During World War II, the village was occupied by Germany. Several people in the village helped to hide Jews. The Germans used a Jewish agent to pose as an escapee looking for a hiding place with a Polish family, after receiving help the agent denounced the Polish family to the Germans, resulting in a German-perpetrated massacre of 12 Poles and several Jews who were hiding with the family, committed on 24 February 1943.[2][3]
^Teresa Prekerowa, Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, "Who Helped Jews during the Holocaust in Poland", Acta Poloniae Historica, Wydawnictwo Naukowe Semper, vol. 76, p. 166. ISSN0001-6829 "The gravest provocation involving Jews took place in 1943, some 100 km east of Warsaw; a Jewish Gestapo agent posing as a fugitive was given, or promised, help by 14 inhabitants of the village of Paulinów." Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich, 1997
^Joanna Kierylak, Treblinka Museum, "12 sprawiedliwych z Paulinowa", 2013, retrieved 2018-05-25. "Akcja niemiecka, zakrojona na szeroką skalę... Posłużono się tu prowokacją. Rozpoznania dokonali prowokatorzy. Byli nimi Żydzi, jeden z Warszawy, drugi ze Sterdyni – Szymel Helman. Prowokator z Warszawy dołączył do ukrywających się Żydów, podając się za Żyda francuskiego, zbiegłego z transportu przesiedleńców wiezionych do Treblinki." ("[In a] large-scale German operation... use was made of provocation. The scouting-out was done by agent-provocateurs. They were Jews, here one from Warsaw, the other from Sterdyń—Szymel Helman. The agent-provocateur from Warsaw joined some Jews who were in hiding, giving himself out to be a French Jew who had escaped from a transport of deportees who were being sent to Treblinka.")
