“Whoever Comes Asking for Help, We Must Not Refuse” Mother Matylda Getter (25 February 1870 – 8 August 1968)

There are always things that stay with you from your childhood. My father told me when I was a young boy that there were nuns who risked their lives saving Jews from the Nazis during the Second World War. I took it in as a fact, but never gave it much more thought—until a few years ago.We’ve all heard of the nuns who did heroic deeds, but, until recently I couldn’t have given you a name. Mother Matylda Getter was the mother provincial of the Warsaw province of the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary. During the German occupation she organised the concealment of hundreds of Jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto inside the order’s orphanages and care homes. Yad Vashem recognised her as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985.She was born in Warsaw, one of ten children in a working-class family. She entered the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary and rose to become superior of the Warsaw province in 1936, based at the provincial house at 53 Hoża Street. Before the war she had already founded or expanded more than twenty educational and care institutions for children across the Warsaw region and beyond.When the ghetto was sealed, Getter told her sisters that no Jewish child who reached them would be turned away. The phrase associated with her is direct: “Whoever comes to our yard and asks for help, in the name of Christ, we must not refuse.” Children arrived through networks that included Irena Sendler and Żegota. The sisters obtained false birth and baptismal certificates, moved the children between convent houses and orphanages (including sites in Anin, Białołęka, Płudy and elsewhere), taught them how to recite Catholic prayers, speak Polish when needed, and kept them hidden under the constant risk of death for both the children and the rescuers. Estimates of the number saved by the congregation under her direction commonly range from 250 to 550 children; some congregational and archival figures are higher when adults are included. Getter herself was nearly seventy when the occupation began.The provincial house on Hoża Street also ran a soup kitchen and, during the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, a medical station. After the war Getter continued at the congregation’s house in Płudy until her death in 1968. In 1985 Yad Vashem awarded her the title Righteous Among the Nations. A plaque at 53 Hoża Street now commemorates her and the sisters who worked with her.In my novel The Ghetto, Mother Matylda Getter appears among the real figures who made daily, practical decisions under occupation. The Ghetto is a story of ordinary people inside and outside the wall, including those who hid children. Readers who already know her name will recognise the choices she and the sisters faced.While researching the book I was invited by the Sisters to the house in Anin that had once belonged to Father Godlewski (who also features in the book and was also a recipient of the title, Righteous Among the Nations). They received me with the same unforced warmth and generosity that had once been extended to the children who arrived at their gates. The rooms were ordinary. The welcome was extraordinary.Further reading includes the Yad Vashem page on Matylda Getter, materials from the Institute of National Remembrance, and accounts published by the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary. Her own recorded principle remains the clearest summary of what she did: she would not send a child away who asked for help.