of Jews was “neither extraordinary nor heroic.” 84 This description fits Teresa Prekerowa. She did not see her actions as extraordinary because she had to normalize the situation.
Prekerowa described herself as someone who protested, who went against the grain. The two important moments of protest in her life were against what she considered to be “indecent” or immoral reactions or behaviors of the people around her. She mentioned that one of the young men who lived with her and her husband in the manor house had right-wing nationalist views with which she did not agree. She found herself standing up to and arguing with him, though doing so carefully once Jan Zieliński was living with them because she did not want to expose Jan to danger. Before this, she had really only interacted with people in her circle, whom she trusted and who shared similar views of pity that they could not do more to help the Jews. In this new situation, although she was pregnant and a rather new member of the household, she was not afraid to speak up. She trusted her husband, and the fact that he was present and agreeing with her in these discussions probably gave her more courage, but again she was bravely questioning the views of others with whose morals she did not agree. 85
In 1994, Prekerowa said, “There was nothing unusual in what I had done.” In some parts of the interview, it seems as if she felt guilty for not having done more. Despite this, she was able to help save people’s lives in a dangerous situation. Could more people have done the same? Of course, but it is not reasonable to expect other people to do the same. Looking back, even Prekerowa thought it was crazy. She gave an example of a survivor who told his rescuer years later, “When you hid me, I thought this was natural and normal. We knew each other and were friends. Now that I know what risks you took, I think, ‘crazy person.’” 86
Prekerowa repeated over and over that you cannot judge any nation or any group of people as one. The Nazi occupation was very harsh. People worried about their children, their loved ones. Every person was different and one had to be very careful with generalizing and judging. When judging, one had to take into consideration the risks that people faced. 87
In the end we may only be left with Zygmunt Bauman’s formulation about guilt. Prekerowa’s life comes down to an idea found in Bauman’s work: that we understand rationally that not everyone can do this—that these actions are exceptional—and yet it is a good thing that people feel guilty for not living up to this standard. 88
