It provided hiding places and false identify documents for Jewish men, women, and children who were able to escape from German-Nazi control and ultimately their efforts saved thousands of lives.
Zegota distributed about 50,000 sets of false identification documents that were provided by secret forgery units of the underground. Żegota agents looked for homes and hiding places, including emergency shelters, to enable escaping Jews to get off the streets as quickly as possible.
A special section of Żegota was organized to get Jewish children out of the German Warsaw Ghetto after locating homes for them. The Jewish children also required false documents and stories to match. If they were old enough, they had to memorize new identities. Żegota rescued about 2,500 Jewish children in the city of Warsaw. Irena Sendlerowa (Irena Krzyzanowska or Irena Sendler) played a leading role in the rescue and hiding of Jewish children. Zegota was the only such organization in occupied Europe during the Holocaust.
Germans selected Poland as the only country where aiding a Jew, be it only to give him a slice of bread, was immediately punished by death. Failure to inform on a neighbor hiding Jews meant deportation to a German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp (1939-1945) Auschwitz, Buchewald, Dachau, Bergen Belsen, Ravensbrück, Sachsenhausen, Muathausen, Neuengamme, Gross-Rosen, Szucha, Pawiak, Palmiry.
Few people know that among all the countries occupied by the German Third Reich during the Second World War only in German-Occupied Poland was any kind of help to a person of Jewish faith or origin punishable by death. This penalty was widely announced by the occupying authorities. What is more, this punishment was quite often imposed not only on the rescuer, but also on his/her family, often on neighbors, and on whole towns or villages. The Germans believed in collective responsibility, trying to eliminate as many Poles, and Slavic people, as possible, making them the most terrorized populations after the Jews and the Gypsies. Close to three million Polish Christians lost their lives by execution, torture, starvation, or overwork in more than 2,000 prisons, forced labor and concentration camps.
On August 22, 1939, a week before his attack on Poland, Hitler exhorted his nation: "Kill without pity or mercy all men, women and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space we need." As many as 200,000 Polish children, deemed to have "Germanic" (Aryan) features, were forcibly taken to Germany to be raised as Germans, and had their birth records falsified. Very few of these children were reunited with their families after the war.
More than 500 towns and villages were burned, over 16 thousand persons, mostly Polish Christians, were killed in 714 mass executions of which 60% were carried out by the Wehrmacht (German army) and 40% by the SS and Gestapo. In Bydgoszcz the first victims were boy scouts from 12 to 16 years old, shot in the marketplace. All this happened in the first eight weeks of the war. See Richard C. Lucas, The Forgotten Holocaust; The Poles under German Occupation. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.
According to the AB German Plan, Poles were to become a people without education, slaves for the German overlords. Secondary schools were closed; studying, keeping radios, or arms of any kind, or practicing any kind of trade were prohibited under the threat of death.
Out of its pre-war population of 36 million, Poland lost 22%, a higher percentage than any other country in Europe. The heaviest losses were sustained by educated classes, youth and democratic forces that could have challenged totalitarianism.
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