By 1965 I was a well-established suburbanite in Springfield, New Jersey. I had drifted away from Orthodox observance decades before, but I still retained a lot of Jewish knowledge from my Chassidic upbringing back in Poland.

Our Reform Rabbi, Israel Dresner, enjoyed discussing Jewish customs. One year, he had an idea. Realizing that his congregants were not familiar with Chassidic lifestyle, he organized a trip to Brooklyn on Simchat Torah. The rabbi asked if I would like to go along; I readily assented.

We traveled to Brooklyn’s Crown Heights section and found ourselves in the Bobover shul of the Grand Rabbi Shlomo Halberstam. The Bobover Chassidim had heavy beards, were silk-coated and capped with sable fur “shtreimels.” While the other Jews from Springfield stood back in a section of the synagogue, I plunged, elbows flying, into the Chassidic crowd.

The Simchat Torah celebration revolved around the Rebbe. Dancing with a Torah scroll in his embrace for hours on end, he whirled and whirled. I stood on a table, clapping my hands, singing alongside the Chassidim.

Hakafot is the highlight of Simchat Torah when prominent congregants are honored to dance with the Torah.

Seven times during the evening, one has a chance to be so-honored, and as the crowd cheered, a silk-coated Chassid, resplendent in fur hat and flowing red beard, standing on a chair next to the ark, called out the names of the honorees. With each name, an eager worshipper reached forward to take a Torah scroll and join the dance.

I remained on the sidelines, until the man with the red beard held a Torah and called out: "Zaleski! I give this honor to Zaleski!" When no one responded, he again called "Zaleski," and I then realized the Torah was being thrust to me.

Zaleski?? I hadn't thought about that name in 20 years! I had adopted the name Tadeusz Zaleski while masquerading as a Polish Catholic during the war. This Chassid with the red beard was honoring Tadeusz Zaleski with the Torah!

Bewildered, I stepped down from the table and accepted the Torah scroll; and as the group from Springfield looked on, I whirled around and around with the Torah in my embrace.

I finally yielded the scroll and tugged at the arm of the man who had called my name.

"Why did you give me the scroll?" I asked in Yiddish. "How do you know me as Zaleski?"

"I owe you a debt," he replied. "And I’m glad to repay a small part by giving you this honor.

"But I don't know you!" I protested.

"Oh, yes, yes, you do," he said. "Don’t you remember back in Cracow, when you rescued two boys from a coal bin in the police station...?"

Two boys in a coal bin- my mind went back to before America, before the escape from Poland. Two boys in the coal bin– yes, I did remember.

It was the winter of 1945. I had advanced within the Polish security forces to the position of head of the state security for Cracow and its neighboring communities. For a Jew to hold such a position would have been impossible, but only a handful of people knew I was Jewish. To the rest, I was Tadeusz Zaleski.

I spoke perfect, unaccented Polish, had a characteristic Polish face and was clean shaven; there was no reason to believe I was anything other than the Roman Catholic officer I claimed to be.

After the Russian forces liberated Poland, the few Jewish survivors began to drift back to the cities. Cracow was no exception, and as the number of Jews grew, they organized themselves into committees to look after Jewish interests.

I made it a point to visit Cracow’s Jewish leadership, a lawyer named Stulbach and a woman named Marianska. I revealed to them that I was a Jew and offered to do whatever I could, unofficially, to ease their circumstances.

While I could do little within the formal structure, there was a great deal I might do behind-the-scenes. The small Jewish community was extremely vulnerable to governmental and personal abuse in Poland, and my offer was gratefully accepted.

At that time, Rabbi Moshe Steinberg, a rabbi who had survived the war, served as the spiritual leader of Cracow's threadbare Jewish community.

Rabbi Steinberg told me that the police had caught two Jewish boys transporting a truckload of sugar. They confiscated the cargo and took them into custody. The rumor was that the authorities had kept the sugar for their own profit and turned the boys over to the Cracow militia.

The next morning, I inquired of the chiefs of each of the precincts whether they knew of the fate of these two brothers. Not surprisingly, none did. So I set out on a precinct by precinct inspection of the jail facilities of Cracow's 12 precincts.

To all appearances, the inspection had nothing to do with the missing Jewish brothers. It was simply an inventory of the city's jail cells undertaken for bureaucratic reasons.

One by one, I visited the dingy jails in the basements of precinct headquarters. One by one, the cell doors were thrown open for my inspection. Some cells were occupied, others vacant. Most contained the occupants named in the records– criminals and offenders of various stripes.

I finally came to one building in the Wolnica precinct; the inspection proceeded just as the others had, except at the end of the dark basement corridor, there was one door still locked tight.

When I asked about it, the police chief assured me that it was just coal storage. Nevertheless, I persisted in being allowed to look inside.

The keys are lost, I was told, whereupon I backed everyone away, took out my side arm, and shot the padlock off the door. As the door swung open, I discerned in the dim light two filthy figures– the missing Jewish boys I was seeking.

As the alarmed chief rambled on about lost records and confused paperwork, I berated him for incompetence and worse. At length, I relented in my chastisement. "Just clean them up and get them to my headquarters. I will take care of this matter myself!" By day's end, the prisoners were presented.

You can imagine their relief – after being beaten and locked up for two weeks – when I told them I was Jewish and that I was going to let them go, provided they left Cracow and I never saw either of them again. Not until that Simchat Torah in Brooklyn.

How in the world do you recognize me?" I asked of the Chassid. "I don't know you at all."

“I could never forget your face, especially your eyebrows," he said. "I constantly thought about how you delivered us from that coal bin. The minute you walked in, I knew it was you."

While my friends from Springfield stared through the window of the shul in Brooklyn, their neighbor, who had danced with the Bobover rebbe, now fell into the embrace of a red-bearded Chassid dressed in a black silk coat and fur shtreimel, his face wet with long suppressed tears of joy.

Norman Salsitz, is author of several books on Judaic themes. Stanley Kalish, professor of economics at Rutgers University, is collaborating on a book with Salsitz on his experiences.