Many locals and foreign workers in Nazi-occupied Europe tried to help prisoners. True, there was also plenty of indifference and collaboration with the occupiers. But foreigners were more likely to defy the SS than ordinary Germans. The German Jew Kurt Goldstein, who had been held in the Auschwitz satellite camp Jawischowitz (Jawiszowice), later testified about the spontaneous support from Polish workers.
I was a prisoner at Auschwitz from 1942 to 1945, as a slave labourer […] in the Jawiszowice coal mines. My fellow labourers and I would not have been able to survive this hell were it not for the help of the Polish miners … In the evening, when I had to go back to the mineshaft, someone called “Nimm! Nimm!”(Take it, take it). Someone’s hand reached out and offered me a slice of bread, a piece of cake, a bottle of milk. My hands were full of little parcels, symbols and proof of the solidarity of the Polish miners.
Source: H. Świebocki, The Resistance Movement, W. Długoborski and F. Piper (eds), Auschwitz: 1940–1945, vol. 4 (Oświęcim, 2000), p. 159