Appeal by the Polish Underground Association For Aid to the Jews, Zegota, Asking For Help In Hiding Jews And for the Punishment Of Traitors

Poles!

The German murderer is trying to tell the world that it was we who set fire to the Warsaw ghetto and we who murdered Jews, and the part played by the German soldiers in this crime is called "armed intervention."

We and our children, who are suffering all the terror of bloody occupation and are unable at present to defend ourselves, could not give the Jews effective aid in their struggle at this time of crisis.

No Pole who is faithful to Christian morality has taken part or will take part in this terrible crime. In the record of glowing deeds of heroism performed by Underground Poland will be engraved, no less than other deeds, deeds of heroism in the saving of people from the Hitlerite beast.

The late Prime Minister of the Polish Republic in London, General Sikorski, in branding the unprecedented German crimes before the world, sent a message of gratitude to the Fatherland for its fine stand and for the help it is giving to the Jews in their terrible situation.

The leadership of the civil struggle and the special courts are already sentencing to death traitors and the extortioners who give away Jews to the German hangmen, and soon the courts of the Free Polish Republic will carry out a full measure of justice against such individuals.

Polish Independence Organizations

Warsaw, September 1943

W. Bartoszewski and Z. Lewinowna, eds., Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej Polacy z pomoca Zydom 1939-1945, Cracow, 1969², p. 951. (English version: Righteous Among the Nations: How Poles Helped the Jews, 1939-1945, London, 1969.)