Museum of Poland's 'Righteous Gentiles'

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In the sixties the two main groups in the Polish Communist Party were actually called the Jews (properly the Pulawian faction) and the Boors (the Natolin faction) after the title of a famous and emotional article written by a Polish Jew Witold Jedlicki in Israel in 1962 (he hated both groups).
Their names reflected the parentage of majority of their members.
The Jews were former Stalinists, the Boors basically were stooges of the post-Stalinist USSR.
In the end the Boors destroyed the Jews in 1968, and shortly afterwards themselves were wiped out by a new faction that sprang behind their back without anybody noticing.

Joachim Görlich (a Polish German who left Poland in 1959, an expert on Polish politics) in his article Machtkämpfe in Polen. Gomułka zwischen den Cliquen called the groups: Lümmel and Juden.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Here an interesting article about Righteous Poles by Konstanty Gebert (in Polish):

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showpost. ... count=2257

And here how South African Afrikaners reacted to stories about WW2 (in Polish):

http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthrea ... t120401654

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Dear Lord have mercy, just send pestilence on us, please don't torment us with Konstanty Gebert and his ilk.

The combination of the effects of the Holocaust and postwar antisemitism led to a dramatic mass emigration of Polish Jewry in the immediate postwar years. Of the estimated 240,000 Jews in Poland in 1946 (of whom 136,000 were refugees from the Soviet Union, most on their way to the West), only 90,000 remained a year later.[67][68] The surviving Jews of Poland found themselves victims of the explosive postwar political situation.

What is not mentioned there is the fact that many of the Jews, maybe even over a half didn't do it because of any antisemitism, but because:

- the new Poland wasn't their homeland, their homeland the so called Kresy was destroyed by the Nazis and occupied by the USSR, it simply didn't exist anymore. Their shtetlech had been wiped out, and were being replaced with sovkhozes and kolkhozes,
- they weren't Poles, they didn't even speak Polish. They spoke Yiddish and sometimes some other language like Russian,
- the choice between Poland - a second and a half world country, and a first world like US/UK/France was obvious. Most of them didn't go to Israel for the same reason, it wasn't a first world country - yet.

Actually places for them was prepared, former German towns were allocated (like Dzierżoniów, Bielawa) so it wasn't like they had no place to go but being reasonably people they preferred greener pastures.

Similar process happened in the eighties, when about a million Poles fled the communist Poland claiming they suffered persecution, but in fact most of them did it for economic reasons.

[henryk]

http://www.thenews.pl/1/2/Artykul/41245 ... scued-Jews

Memorial Day honouring Poles who rescued Jews

Polish Radio 24.03.2019 12:00

March 24 is observed in Poland as a memorial day honouring Poles who helped save Jews from the Holocaust. The Day was first observed in 2018, after legislation initiated by Polish President Andrzej Duda was adopted by the upper house of Poland’s parliament. The memorial day is designed to be a tribute to Poles who saved their Jewish neighbours from extermination at the hands of Poland's Nazi German occupiers during the war. This particular date was selected as on March 24, 1944, German military police shot Józef and his pregnant wife Wiktoria Ulma, their six children — aged one to eight — as well as the family of eight Jews that they had harbored for more than a year in the village of Markowa, southeast Poland.
Speaking at the Mass at the Field Cathedral of the Polish Army in Warsaw, which begain the solemnities of the Day, Field Bishop Józef Guzdek appealed for an honest approach to the past and for memory of the nameless heroes of World War 2. "We know there were those who did not behave as they should and collaborated with the German occupier in exterminating Jews. But there were many who for moral and religious reasons carried help to our elder brothers in faith" he said. He also underlined that Poland was the only country in Nazi-occupied Europe where there was a death penalty for helping Jews. In spite of this, he said, many did. More than 6 thousand Poles have been recognized by the Yad Vashem Institute with the title of Righteous Among Nations, said Bishop Guzdek.
He also said that he hoped today's unveiling of a plaque in honour of Franciscan nun Matylda Getter would be symbolic for memory of all Poles who helped Jews in wartime.
During the occupation, Sister Matylda Getter placed Jewish children in orphanages run by her order in Warsaw suburbs, from 1942 taking in any child that had come from the ghetto. The joint effort of the Franciscan nuns saved several hundred lives.

Source: IAR, PAP

[history1]

"“ [...] These Jews stayed on the premises of the Ulmas [...] THEY NEVER HID IN PARTUCULAR, since all of them were busy helping to run the Ulmases’ farm,” reported Stanislaw Niemczak, a neighbor of the Ulma family. [...]"
Source: https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/ulma.html
From the same source: "[...] Searches were conducted both by the Germans and the Polish peasants themselves, who wanted to find the hiding Jews [...]"

Not very wise and totally careless! At the end they did paid the ulitimate prize for it.

[history1]

Nah, it´s not true, but that´s what they spreed in Poland:
Maciej Rosalak: gdyby nie Polacy żaden Żyd nie przeżyłby drugiej wojny światowej
https://www.polskieradio24.pl/130/5925/ ... acGJwR-okQ

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The Ulmas were simple and deeply religious people, they weren't any cartoonish 007 agents, so they naively helped people in need.
They really shouldn't have, if it's my family versus a stranger/Jew the stranger will get it first, make no mistake about it.

But still it didn't really matter, you could hide something from the village for a few months but not for a few years.
In a close-knit community, like villages were, secrets weren't possible. It's obvious the village knew, so it didn't matter the Jews were busy helping to run the Ulmas’ farm or not, the village knew what was going on.

The problem is if the people knew and didn't report it they were liable to be executed, so the question is were they aware they endangered their neighbors or not.
I suppose they weren't. The Germans were hugely paranoid about the Jews, and since 1943 even more paranoid. Even the post-Warsaw-Uprising population was screened for Jews although at that time it didn't matter.
But the German threats weren't evenly distributed, and many people weren't aware of the danger of their naive helping efforts.