Holocaust Hero : Jews Honor Polish Priest for Saving Lives in World War II

Jews turned to a Catholic priest Thursday for help in remembering the horror of the Holocaust.

A ceremony at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in West Los Angeles paid homage to 6 million Jews killed in World War II by honoring Father Josef Gorajek--a Polish village priest who saved dozens of Jews from Nazi invaders by hiding them in his parish.

The event was part of an international Holocaust Day remembrance. Other observances included the symbolic ground-breaking for a $1-million Holocaust monument at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles and disclosure of expansion of the Wiesenthal Center’s campaign to locate suspected Nazi war criminals in the United States.

The Wiesenthal Center event reunited the 80-year-old Gorajek with one of those whose life he saved as the Nazis herded Poland’s 3 1/2 million Jews into ghettos and concentration camps, such as the one at Auschwitz.

Eugene Winnik, now an Encino resident and owner of a San Fernando Valley fur shop, was coached by Gorajek to pretend to be Catholic as he and his mother hid from Nazis near the village of Wawolnica.

“I attended church daily” and received communion from Gorajek, recalled Winnik, 53. When nervous villagers began to suspect that he might be Jewish, he said, Gorajek convinced them to keep their silence.

Through the war years, “at no time did this courageous priest, who risked so much, ever encourage me to leave my faith or my people,” Winnik said.

He traced Gorajek to his old church last July after finding the priest’s name on a communion certificate saved by his mother.

Dozens of concentration camp survivors applauded as the white-haired Gorajek explained in Polish how he protected Jews, even though Jewish sympathizers were being rounded up and executed by the Nazis.

“There weren’t enough people like him,” said Jack Mandel, president of a national organization of concentration camp survivors. “If there had been a thousand Father Gorajeks, many, many more would have survived.”

Gorajek said he was a member of the Polish underground. “In order to save the Jews, I changed their certificates and attested they were Catholic,” he recalled. “Many were placed in convents and religious orders. Others we located in various occupations which possibly could be safe.”

The world, said Gorajek, should “know the truth about the persecution of the Jews and the martyrs. One needs to look to the Hitlerites, the criminals who are still hiding in Poland.”

Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center, said his organization is doing just that in the United States. He announced that the names of 31 additional suspected Nazi war criminals believed to be living in this country were turned over Wednesday to the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigation.

The names, and how they were identified, were not disclosed.

But the list includes the first American-born war criminal identified by researchers at the center, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the center’s associate dean. That suspect is a Philadelphia native who later became a member of the Lithuanian police, he said.

The new names bring to 350 the number of cases involving suspected Nazi war criminals that the center has uncovered in the last 18 months, he said.