What We Are Reading: The Righteous Among Nations

The Righteous Among the Nations, honored by Yad Vashem, are non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Rescue took many forms and the Righteous came from different nations, religions and walks of life. What they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed.

Most rescuers started off as bystanders...but there was a point when they decided to act, a boundary they were not willing to cross.

from Yad Vashem About the Righteous

Corrie ten Boom and family were Dutch Calvinists and believed that it was God's will that they help the Jews during the war. Corrie and her sister opened their home to both escaping Jews and the Dutch Resistance. Corrie had a hiding place built in her bedroom that could hold up to six people at a time. She organized ration cards for them and worked with the Dutch Resistance to find them places to go. It was estimated that she helped save over 800 Jews.

The ten Booms were denounced by a Dutch informant and arrested. The father died in jail shortly after arrest; Corrie and her sister Betsie were tried and ended up in Ravensbruck. Corrie was released at the very end of 1944, returned to Amsterdam, and began hiding the mentally disabled who were also targets of the Nazis.

Her memoir, The Hiding Place, was very interesting, although her religious beliefs feature prominently. When I was in Amsterdam, I was able to visit the ten Boom home.

From my reading, I can recommend the following books by or about individuals designated as Righteous Among the Gentiles:

We Followed Our Stars by Ida Cook (reissued as Safe Passage)
My Brother's Keeper: Christians Who Risked All to Protect Jewish Targets of the Nazi Holocaust by Rod Gragg
The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman
Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies
In My Hands: Memories of a Holocaust Rescuer by Irene Gut Opdyke

Perhaps the most intriguing I've read is The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews by Michael Good. Major Plagge was recognized by Yad Vashem in 2004 and is credited with the rescue of 34 persons.

Not a book review, but a personal recollection, if that's OK:

Around about 1990 or 1991, I was living in San Francisco and volunteering for an organization called the San Francisco Holocaust Oral History Project whose goal was to videotape the testimonies of as many Holocaust survivors and rescuers as we could. I was mostly involved in fundraising and PR. We were in contact with a fellow in San Francisco who was a known rescuer of Jews during the war in, well, I want to say Estonia, though I can't remember precisely any more. But it was one of the Balkan countries. He was a fascinating fellow. I was given the assignment of contacting the Estonian (or whichever it was) consulate to see if they wanted to have an event honoring this gentleman for his bravery in a time of great danger. The consulate was a very low frills affair. The consul, as memory serves as not even a native of the country, but a local businessman who had family ties to the country. His parents had immigrated to the U.S. or something like that. So the "consulate" was simply his business office. At any rate, I called and left messages two or three times and wrote a couple of letters, but never got a call back or a written reply. Either they weren't particularly interested in honoring a man who'd saved Jews, or they didn't want to reopen the historical door to those bad times, or they simply couldn't be bothered. Some mixture of all three, I'd guess. We had our own round tables with the gentleman, of course, but official recognition by his own country would have been better.

>4 rocketjk: That's interesting, Jerry. The Baltic countries have a very dark history regarding Jews and the Holocaust, so I guess it's not too surprising that they chose not to engage. I heard Julija Šukys, a Lithuanian-Canadian, speak about this issue and read her book, Siberian exile : blood, war, and a granddaughter's reckoning. She wanted to write about her grandmother who was deported from Lithuania to Siberia in 1941. But in researching the story, she found some dirty laundry regarding collaboration. She was deeply affected and writes about her guilt through association and desire for atonement.

>5 labfs39: Yes. In that part of Europe, as I understand it, Jews on the run were often in as much danger from the partisan groups as they were from the Nazis.

>6 rocketjk: True, at least in Poland. I've read accounts of some of the Jews that escaped Sobibor, only to be murdered by Partisans hiding in the woods. Locals would also kill escapees rather than aiding them.