Resistance (4 page)

I met Zygmunt in a 1978 meeting in Warsaw. During our conversation, he emphasized that in Krzemienice many of his friends had been Jewish. He also told me that he was a member of the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, or PPS).
Throughout the war years, he devoted himself to saving the most persecuted. What kind of a person was Zygmunt Rytel? What values pushed him toward the protection of the most oppressed? His wartime protection of Jews led to a Yad Vashem—the museum and research center in Israel devoted to the Holocaust—recognition as a Righteous among the Nations of the World.
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Before the public ceremony, Zygmunt learned that evidence had established that he had saved the lives of at least one hundred Jews.
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“I am an individualist,” he said to me. “I like to live in a way that does not make me dependent on others. I also stand up for things I believe in, and often pay for it. But, this is the only way I can respect myself.”
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During the war, as he himself says, Zygmunt's activities were closely intertwined with who he was and how he saw himself. With high school education behind him, he enrolled in an engineering program. But he soon gave up the idea of becoming an engineer and, following the invasion and occupation of Poland by the Germans, turned instead to writing and to journalism—to reporting and documenting history as it evolved. Zygmunt was deeply concerned about the multiplying threats that grew out of the German occupation. His assessments of the political situation were gloomy and confirmed his sense that there was a need to stand up for those who were its victims. His affiliation with the PPS bolstered his social and political obligations.
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Initially, Zygmunt's activities concentrated on the protection of the so-called Polish elites—the intellectuals, artists, academics—because they were, in fact, the most threatened. The concentration camp Auschwitz was built in 1940 and its initial inmates were Polish leaders and intellectuals.
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Outspoken and direct, Zygmunt explained, “I was not helping more Jews than Poles. On the contrary, around 1940 I had concentrated on aiding the Polish elites. At that time they were targeted by the Germans for destruction.”

Zygmunt was himself subjected to hardships, as well. Barely eighteen, he became an Auschwitz prisoner. The eight months he spent in Auschwitz made a deep impression on him. As a former inmate, Zygmunt was convinced that Auschwitz prisoners cannot bear to look at the sufferings of others. Zygmunt's sensitivity to the distress of others was tested at the start of the war, when a German officer murdered his teenage brother in 1939. Serving as a Polish soldier, this brother was slightly injured. His injury caught the attention of a German officer, who, without checking the extent
of the young man's injuries, took out his gun and summarily shot him. This event only strengthened Zygmunt's determination to protect all those who suffered. He explains:

I take a strict position toward myself, and towards others. Particularly toward those who could but failed to help. . . . I see them as some kind of lower type beings. . . . By 1943, it was clear that the worst off were the Jews. Because I wanted to save those who were in greatest danger, I concentrated on rescuing Jews. Had I not done this, I would have lost all my self-respect . . . I would look at myself as a zero, a nobody, and would feel disgusted with myself.

I was curious to know whether Zygmunt had been afraid while standing up for the oppressed. First, he seemed to hesitate. Then he explained, “I do not like the so-called courageous people who say that they are not afraid. People, who lack the sense of danger, endanger themselves and others. . . . Of course I was afraid, but I tried not to show it.”

Asked how he related to the Jews he was protecting, he responded, “There were some Jews with whom I became close friends. Some of them I liked; some I did not. Some I even felt repulsed by. But none of this affected my actions. I helped all. Those I liked and those I disliked.”

How did those who benefited from Zygmunt's protection react to him? The unhesitating answer was that there was a difference in the reaction of the “poor” and the “rich.” Those survivors who had limited resources were eager to maintain contacts with their rescuers and their family. The opposite was true for survivors who were financially well off. The latter group was aloof and disinterested in having continuous contacts with their wartime protectors.

By 1944, Zygmunt's involvement with the Polish socialist underground and his protection of Nazi victims brought him to Warsaw, to the part of the city called Zoliborz, an area known for its generous aid to the persecuted and its opposition to the German occupation. In Zoliborz the Socialist Party offered Rytel a one-room apartment. Since the socialist underground had recently lost its best document forger, Rytel was asked to take over this job. This young journalist-reporter tried to match the accomplishments of his predecessor. First, for safety, Zygmunt prepared for himself four documents, each with a different name. Soon a range of orders
began to reach his living quarters, which were transformed into a semi-factory, producing all kinds of certificates, records, and documents. The more orders that reached Zygmunt's place, the more skillful he became. Naturally, as his reputation as a forger grew, the more strenuously the Socialist Party tried to keep the location of his apartment secret.

While Zygmunt was willing to help move Jews to safe places, he could not bring them to his apartment, which was filled with incriminating evidence. However, Zygmunt knew that in Zoliborz he would most likely find temporary lodgings for those who were on the run, and that later on he would be able to replace these limited quarters with more permanent shelters. About his varied illegal activities he told me, with persuasive conviction, “If I were acting alone I would not have saved a soul! Only a group of people could succeed, not a single individual!” Zygmunt was affirming the importance of cooperation. Experience had taught him that solutions to problems grew out of cooperative efforts, which in turn grew out of his underground affiliation.

FIGURE 1.1
Zygmunt Rytel in 1966. During the war, Zygmunt, a member of the Polish Socialist Party, devoted himself to saving those who were most persecuted. (Courtesy Yad Vashem)

Zygmunt's underground involvements expanded in diverse directions. He joined
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egota, also known as the Council for the Aid to Jews.
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egota was particularly involved in aiding Jews who tried to survive by passing as non-Jews and hiding in the forbidden Christian world—the so-called “Aryan side.” After October 15, 1941, all unauthorized Jewish presence on the Aryan side was punishable by death. The same punishment applied to any Pole, and his or her family, who was caught helping Jews stay in the Christian world.
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The Socialist Party was actively supporting
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egota. Zygmunt, for example, distributed funds to Jews who were in hiding and or passing as Christians in the Aryan world. Some of these funds came from the Polish government-in-exile in London; some came from several organizations in the remaining free world. The money helped Jews in a whole range of circumstances. Often threats from denouncers required changes of living quarters, as well as new documents.
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Zygmunt was also busy transporting Jews from one town to another, keeping them one step ahead of the authorities. These moves involved risks, yet he undertook them without much second thought. “Whether one worked for the underground or not, life was endangered anyway. One could be caught every day for no reason at all, or for a serious reason. My mother was arrested in 1942 while working on an illegal newspaper. All people I knew did work in the underground, in one capacity or another. Whether you transgressed or not, you could be picked up.”

With time, Zygmunt learned how to make films. At first filmmaking seemed frivolous and useless to him. But when his superiors explained the value of movies as historical documents, he changed his mind. In the end he was very good at it.

Zygmunt acknowledged to me how hard it was to keep entire Jewish families for prolonged periods of time. Inevitably those who harbored in their homes Jews for extensive periods of time experienced a variety of inner and outer conflicts. Using himself as an example, Zygmunt tried to explain some of the differences between long- and short-term protections of Jews. “I was constantly on the run; among my duties was the transportation of illegal individuals, Jewish and non-Jewish. I was constantly active, constantly switching from one activity to another. I had constant changes fighting actively. In a sense, I was fighting. Those who had kept Jews in their homes for prolonged periods of time were fighting passively.
To fight passively is harder. I don't know if I had the strength, especially as a youth, to keep someone in my place for a year or longer. Those who kept Jews for a long time turned their lives into a process of waiting for something that had to come from the outside.”

As he acknowledged, however, it was his youth that helped him through it:

As a young person, I might have even found the dangers of underground activities exciting . . . I might have experienced illegal pastimes as a part of an adolescent game, as some kind of an adventure. We should neither hide nor deny that we were engaging in activities that were dangerous and daring, something which gave us satisfaction. . . . As young people we were participating in doing something against those who were strong and powerful. We were acting in opposition to those who were in authority. This in itself might have satisfied the young. Also while acting in opposition to authority we were engaged in highly valued acts, we were at once opposing the enemy and saving the oppressed. Similarly, when during the war we studied illegally we had an easier time learning because for us, at that time, learning was a forbidden pastime. To the extent that the young people welcomed the illegal part of studying, they probably learned better.

Zygmunt argued nonetheless that the “very young” did not have “the moral strength to keep people in their apartment for long stretches of time.” It was, instead, older people, those who had “passed through many difficult experiences [and] were hardened psychologically” who had the strength to do that. “Older people are more patient. They did not require constant changes in their underground activities.”

I asked why Hitler concentrated on murdering Jews, and Zygmunt was surprised by the question. “The extermination of the Jews was the best business for the Germans. Murdering the Jews was based on economics. I cannot understand why people do not want to take a pencil and calculate the profits that came to the Germans.”

When I asked about the sources of anti-Semitism, always a very touchy subject in Poland, Zygmunt had a ready answer. Groups which differ from those in their environment will evoke negative feelings from the majority. But anti-Semitism was a political and
economic activity, stimulated by leaders. It didn't stop with the end of the war. The Polish government persecuted the Jewish elite in 1968, when most of the prominent Jews immigrated to Denmark. Denmark was delighted to accept this highly intelligent group of Jewish professionals.

For most of Zygmunt's life, he was faithful to the PPS. Only during the Warsaw uprising did he cooperate with the Home Army (Armia Krajowa, or AK). Eventually, however, he joined the Gwardia Ludowa (GL), which was the leftist pro-Soviet party. In the facts and details of Rytel's life, he had much in common with Antoni Zieleniewski, though it is a curious fact of history that they never met.

Antoni Zieleniewski was born in 1913 in the small town of Kolo, located in the heart of Poland close to the River Warta. Up to 1939, this town's inhabitants had been split into practically equal parts; one Jewish, the other Polish. Zieleniewski was Polish. I met Antoni in 1978, hoping to learn from him about prewar and wartime history. What made him a particularly interesting subject was the archival evidence, which identified him as someone who had been a part of the Polish underground and who had risked his life to save Jews.

We met at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, and after a brief chat I plunged into the subject at hand, asking him how Jews had affected his life. Antoni delivered his replies in a measured voice. He told me that many of his schoolmates were Jewish. “One of them was an especially valued friend, Lolek Leczynski. Our friendship began in the elementary school, continued in high school and beyond. We always studied together. Our mothers were both widows and they, too, were close friends. They might have encouraged our friendship, but we were not aware of this.” After Antoni and Lolek graduated from high school, they enrolled at the Warsaw University. Both decided to study law. “Lolek was an outstanding student. I looked up to him. Together we expected the University to fulfill all our dreams. Initially, we simply ignored that being Jewish or being Polish might have had serious implications for our hunger to learn. Somehow our friendship made us insensitive to the mounting prejudices around us.”