Żegota was the Polish Council to Aid Jews with the Government Delegation for Poland, an underground Polish resistance organization, and part of the Polish Underground State, active 1942–45 in German-occupied Poland. Żegota was the successor institution to the Provisional Committee to Aid Jews and was established specifically to save Jews. Poland was the only country in German-occupied Europe where such a government-established and -supported underground organization existed.
Third anniversary of Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: Żegota members, Warsaw, April 1946. Seated, from right: Piotr Gajewski, Ferdynand Marek Arczyński, Władysław Bartoszewski, Adolf Berman, Tadeusz Rek [pl].
1941 German poster, in German and Polish, on death to Jews outside ghetto and to Poles who helped Jews
Żegota letter to Polish Government-in-Exile, requesting funds to aid Jews, January 1943
Polish Prime Minister Władysław Sikorski's leaflet appeal to help Jews, Warsaw, May 1943
The Polish Underground State [a] was a single political and military entity formed by the union of resistance organizations in occupied Poland that were loyal to the Government of the Republic of Poland in exile in London. The first elements of the Underground State were established in the final days of the German and Soviet invasion of Poland, in late September 1939. The Underground State was perceived by supporters as a legal continuation of the pre-war Republic of Poland that waged an armed struggle against the country's occupying powers: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The Underground State encompassed not only military resistance, one of the largest in the world,[b] but also civilian structures, such as justice, education, culture and social services.
Władysław Sikorski, Polish commander in chief and prime minister during World War II
Stefan Korboński, the last delegate
Polish Underground State's underground Information Bulletin, 15 July 1943, reporting the death of Gen. Sikorski and ordering a national day of mourning
The Polish Underground State Monument in Poznań