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The Holocaust was a time of overwhelming terror and enduring grief.
The ultimate expression of man’s inhumanity with hardly a trace of
human kindness to lighten that darkness. However there
were some deeds of courage and compassion during the Holocaust that
one can consider when contemplating humanity's past and hope
for the future.
The following are only some of the extraordinary men and women, who,
at very great personal risk have acted to save lives.
Most of their deeds were unnoticed and not acknowledged during their
lifetimes but many have been honored by Israel’s Yad Vashem memorial
with the title “Righteous among the Nations” or “Righteous Gentiles”
recognizing those non-Jews who helped save Jews from the Holocaust.
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Raoul Wallenberg (1912 – 1947?)
Swedish Diplomat
Immediately following his arrival as First Secretary to the Swedish
embassy in Budapest in July 1944, Wallenberg used his diplomatic
status to issue “protective passports” to thousands of Jews,
identifying them as Swedish citizens, thereby preventing their
deportation to death camps. He would often personally intervene to
obtain the release of these passport bearers, including those with
forged documents, from the Jews who were forced to march toward the
Austrian-Hungarian border for deportation, saving as many lives as
possible. He even rented more than 30 buildings to house about
10,000 Jewish refugees, putting up fake signs as “The Swedish
Research Institute” and hanging the Swedish flag to avoid detection.
All in all, this soft-spoken Swede is credited to have rescued more
Jews than any single rescuer or country, around 100,000 of them; but
he was unable to save his own. In January 1945, he was taken
by the Soviet Red Army troops to a Soviet prison, where he was
reported to have died in 1947, although the exact circumstances of
his death are still very much in dispute.
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Giovanni Palatucci (1909 – 1945)
Italian Police Official and Lawyer
Palatucci entered the police service in 1936 and was assigned to be
in charge the Adriatic seaport of Fiume (present day Rijeka,
Croatia). When anti-Jewish laws were enacted in 1938, he used his
authority as chief of the Foreigners’ Office to forge travel papers
that permitted hundreds of Jews flee persecution in Eastern Europe
and settle in Fiume, sometimes even providing them with funds.
However, his effort became riskier in 1943, when Mussolini’s
government fell and the Nazis occupied the place. In defiance
against orders to arrest and deport the Jews in the area, he made
sure that they were sent instead to a prison-turned refugee camp
managed by his uncle, Bishop Giuseppe Maria Palatucci, in Campania
southern Italy, by destroying documented records of some 5,000
Jewish refugees, thus saving them from certain death in
concentration camps. When his activities were discovered in 1944, he
was arrested by the Gestapo, and sent to Dachau, where he died just
a few months shy of his 36th birthday.
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Oskar Schindler (1908
– 1974)
German Industrialist
Oskar Schindler was an
unlikely rescuer of the Jews. He was a Nazi
and a businessman at that time, yet he
heeded the call of his conscience. He
initially sought to profit from the 1939
German invasion of Poland by hiding wealthy
Jews and employing around 1,000 cheap Jewish
slave laborers for his ammunition factory in
Poland. However, appalled by the immense
brutality of Nazism, he began shielding his
workers without any regard for cost. He
smuggled children out of ghettos and used
his connections in high places to request
for hundreds of Jews to be moved to an
adjoining factory. He would call on his
legendary charm and persuasive eloquence to
help his “Schindlerjuden” (”Schindler Jews”
as they came to be known) get out of
difficult situations, claiming that women,
children, handicapped and unskilled workers
were vital to his business. While he died
penniless at age 66 having spent all his
wealth by the end of the war and having
failed in his post-war business efforts, he
gained the perpetual gratitude of his Jews,
whom he affectionately referred to as “my
children.”
He is the only Nazi to
be buried in a cemetery in Jerusalem.
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Andre Trocmé (1901 – 1971)
French Protestant Pastor
Andre Trocmé, as the spiritual leader of the town of Le
Chambon-sur-Lignon and as a man clearly driven by ethical and
religious convictions, spoke against discrimination as the Nazis
were gaining power in bordering Germany and repeatedly asked his
congregation to help protect “the people of the Bible.” When the
Nazi occupied France, he and his wife Magda (1901 – 1996) arranged
for the rescue of between 3,000 to 5,000 Jews fleeing the Nazi
persecution. Under their leadership, many private families willing
to take in Jewish refugees and children were located, and town
schools got ready for a sudden increase in the number of students.
Their courageous efforts made Le Chambon and nearby villages a
unique refuge in Nazi-occupied France. When forced to produce a list
of Jews in the town, he responded, “We do not know what a Jew is; we
know only men.” Despite rumors of his imminent arrest, he encouraged
his congregation to “do the will of God and not of men.” In January
1971, Yad Vashem recognized André and Magda Trocmé as “Righteous
among the Nations.” |
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Irena Sendler (1910 – 2008)
Polish Catholic Social Worker
People and their households caught hiding Jews risked death
sentences in German-occupied Poland. As a Jewish sympathizer since
childhood, Sendler (Sendlerowa) and her friends produced thousands
of false documents to help Jewish families prior to joining the
resistance group Zegota (Council for Aid to Jews). Upon her
appointment as head of Zegota’s newly formed children’s department,
she organized the smuggling of some 2,500 children out of Warsaw
ghetto and had them placed in Polish families, orphanages and
convents. She gave each child a new identity and carefully recorded
their names and placements so that they could be returned to
surviving relatives after the war. Her work was interrupted when she
was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death by the Gestapo in
1943. However, she was successfully rescued by Zegota before her
scheduled execution. She then went into hiding and resumed her work
for Jewish children for the remainder of the war. In 2003, she
received Poland’s highest civilian decoration, the Order of the
White Eagle.
“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence
on this Earth and not a title to glory.” – Sendler’s letter to
Polish Parliament |
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Nicholas Winton (1909 – )
British Stockbroker
In 1939, Winton visited Prague at the invitation of a friend from
the British Embassy and was alarmed by the influx of refugees,
endangered by the impending Nazi invasion. He noticed that the
refugee camps set up by the British team were dealing mostly with
the elderly and other vulnerable adults, but nothing was being done
for the children. So he took it upon himself to organize the Czech
Kindertransport, managing to save 669 children out eight trains
prior to the outbreak of World War II and finding them foster
parents in England and Sweden. He was not troubled by the fact that
his humanitarian efforts went unrecognized for he did not view his
acts as something extraordinary. His exploits became known only in
1988 when his late wife discovered lists of children and letters
from their parents in the attic. He is very much revered as the
father who rescued his many “children” from certain death in Nazi
camps. Known as “Schindler of Britain,” Winton currently lives in
Maindenhead, Great Britain; he was knighted in 2002 and was
nominated by the Czech government for the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.
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Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986)
Japanese Diplomat
Though Sugihara was named vice-consul of the Japanese consulate in
Kaunas, Lithuania in 1939, his main duty was to keep the Japanese
forces informed of the Soviet and German troop movements. Following
the 1940 Soviet invasion of Lithuania, Polish Jews as well as
Lithuanian Jews had difficulty acquiring exit visa, making it unsafe
to travel and difficult to find countries that will issue them. With
no discernible motivation other than to do the right thing, he
started issuing visas to all who applied including those who did not
meet immigration requirements, allowing them to enter Japan for up
to 15 days, in direct violation of his orders. He was subsequently
reassigned to Berlin when the Soviet took over Lithuania. While en
route to the train station, he continued to give out visas for a mob
of desperate refugees surrounding his car. However, many passports
remained unstamped when he boarded the train, so he threw the
official stamp to the crowd. His altruistic acts saved anywhere
between 2,000 and 10,000 Jews based on some estimates. Sugihara, the
“Japanese Schindler,” was honored as “Righteous among the Nations”
by the Israeli government in 1985.
“I cannot allow these people to die, people who have come to me for
help with death staring them in the eyes. Whatever punishment may be
imposed on me, I know I should follow my conscience.” – Sugihara |
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Varian Fry (1907 – 1967)
American Journalist
Distressed by what he personally saw of Nazi barbarities against
Jews during his 1935 Berlin visit as a foreign correspondent for an
American journal, the Harvard-educated Fry started to help raise
funds for European anti-Nazi movements. Following the 1940 invasion
of France, he went to Marseille and ran an elaborate rescue network
in direct opposition to French and even some American authorities.
Despite being under constant surveillance by the puppet Vichy
regime, he was able to secure visas with the aid of American
Vice-Consul in Marseille Hiram Bingham IV for around 3,000 anti-Nazi
and Jewish refugees (among whom were many prominent artists and
intellectuals including Marc Chagall and Wilhelm Herzog among
others) escape to neutral Portugal before making their way to the
United States. A few months prior to his death, France presented him
with the Legion of Honor for his heroic work in Marseille from 1940
to1941. Fry, also known as the “American Schindler,” was
posthumously honored by Yad Vashem in 1996, the very first American
to be listed as “Righteous among the Nations.” |
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The Holocaust specifically targeted
the Jews in what the Nazi termed as the “Final Solution of the
Jewish Question.” Other victims of the Nazi regime included gypsies,
religious groups, the mentally and physically disabled; homosexuals;
prisoners of war; intelligentsia and political activists; and races
that were deemed inferior. Considering all the victims of Nazi
persecution, the total number of casualties is estimated to be
between nine and eleven million including six million Jews and two
million Gentile Poles, absolutely making World War II the costliest
war in terms of human lives.
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