Elżbieta Jadwiga Keiferowicz, born in 1924

A Story About Human Kindness and One Blackmailer

I’m a nun in the Congregation of the Stara Wieś Sisters Servants of Mary Immaculate. Born in 1924, I’m currently eighty-five years old. I’ve been in the Congregation for fifty years. I’m an internist by profession. After four years of medical work in Tarnów, I joined the convent.

My mother, born in 1900, became a widow in 1933. She raised me and my sister Teresa, who was a year younger than me. We lived in Lublin, where my mother’s brother worked. All four of us were baptized in 1936.

When the war broke out, we stayed in Lublin until the end of 1939 and throughout 1940. Uncle left on the last train to Lvov, to join the rest of the family there. We stayed in Lublin.

In the first year of the war, in November 1939, secondary schools (except for vocational schools) were closed. After my middle school in Lublin was shut down, the so-called childcare center was opened in the convent of the Ursuline Sisters of the Roman Union. It had a kindergarten and a department for school children. The center was supervised by the city’s Central Welfare Council (RGO). My tutor recommended me to work with the children and I worked there for all of 1940. However, in 1941 we were advised to leave, as the Lublin ghetto was being formed and we were known there.

When the persecution of Jews began and the ghetto was established in Lublin, we left with my mother and my sister Teresa to go to Warsaw, receiving letters from my tutor, Mother Stanisława Manowarda to the Gray Ursulines at Gęsta Street (now Wiślana Street) and a letter from the head of RGO in Lublin, Antonina Łopatyńska, recommending me to work with the children in Józefów near Warsaw. In the letter, my tutor asked the Ursuline Sisters to help us get situated, otherwise we would have to go to the ghetto. Mother General of the Ursuline Sisters, Maria Leśniewska, took my mother and sister to a house run by the Sisters at 40 Tamka Street. There was a boarding house for girls attending vocational schools. My mother and sister lived in a tiny room on the second floor of that house which had been vacant. That floor was an attic and a storage space.

I got a job (in exchange for food and accommodation) in the institute for children at risk of tuberculosis, whose fathers were in Oflags and Stalags in Germany. I worked in this preventorium for a year, after which I was transferred to the facility for the blind in Laski, to work with healthy but blind children.

Oflags, Stalags—prisoner-of-war camps.

My mother was able to stay with my sister in the boarding house of the Gray Ursulines until 1943. Because of a denunciation against them, they had to leave. It was a very painful departure. But if they had stayed, the whole convent, along with its superior, Sister Szczepańska, and the nuns, would have been at risk of death. In that house there was also a postulant of Jewish origin, newly baptized (I don’t remember her name), already wearing a habit.

My mother began the life of a homeless person. During the day, she went from church to church, and at night, locked in the church of St. Cross, she slept on a pew, without the sacristan’s realizing it. She was lucky not to have been spotted as he locked up the church.

Now that both my mother and sister are gone, it’s difficult for me to establish the chronology of events from the period of their struggle for life during the occupation. There was an important night in their lives in 1943. For one night they were taken into the apartment of Father Jan Zieja, the chaplain of the Sisters at Gęsta Street. The priest lived outside the convent.

When my sister went out to buy bread, she was accosted by two suspicious-looking individuals. They were sure she was Jewish, they asked where she lived and took her gold watch (the only valuable thing that she had left). They demanded valuables and money, threatening that they would denounce her to the Germans. My sister cried, begging them to let her go, because she had nothing that she could offer them. They left saying that they were fetching the Germans.

My mother and sister didn’t sleep that night; Father Zieja was with them all night. He calmed them down, saying that the “szmalcownicy” (blackmailers) were afraid of death sentences passed by the Home Army and therefore they wouldn’t come or tip off the Germans. And it was so. In the early morning, they were both taken by a nun who took care of them and found safe places for both. At least, safe for a while.

After the war, my sister Teresa worked at the Voivodeship Office in Lublin and, near the office, she met an individual who was one of the men that had blackmailed her in Warsaw. His face changed as he got closer to my sister, he turned pale and looked for a way to get past her. Finally, my sister stopped him and said that she recognized him, she knew who he was and what he did during the occupation. However, she forgave him. She did it because Christ commanded us to forgive evil. I don’t think he thanked her because this would have meant he admitted his guilt.

When the cold fall weather began, Mother went to the Ursuline Sisters at Gęsta Street and asked for help. Sister Popiel, who had contacts in Warsaw, was sent to her. She placed my mother in the home of a retired government official. It was a very noble family, joyful, and full of faith in God’s Providence. Mom ran the household. All the household members were warm and kind. And it should be mentioned that my mother’s Jewish origin was visible from her physiognomy. My mother didn’t leave the house at all nor was she present around the guests.

When there was a denunciation about the entire district of Żoliborz, the Germans unexpectedly came over. A dog, a large wolfhound, snatched my mother’s dress and dragged her out into the garden through the back door of the kitchen. There she hid behind a column, of which there were several near the house while the dog stayed in front of her and growled, showing its teeth. The Germans left the house, heading for the car in the street. The dog continued growling, the Germans saw the dog, but they didn’t spot my mother behind the column and got into the vehicle. Mom had to leave that place.

For a few weeks, she stayed at a retired employee’s in Laski near Warsaw, at the Institute for the Blind, and then with Mrs. Kornecka’s in the village of Izabelin. It was a woman with a big heart. She lived alone in an old cottage. My mother stayed with her for about half a year. When the Germans came to this cottage “on a tip”, Mom was sitting by the stove and peeling potatoes. Mrs. Kornecka, when asked who she was, said, “She’s my old grandmother, blind and deaf.” The Germans left, but Mom couldn’t stay on at this house.

Sister Popiel, who had been informed about the situation, came to fetch Mom and took her to Radość near Warsaw, to the house of Professor Marian Dąbrowski. He ran the Institute of Mental Hygiene. It was a large house, always full of visitors. My mother was the cook and cleaner there. When it got dangerous, she was taken to the Ursuline Sisters, to the home of Sisters suffering from tuberculosis. In the summer, she lived in an empty shed next to the sick Sisters’ building, and in winter, together with the Sisters, serving them.

This was where I found her and took her to the Institute where I worked. My sister also came back here. She had been taken to Germany, to a labor camp, after the Warsaw Uprising. My sister Teresa after leaving the house on Tamka Street, wandered around Warsaw looking for work. It was after the liquidation of the ghetto in Warsaw and it was very dangerous. She found herself again at Gęsta Street with the Sisters, and Sister Popiel took care of her once more. She took her from Warsaw to Skolimów, to the RGO’s Institute for Orphaned Children. There she was employed as a caterer.

After a few months, she returned to Warsaw. She picked a random building and got hired as housekeeper. The owner of the apartment took to her because she thought that she looked similar to her recently deceased daughter. Indeed, this lady’s daughter and my sister looked alike. There was a portrait of her, and the mother of the deceased girl compared the person in the portrait with the appearance of my sister. This is how my sister survived until the Warsaw Uprising.

The letter of recommendation from Mother Manowarda in Lublin didn’t mention that I was a Jew, and I didn’t volunteer this information, following the advice of my confessor, Father Śliwiński, a Jesuit, who, knowing my place of birth (Lvov), recommended that I impersonate an Armenian woman. And he made me promise to firmly deny any suspicion of Jewish origin.

I worked in Laski for eight months, after which the religious and secular authorities were warned that the Germans had been notified of the presence of Jews in the Institute. Right after my departure, the Gestapo killed a Jewish teacher in Laski, sparing the life of the person she had lived with and not holding the authorities of the Institute responsible! A month earlier, when I was still employed in Laski in 1942, while traveling to Warsaw by tram, I got off at Żelaznej Bramy Square. A “navy- blue” policeman got off with me. Clearly aware of who he was dealing with, he started walking me to the police station. But on the way, with a calmness which didn’t come from me but from God, I explained to him that I was an Armenian, born in Lvov, etc. He looked at my social insurance book, where I coincidentally had a school photo with the whole class and the tutor Mother Ursuline. He let himself be persuaded and I thanked him for letting me go. So I didn’t end up having my identity checked at the police station in Powiśle. Free, I thanked God for looking after me and helping me avoid misfortune.

After leaving the Institute in Laski and a short stay with my mother and sister in Warsaw at the Sisters of Charity at Tamka Street, I returned to Józefów. A few months earlier, there was a person who knew who I was and I was afraid that she would report me to the Germans or the navy-blue police. However, I had no other option and took a chance. It turned out that the woman who could have been a threat to me had left the Institute and moved somewhere else.

The head of the Institute in Józefów hired me, didn’t ask many questions, was always cordial and kind. Several teachers, former scouts with high morale, worked in the Institute. One of them, an older woman, was of Jewish origin. People who stayed at the Institute were there for longer or shorter periods of time due to the increasing threat in Warsaw (repression, arrests). There were several children of Jewish origin. Also, young people involved in the Home Army who were at risk of being arrested visited here. For a short while, they were employed as tutors for the boys, and young girls were hired as “temporary” tutors for girls.

In December 1943 bandits, masked and armed with pistols, attacked the house in Józefów. There was no telephone in the house. The remoteness from the city, the rural area, being far from other houses were otherwise safe circumstances, but this time, we were defenseless. The bandits robbed the pantry, took valuables (the property of the residents), and announced their next “visit”. Neither the first nor the second time was the Institute head present.

The second time, the bandits came after midnight, the carbide lamps went out (there was no electric light in the Institute). They threatened to burn the house down if the janitor didn’t open the door. After drinking vodka, they went after us young girls. Their guns were probably damp, because they weren’t shooting at anyone. The young girls from Warsaw started throwing bottles at them. They smashed their heads, one got his eye injured. The attackers basically didn’t harm anyone. Some of the girls escaped through the back door to a neighbor’s remote house. They managed to fetch him when the bandits had already escaped. We emerged victorious from this incident, but the bandits announced that they would burn down the house.

The head was afraid to bring in the navy-blue police because of the people staying in the facility illegally. The Institute was closed, the children—orphans—were placed in other orphanages, and the staff moved to Warsaw. All the tutors died during the Warsaw Uprising. In the circumstances I have no exact information about whether it was in a fire or as a result of shelling. After the war, I couldn’t thank anyone for their kindness and noble character. I was sent to Konstancin, to the Little Children’s Home, which, after the Warsaw Uprising, was turned into the Warsaw Children’s Home.

Summing up: the Ursuline Sisters saved the lives of my mother and my sister. Despite the dangers and risk of moving around the city with people of Jewish origin, Sister Popiel (especially her) showed heroism, and thanks to her my mother and sister managed to survive.

Sister Popiel died during the Warsaw Uprising. While she was on her way to serve people in need, she was hit by a bullet and was set on fire.

She was completely burnt so that there was nothing left of her, not even a handful of dust. This is how this heroic Sister died, who couldn’t even be thanked for her efficient and effective help.

Between 1950 and ’51, I got together with Sister Szczepańska in Lublin. During the occupation, she had been the mother superior and head of the Institute at Tamka Street, where my mother and sister were hiding. I thanked her for her heroism, for the trust placed in God, for bearing all threats during the stay of my relatives at the home for which she was responsible. The house survived, there was no German inspection, no damage during the war or the Uprising. God saved this house and its residents.

I was saved thanks to the kindness of the environment in which I found myself. It was not only kindness, it was a silent heroism that wasn’t talked about. Only once did I have to leave the house, because there was a warning about a German inspection. I stayed away for three hours, which I spent in a rather distant church, after which I returned in the evening. The fears turned out to be ungrounded. The Germans never came. This is how I made it to the end of the war.

I will never be able to thank the noble and courageous people enough for the good that they did us. Every day, I pray for their souls and hope to meet them in the next life.

My mother, Elżbieta, of blessed memory, died in 1985. My sister, Teresa, of blessed memory, died in 2004.

Stara Wieś, 2006 and 2009.