Amid horrors of Holocaust, Polish Franciscan mother superior saved hundreds of Jewish children

WARSAW, Poland (OSV News) -- "I will not send away any Jewish child," assured Mother Matylda Getter, superior of the Warsaw province of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, founded by Father Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski in the mid-19th century.

On Jan. 27, as the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of German death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau -- where 216,000 Jewish children, among 231,000 children from various nations, perished, Mother Matylda was being remembered as a beacon of hope in the midst of Nazi horrors and as one that saved hundreds of Jewish children.

Mother Matylda, called "Matusia," or "Mommy," because of her love for every person, kept her word. Her congregation's mission was to care for children and seniors.

She was almost 70 years old when the Third Reich, or Nazi Germany, invaded Poland, starting World War II. But despite her advanced age, she became involved in the resistance movement against the German occupiers.

The German occupation brought tragic consequences for Polish citizens -- the murder of the intelligentsia; street executions; the deportation of some 2.5 million for slave labor in Nazi camps in the Reich; the prohibition of education for young people above the fourth grade; the closure of secondary and higher schools; the impoverishment of society; and famine management -- limiting food supplies and looting farms to secure these supplies for the German army.

Poles quickly began to organize ways to defend themselves. An underground army was formed and Mother Matylda, who was a soldier in the Home Army -- the Polish underground resistance -- and her sisters organized care for war orphans and political prisoners, held secret classes and ran kitchens for the poor.

When the persecution of Jews began, Mother Matylda quickly realized that an important task was also to save her Jewish fellow citizens. In late 1939 and throughout 1940, the Germans created ghettos in all areas of occupied Poland, into which they rushed the Jews. Starting in the fall of 1941, Poles who helped them were punished with immediate death -- in no other German-occupied European country such a measure was introduced.

After the repression and deportation of Jews to extermination camps intensified, escapes from the ghettos increased, and Matusia decided that it was her and her sisters' duty to save people, regardless of the threat of losing their lives.

Jewish children were found on the street or handed over by their families; little escapees also came on their own.

"The charism of our congregation is summed up in the words of Jesus: 'whoever receives one child such as this in my name receives me.' We take care of orphans, children who are most at risk, and during the occupation it was Jewish children who were most at risk, who needed special care," Sister Magdalena Abramow-Newerly, historian of the congregation explained the motives behind the nuns' actions amidst wartime terror.

The sisters took in children and placed them in the more than 40 orphanages they ran and with friendly families. They dyed the hair of the dark-haired ones, taught them Polish (not all Jewish children knew it) and Catholic prayers such as the Creed, Our Father and Hail Mary, as the Germans "tested" them on their prayers.

It is estimated that 120 sisters from Mother Matylda's congregation took part in the operation of saving Jewish children, with 22 of them awarded an honorific title of Righteous Among Nations, used by Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews.

"Whoever comes to our yard and asks for help, in the name of Christ we are not allowed to refuse," Matusia used to say. She would encourage her sisters, saying that these children were so beautiful. When she was about to send another Jewish child to a particular orphanage, she would call the superior and ask: "Will you accept God's blessing, Sister?" She trusted that God would protect them, showing a face of a leader in moments of crisis, wartime witnesses of her heroism underlined.

Lea Balint (born Lusia Alterman), a girl rescued by the sisters at their orphanage in Brwinow, was 4 years old when, during a sudden "visit" by a German policeman, her guardian, Sister Helena, put her in a basket, ordered her to be quiet, covered the basket with straw, and piled eggs on top of it. The German wanted to confiscate these eggs, the sister begged him not to do so because they had sick children at home, and Lea thought it was a game of hide and seek and wondered if they would find her.

She was too young to understand what was going on, and had to hide when the Germans did searches at the orphanage. The sisters explained to the children that the Germans didn't like children with dark hair. After the war, Lusia settled in Israel with her father, who survived Auschwitz. She would only find out years later her mother did not survive the war.

Sister Magdalena stressed that rescue was the achievement of the entire Franciscan community. "We acted together then, we still act together today," she explained.

Polish professor Jan Zaryn, a historian of World War II, also stressed that the rescuing of Jews -- including by lay Catholics -- flowed from faith and the commandment to love one's neighbor and help the weak, and that it was one of the forms of clandestine life under the occupation.

He said the Germans used collective responsibility: If they found out that Poles were helping Jews, they murdered everyone in the family, just like Blessed Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma, murdered with seven of their little children in Markowa, Poland, and beatified Sept. 10, 2023.

"Without faith and the strength of conscience, confronting and overcoming fear was impossible, fear was losing out to Christian morality," Zaryn emphasized.

It is estimated that Mother Matylda and her sisters saved several hundred Jews, mostly children. All those who turned to her for help safely lived to see the end of the war. Most of them settled in Israel after leaving Poland, just like Lusia.

Mother Matylda died at the congregation's home in Pludy near Warsaw in 1968. In 1985, she was posthumously awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

During the German occupation of the Polish territories between 1939 and 1945, help was given to Jews by 66 female religious orders in about 450 institutions (mainly monasteries), 25 male religious orders in about 85 institutions, and by more than 700 diocesan priests in at least 580 locations in occupied Poland. Historians underline however that those numbers may be underestimated as many clergy and religious took the story of their bravery to the grave.