THE KNOWLEDGE OF POLISH

Escaping the ghetto and living “on Aryan papers” was a choice usually made by assimilated Jews – those familiar with the culture and the basic holiday customs of the Poles, knowing the basic Catholic prayers and elements of liturgy, versed in the recipes for traditional Polish dishes and, first and foremost, fluent in Polish. There were, however, exceptions – there are stories of people hiding “on the surface,” who disguised their unfamiliarity with or insufficient knowledge of the Polish language (evident in their accent, intonation, or the use of phrases from yiddish) by pretending to be deaf and dumb. A notable example was professor Perec Willenberg posing as a mute photographer, Karol Baltazar Pękosławski.

Those who could not use the language well enough nor had the acting skills required for impersonating Poles, chose life in confined hideouts, where the threat of encountering a blackmailer, a Gestapo officer, or even a suspicious passer-by was greatly decreased.

Magdalena Grodzka-Gużkowska taught fugitives from the ghetto how to behave in the Aryan side: “Women, hats upward, let’s show that face, we need to get some tan, walk boldly…” – she recalls in her interview. “I was to teach [this] man how to behave in a church, so I took him to an aspersorium and I’m telling him to observe how the Catholics do it: go in, wave around, go on. And then he’s dipping his hand, so delicately. I was addressing him simply as “you,” and you should show respect to your elders – ‘you’re done for, you’re gone.’ … we’d gone through a couple of churches until he got it right.”