[December 3, 2015] About once a month or so I highlight a “hero” who showed an unusually high degree of physical or moral courage. It’s rare to find those who display both and why I’m pointing out the case of Zofia Kossak (later Kossak-Szczucka). Although there are many who were killed and their names will never be known, we are fortunate to have Kossak to admire for what she did in Poland during the Nazi occupation in World War II.
As many will recall from history classes, Germany invaded Poland in early September 1939. The occupation was divided between Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union (USSR) until the German attack on the USSR in 1941. Both military powers were hostile to the Polish culture and its people and each had the specific aim of the destruction of Polish society.1 They exercised a rule of terror which included the mass execution of Polish military prisoners, the intelligentsia, politicians, scientists, and others deemed a threat. Nazi Germany’s terror also included a dedicated extermination program to eliminate all those of Jewish faith.
In this backdrop Zofia Kossak, a Polish writer and later a resistance fighter, co-founded the wartime Polish organization Żegota along with Wanda Pilipowicz. Since the German invasion, the Jewish population had been thrust into ghettos, transported to concentration and labor camps, or murdered. Homes were confiscated and synagogues burned.2 Anyone helping Jews were considered enemies of the state.
It was the publication of their underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, that made public the news that tens of thousands of Jews were being gassed at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland. Despite Kossak and Pilipowicz being persecuted for being Slavs (they were considered an inferior race), this did not stop them, both Christians, from helping protect their Jewish neighbors. Kossak was arrested in 1943 but was released later because the Nazis did not know of her underground work. She later participated in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising.
After World War II and the liberation of Poland, the country was run by a communist regime. Kossak fled Poland to avoid arrest by the Soviet authorities for helping Jews, fleeing to the West. Today we honor their memory and respect the courageous work done by Zofia Kossak.
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- http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/199/glass.html
- http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/polish-christians-come-to-the-aid-of-polish-jews