SW News: The first English-language monograph about Catholic priests saving Jews during World War II was published during a conference at the Catholic University of Lublin. The two-volume book, “Wartime Rescue of Jews by the Polish Catholic Church,” by Ryszard Tyndorf, was issued on March 23.

The book is a study of rescue operations for Jews carried out by the Catholic Church and its clergy in German-occupied Poland during WWII. According to the publication, many Jews received help from about 100 Catholic religious orders in more than 500 facilities and over 700 diocesan priests in 600 localities in occupied Poland during the Holocaust.

The study is mainly based on the experiences of Jewish survivors and Poles who assisted them, supplemented with Church sources. It depicts various forms of help to Jews by the Catholic Church and clergy in at least 580 towns in the occupied regions.

The rector of the Catholic University, Fr. Prof. Mirosław Kalinowski, emphasized that the book was a work of decades and that every reader should know the role of the Catholic Church during WWII.

The book was crafted by Tyndorf, a Canada-based lawyer and documentarian, by reviewing the extensive Polish-language literature over the same. The 20th-century history of the Catholic Church, the issue of charity and philanthropy in social life, and the history and culture of Jews in Poland during the 19th and 20th centuries are among the areas of expertise of this historian.