Righteous Among The Nations
By Corey Rose
Under cover of the 2nd World war for the
sake of their new order the Nazis sought
to destroy all the Jews of Europe. For the
first time in history industrial methods
were used for mass extermination of a
whole people. 6 million were murdered
including 1,500,000 children. This event is
called the Holocaust.
Most rescuers started off as bystanders.
In many cases this happened when they
were confronted with the deportation or
the killing of the Jews. Some had stood
by in the early stages of persecution,
when the rights of Jews were restricted
and their property confiscated, but there
was a point when they decided to act.
The price that rescuers had to pay for their
action differed from one country to another.
In Eastern Europe, the Germans executed not
only the people who sheltered Jews, but their
entire family as well. Notices warning the
population against helping the Jews were
posted everywhere. Generally speaking
punishment was less severe in Western
Europe, although there too the consequences
could be formidable and some of the
Righteous Among the Nations were
incarcerated in camps and killed.
There were different degrees of help: some
people gave food to Jews, thrusting an apple
into their pocket or leaving food where they
would pass on their way to work. Others
directed Jews to people who could help them;
some sheltered Jews for one night and told
them they would have to leave in the morning.
Only few assumed the entire responsibility for
the Jews’ survival. It is mostly the last group
that qualifies for the title of the Righteous
Among the Nations.
So far Yad Vashem recognized Righteous from
44 countries and nationalities; there are
Christians from all denominations and churches,
Muslims and agnostics; men and women of all
ages; they come from all walks of life; highly
educated people as well as illiterate peasants;
public figures as well as people from society's
margins; city dwellers and farmers from the
remotest corners of Europe; university
professors, teachers, physicians, clergy, nuns,
diplomats, simple workers, servants, resistance
fighters, policemen, peasants, fishermen, a zoo
director, a circus owner, and many more.
• The main forms of help extended by the
Righteous Among the Nations:
• Hiding Jews in the rescuers' home or on their
property
• Providing false papers and false identities
• Smuggling and assisting Jews to escape
• The rescue of children
• In early years, trees were planted by some of the
Righteous or their families on the Mount of
Remembrance. Today their names are engraved
on the walls of the Garden of the Righteous.
• Trees, symbolic of the renewal of life, have been
planted in and around the Yad Vashem site, in
honor of those non-Jews who acted according by
risking their lives to save Jews during the
Holocaust. Plaques adjacent to each tree record
the names of those being honored along with
their country of residence during the war.
Persons recognized as a "Righteous Among the
Nations" are awarded a specially minted medal
bearing their name, a certificate of honor, and
the privilege of their names being added to the
Wall of Honor in the Garden of the Righteous at
Yad Vashem in Jerusalem.
• Irena, got permission to work in the Warsaw
ghetto, as a Plumbing/Sewer specialist
• Irena smuggled Jewish infants out in the
bottom of the tool box she carried. She also
carried a burlap sack in the back of her truck,
for larger kids.
Irena kept a dog in the back that she trained
to bark when the Nazi soldiers let her in and
out of the ghetto. The soldiers, of course,
wanted nothing to do with the dog and the
barking covered the kids/infants noises.
She managed to smuggle out and save 2500
kids/infants. Ultimately, she was caught, and
the Nazi's broke both of her legs and arms and
beat her severely.
Irena kept a record of the names of all the kids
she had smuggled out, In a glass jar that she
buried under a tree in her back yard. After the
war, she tried to locate any parents that may
have survived and tried to reunite the family.
Most had been gassed. Those kids she helped
got placed into foster family homes or adopted.
• Names and Numbers of Righteous Among the
Nations - per Country & Ethnic Origin, as of
January 1, 2013
• The numbers of Righteous are not necessarily
an indication of the actual number of
rescuers in each country, but reflect the cases
that were made available to Yad Vashem.
Albania
69
Japan
1
Armenia
21
Latvia
135
Austria
92
Lithuania
844
Belarus
587
Luxembourg
1
Belgium
1,635
Macedonia
10
Bosnia
42
Moldova
79
Brazil
2
Montenegro
1
Bulgaria
20
Netherlands**
5,269
Chile
1
Norway
50
China
2
Poland
6,394
Croatia
109
Portugal
2
Cuba
1
Romania
60
Czech Republic
109
Russia
186
Denmark*
22
Serbia
131
Ecuador
1
Slovakia
534
El Salvador
1
Slovenia
7
Estonia
3
Spain
6
France
3,654
Sweden
10
Georgia
1
Switzerland
45
Germany
525
Turkey
1
Ukraine
2,441
Great Britain
(Incl. Scotland)
19
Greece
315
USA
3
Hungary
806
Vietnam
1
Italy
563
Total: 24,811
* The Danish Underground
requested that all its
members who participated
in the rescue of the Jewish
community not be listed
individually, but
commemorated as one
group.
** Includes two persons
originally from Indonesia,
but residing in the
Netherlands
Seeing a display at the Imperial war
museum of a sample of the number of
shoes and gold rings that were collected
in the concentration camps, brought
home to me the number of people killed.
Reading various accounts of rescues of
Jews, such as hiding Jews in attics,
gaining false papers and sending children
abroad shows bravery and saved so many
lives