Mother Matylda Getter
Matylda Getter was born on February 25, 1870 in Warsaw. Little is known of her family and early years. Historical records show her attending a private girls’ school run by the Sisters of the Family of Mary, who operated in secrecy due to the repression against religious orders in Russia and the former Kingdom of Poland. In 1884, she moved back to Warsaw.
In 1887, at the age of 17, Matylda entered the Congregation of the Sisters of the Family of Mary, which continued to operate clandestinely. There, Matylda worked as a teacher and guardian for girls, and also served as the superior of a shelter in Moldavanka. Over the next decade, she continued her work in education and with impoverished children in Rome and St. Petersburg, returning to Warsaw at the end of 1908 to assume the duties of mother superior of the main house of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Family of Mary.
By the time World War II began nearly thirty years later, Mother Matylda would develop dozens of schools, classrooms, and care facilities across Poland and Lithuania, while also organizing campaigns and homes for orphans and those suffering continued effects from World War I. It’s believed that she helped to found twenty-five educational and childcare institutions in her lifetime.
As Nazi Germany began invading Polish territory, Mother Matylda and the Sisters began taking in and organizing new homes for refugees, prisoners, struggling families, the homeless and those in danger of arrest, and, in particular, orphaned children. Throughout the German occupation, the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary’s home in Warsaw—the same home that had survived an air strike—was commonly used by 300 people a day.
Mother Matylda supervised outreach to aid recent arrestees, issuing new documentation for people, particularly Jews targeted by the Nazis; she also paid close attention to the wellbeing of the Sisters, refusing to shutter any of their homes, and opening nine more. But, according to witnesses and historical documents, Mother Matylda’s greatest contribution during the war was in saving the lives of Jewish children.
Well aware of the risks, Mother Matylda nevertheless made it known that messengers and children were always welcome at her door. She took in children and the elderly, hiding them throughout the Sisters’ various homes and offering spots in their classrooms and churches, while older girls were dressed as Sisters or handmaids. The Sisters also collected birth and baptismal certificates for those they housed, as these served as documented “confirmation” that the Jewish children were, in fact, Christians.
In the last days of the siege of Warsaw during World War II, German air raids were unceasing. At a small provincial house, occupied by children and the Franciscan Sisters of the Family of Mary, an evacuation had taken place just before a three-ton bomb hit the house; luckily, it did not explode. Later, when the sisters came to see what happened to the house, they found Matylda Getter, known to them as Matusia, cooking a pot of groats to feed the children.
Mother Matylda and the Sisters’ final heroic act during the war came in the form of food and first aid during the Warsaw Uprising. They prepared meals for over one thousand people, aided insurgents, the wounded and the medical staff in the nearby hospital, and established a cemetery for those who lost their lives. After sixty-three days of fighting and the collapse of the uprising, Matylda and the Sisters had to abandon their house and Warsaw, staying in Brwinów until the liberation.
By the end of the war in 1945, after countless air raids and destruction, Matylda and the Sisters documented only two lost lives in their wards; but it’s estimated that they saved the lives of 250 to 550 Jewish children.
Matylda then spent the next fourteen years at the same home, first as Superior, then as retiree. She received numerous honors for her heroic actions, including being recognized as one of the Polish Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem. She passed away in 1968.
The story of this building is present in the virtual exhibition
The museum will comprise a permanent exhibition dedicated to the saving of Jewish children by orders of nuns and priests, as well as a conference hall and a library. The congregation has already taken the first formal steps to obtain a building permit, with preliminary plans already completed. The museum is planned to open in three years.