This texts talks about three single, uneducated Polish women living alone (a dressmaker, servant, and kitchen worker), who during the war sheltered Jews in their apartments in Warsaw and Drohobych. All three of them helped the Jews for money, but – as far as we know – none of them resorted to financial blackmail or any other major abuse of a financial character. Nevertheless, the war circumstances became an opportunity for them to fulfill their emotional needs, otherwise impossible to satisfy. They derived pleasure from having power and control over another person and their actions towards the Jews they sheltered also bore traces of a class revenge. The authors analyze the relations between the helpers and helps mostly on the basis of Jerzy Feliks Urman’s diary and memoirs of Karol Rotgeber and Calek Perechodnik. Aside from the sociological theory of exchange systems, another useful tool facilitating comprehension of the Polish women’s behavior and their interactions with the Jews in hiding, which are described in those texts, is Erich Fromm’s concept of human cruelty as a highly complex phenomenon that cannot be reduced to openly violent actions.