83rd Anniversary of the “Żegota” Council to Aid Jews

Redakcja / Editorial staff; English translation: Andrew Rajcher, 4 December 2025
It was the only state-supported organisation in occupied Europe, established to help Jews during the Holocaust. Its member and collaborators – Poles and Jews – were active in the underground. They helped adults and children – Jews hiding in German-occupied Poland. Marking the 83rd anniversary of the establishment of the “Żegota” Council to Aid Jews, we present the activities of this secret organisation. Check out what we have prepared for this anniversary – read what is new on the Polish Righteous portal and see memorabilia from POLIN Museum collection.

“It was the first organisation in which Zionists, Bundists, Catholics, Polish democrats, Polish socialists and peasants, both Jews and Poles, sat together at one table, in a conspiracy against the Germans”, wrote Władysław Bartoszewski (1922–2015), a member of the Council to Aid Jews, honoured after the War with the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

“Żegota” was established, in Warsaw, on 4th December 1942, continuing the mission of the social Committee to Aid Jews, established a few months earlier by Zofia Kossak and Wanda Krahelska-Filipowiczow.

The activities of “Żegota”, conducted until January1945, consisted mainly of providing financial support to Jews in hiding, organising hiding places, finding work and supplying them with false documents. Those for whom they cared were both adults and children.

The first chairman of the Council to Aid Jews, from January 1943 to February 1944, was Julian Grobelny (1893–1944).  The work of the Council to Aid Jews was streamlined through a division into departments, including documentation and legalization, finance, housing, anti-blackmail, propaganda, children’s aid, medical, and clothing departments. In the spring of 1943, two regional branches of the Council were also established — in Kraków and in Lviv.

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It is not possible to precisely determine the scale of help provided by “Żegota” – how many Jews were saved. It is impossible to determine just how many of these rescue activities were successful. It is known that “Żegota” supplied circa 50,000 false documents to those under its care. Initially, 300 people benefited from its financial support. At the end of 1943, it was 2,000 and, in the summer of 1944, circa 4,000.

However, it should be remembered that the establishment of “Żegota” took place at a time when the mass deportations of Jews from the ghettos to extermination camps, organised by the Germans, were already coming to an end.

New on the Polish Righteous portal

This year marked the 130th anniversary of the birth of Władysława Larysa Chomsowa (1895–1966), known by the pseudonyms “Dionizy” and “Danuta” — a social and political activist, chair of the presidium of the Lviv branch of the Council to Aid Jews, and after the war honored with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. In 2026, the 60th anniversary of her death will be observed.

We dedicate the latest publication on the Polish Righteous portal, devoted to the activities of “Żegota” in Lviv, to the memory of this remarkable woman. As noted by the author of the article and a researcher of this still little-explored subject, Bartosz Heksel:

“Relatively few materials concerning the Lviv branch of the Council to Aid Jews ‘Żegota’ have survived. While part of the documentation of the Kraków branch was preserved thanks to copies of reports sent to the Regional Delegate of the Government-in-Exile at Home and to the chair of the Council in Warsaw, in the case of the Lviv ‘Żegota’ only brief references to its activities remain, primarily concerning Władysława Larysa Chomsowa and the rescue operation for Jewish children that she led.”

The text is illustrated with archival photographs depicting members and associates of the Council to Aid Jews in Lviv (selected images are also presented in the gallery at the top of this page). The article is further complemented by biographical interviews with individuals who survived the Holocaust in Lviv, drawn from the oral history collection of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Read: Activities of the Lviv branch of the Council to Aid Jews “Żegota” [English version will be available soon] →

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