Edward Chacza: The Polish Rescuer Who Guided Jewish People to Safety

Edward Chacza: The Polish Rescuer Who Guided Jewish People to Safety

Today I want to find out a little about Edward Chacza. He was a Polish Catholic who risked his life and the safety of his family to help Jewish people escape during the Second World War.

Edward was born in 1918 in western Poland. By the time of the war, he was living in Baranowicze, a city that had belonged to Poland before the Soviet occupation of 1939 and is now Baranavichy in Belarus. He was married to Julia Iwanowa, and they had a daughter. During the German occupation, Edward worked for the municipal sanitation department and was responsible for the Catholic cemetery.

After German forces occupied Baranowicze in 1941, its Jewish population was imprisoned inside a ghetto. Hunger, forced labour and repeated mass killings devastated the community. Edward began his rescue work in early 1942, knowing that discovery could lead to imprisonment or death.

During one of the first major killing operations, Edward encountered a Jewish acquaintance named Arkadi Lipkin. He sheltered him and helped him reach the surrounding forests, where Jewish and Soviet partisan groups were operating. Lipkin and his brother later appear to have acted as links between Edward and the partisans.

Edward’s home became a temporary refuge for fugitives. He provided food, medical assistance and somewhere to recover before helping them reach the forests. Survivor accounts also state that he sometimes concealed people inside the mortuary at the Catholic cemetery.

 Assisted by several trusted companions, Edward guided escapees away from danger and helped them reach partisan units in the surrounding forests.He also cooperated with Hugo Armann, a German army sergeant who secretly protected Jewish workers. When Armann helped people escape, Edward connected them with partisan groups. In early 1943, Edward reportedly helped rescue around 35 of the last Jewish workers held in a camp controlled by the German Security Service.

After the ghetto had been destroyed, Edward continued supplying intelligence to the partisans. He was arrested more than once. Following another arrest in November 1943, he was brutally tortured and imprisoned in several camps until liberation. Despite his suffering, he survived the war.

The exact number of people saved by Edward remains uncertain, but historian Yehuda Bauer estimated that it may have been between 60 and 150. On the 24th of March 1964, Yad Vashem recognised Edward Chacza as Righteous Among the Nations.

Edward’s story reminds us that extraordinary courage can come from an ordinary person who refuses to abandon others. How many more rescuers like Edward Chacza are still waiting to be remembered?