Rescuers A Model for a Caring Community

1. Rescuers A Model for a Caring Community _________________________________________________________________ October 2016

2. Defining Rescue During the Holocaust, thousands of non-Jews (mainly Christians, some Muslims) risked their lives to save Jewish friends, neighbors, relatives, and strangers from certain death.

3. Bystanders (85%) Victims Perpetrators (< 10%) Rescuers (< 0.5%)

4. Stages of Destruction of European Jewry Extermination Deportation Ghettoization Expropriation: Property & Jobs Exclusion Identification

5. Choiceless Choices • Remaining Jews clung to false hope that as bad as things were, they would not get worse. • Choiceless Choices – to leave the ghetto; to go East; to go West; to pass as an Aryan; to go into hiding • If a Jew survived the Holocaust and was not in a ghetto, a concentration camp or with the partisans, that person received help. Whether it was food, papers, shelter, transportation, or not being denounced. • As insignificant as an act might seem, the absence of that act more often than not could be fatal.

6. The Difficulty of Helping • Scarcity of basic resources • Prevalence of antisemitism • Extent of local collaboration • Degree of Jewish integration into society • Practical hurdles – geographic, financial • Consequences of getting caught • Moral Dilemmas – putting family at risk

7. Collective Responsibility • All Christians knew – to help a Jews was to risk one’s life and the lives of family members • If you were caught hiding or helping a Jew – you and your family were killed. • If you denounced a Christian who was hiding a Jew you received a kilo of sugar, a liter of vodka, a pair of boots, or other rewards.

8. How Did Rescue Begin? • In most cases, it was the Jewish person who sought help • Help began gradually – shelter for a night or two – turned into weeks, months, years.

9. Range of Rescue Activities • Helping Jews escape to safety • Hiding Jews • Helping Jews pass as non-Jews • Issuing protective papers • Providing food, medicine, and other essentials • Alerting about pending aktions • Individual and collective efforts Danish Rescue Ship Papers issued by Chiune Sugihara.

10. Who Were Rescuers? • Came from all walks of life • Peasants and laborers • Middle class and intellectuals • Rich and poor • Educated and illiterate • Clergy – individuals ministers, priests, nuns • They had different motivations and limitations There was no typical rescuer– biography was not destiny

11. Characteristics of Rescuers • They don’t blend into their communities. • This makes them less controlled by their environments and more inclined to • act on their own principles. • They are independent people and know it. • They do what they feel they must do, what is right, and the right thing is to • help others. • They have a long history of doing good deeds; because they have done the right thing for a long time, it doesn’t seem extraordinary to them. • If you consider something your duty, you do it automatically. • 4. They choose to help without rational consideration. • 5. They have universalistic perceptions that transcend race and • ethnicity. • They can respond to the needy and helpless because they identify with • victims and injustice.

12. MORAL LEADERSHIP The ability to influence others to accomplish a goal arising from a sense of right and wrong.

13. Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz 1904-1973 Member German Legation in Copenhagen Within 3 weeks, 7,200 Danish Jews and another 700 non-Jewish relatives were taken to Sweden.

14. When German officials demanded a list of the island’s Jewish residents, Mayor Karrer turned to local Greek Orthodox Bishop Chrysostomos for help. As the bishop negotiated for their lives, 192 Jews fled to remote local villages where non-Jewish locals hid them. When the Germans again demanded the names for deportation, Chrysostomos presented a list bearing only two names—his and the mayor’s. “Here,” he said, “are your Jews.” At war’s end, all 275 of Zakynthos’s Jews were still alive. STORIES OF RESCUE Bishop Chrysostomos Greek Jews walk down a street on the island of Zakynthos, 1940–1944.

15. SELF-SACRIFICE Giving up personal wants and needs for the sake of others or for a cause.

16. Irene Gut 1922-2003 Poland 1945 Reunion: Marian, Fanka, Henry, Alex, Pola, Irene, Moses Irene at the table with some of the women in hiding.

17. One morning on my way to school, I passed by a small Jewish children’s home. The Germans were loading the children who ranged in age from babies to eight-year-olds. They were upset and crying. When they did not move fast enough, the Nazis picked them up by an arm, a leg, the hair, and threw them into the trucks. To watch grown men treat small children that way – I could not believe my eyes. Two women coming down the street tried to interfere physically. The Germans heaved them into the truck, too. I just sat there on my bicycle and that was the moment I decided that if there was anything I could do to thwart such atrocities, I would do it. STORIES OF RESCUE Marion Pritchard A social worker, The Netherlands, 1942–1945 Marion Pritchard poses with a Jewish infant, Erica Polak, whom she rescued during the German occupation of the Netherlands, 1944.

18. COURAGE The state of mind that enables one to face danger, hardship or uncertainty with composure and resolve.

19. Jan ? Piotrkow, Poland Deportations Piotrkow, Poland

20. As manager of a confiscated Jewish textile factory in the Bedzin ghetto, Alfred Rossner produced goods for the German armed forces. To save the Jewish forced laborers working in his factory, he issued them work permits that exempted them from deportation. Rossner repeatedly warned Jews of impending deportations, even driving into the poorest parts of Bedzin to urge the inhabitants to ignore a summons that would lead to deportation. In 1944, the Gestapo arrested and executed Rossner for his actions. STORIES OF RESCUE Alfred Rossner A businessman, Germany, 1938–1943 Left: Portrait of Alfred Rossner, 1943. Right: Studio portrait of Dora Rembiszewska and her four-year-old daughter, Mira, in the Bedzin ghetto. Dora worked in the laundry of Rossner’s factory, April 1942.

21. INTEGRITY Firm adherence to a moral code, especially in the face of adversity.

22. Dr. Adelaide Hautval 1906-1988 France Tag with the inscription, “Friend of the Jews”. Dr. Hautval was forced to wear such a tag when she was deported to Auschwitz.

23. In 1938, Captain Paul Grueninger, commander of the Swiss Border Police in St. Gallen Canton, chose to disregard orders to close the borders to most Jewish refugees. Not only did he turn a blind eye to fake visas, he also backdated entry visas to prevent the expulsion of recent Jewish refugees. He was terminated for defying orders and, after being convicted by a Swiss court for falsifying official documents, punished with a severe fine.Grueninger’s actions saved between 2,000 and 4,000 Jews. STORIES OF RESCUE Paul Grueninger A police commander, Switzerland, 1938–1939 Paul Grueninger (left) poses with a fellow Swiss police officer on a balcony in St. Gallen, February 15, 1934.

24. COMPASSION A feeling of sympathy for the suffering of another and the desire to alleviate it.

25. Elisabeth Abegg 1882-1974 Germany Berlin memorial plaque, Elisabeth Abegg, Tempelhofer Damm 56, Berlin-Tempelhof, Germany

26. During the German occupation of Ukraine, Tatyana Kontsevich and her daughter, Ania, sheltered the family of Shimon Redlich. Shimon hid with his mother, aunt, and uncle in the attic and shed of the Kontsevich home in Raj. Ten-year-old Ania was in charge of bringing them food and water. At one point, when home alone, Ania dissuaded two German soldiers in search of straw from climbing into the attic, where they would have found the Redlich family. STORIES OF RESCUE Tatyana & Ania Kontsevich A housewife and her daughter, Ukraine, 1941–1944 Family portrait of Tatyana Kontsevich and her two children, 1940.

27. COOPERATION Working together toward a common goal or purpose.

28. Irena Sendler 1910-2008 Warsaw, Poland Irena Sendler, worked in cooperation with members of Zegota, to rescue more than 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto.

29. SOCIAL RESPONSIBLITY A sense of obligation to ensure the welfare of others.

30. Unknown Polish Christian Bialystok, Poland The Great Synagogue of Bialystok, built in 1908, was the largest wooden synagogue in Eastern Europe. On June 27, 1941 the Germans forced 500-700 Jews into the synagogue and burned it to the ground.

31. STORIES OF RESCUE Knud Christiansen • Knud Christiansen was a member of the Danish Olympic rowing team and competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. • Knud and his wife, Karen, joined the Danish resistance, and worked to rescue Jews. • During October, November, and December of 1943, Knud ferried one Jew at a time across the water from Denmark to Sweden using his Olympic racing boat. Danish Olympic Rower

32. INGENUITY Inventive skill or cleverness in confronting a challenge.

33. In 1943, Leopold Socha, a sanitation worker, discovered several Jews escaping the liquidation of the Lwów ghetto through the city sewer system. Using his knowledge of the system’s canals, he suggested hiding places and, with his wife and a coworker, brought the hidden Jews food and news from the outside world. While the Sochas initially received payment for their efforts, they continued to help those in hiding even after the payments stopped. Ten of the 21 refugees in hiding survived. STORIES OF RESCUE Leopold Socha A sanitation worker, Lvov, Poland, 1938–1944

34. Why did they do it? Rescuers, like perpetrators, were not born to a particular role or function. They became rescuers step by step. - Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders, Raul Hilberg • Some sympathized with the Jews. • Some had Jewish friends before the war – others did not. • Some were actually antisemitic, but could not sanction murder or genocide. • Some were bound to those they saved by ties of friendship and personal loyalty, while some went out of their way to help total strangers. • Some were motivated by their political beliefs or religious values. • Some felt ethically that life must be preserved in the face of death. • For some there was no choice, what they did was natural and instinctive.

35. Documenting Rescue:YadVashem, Jerusalem Avenue of the Righteous "Even unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off" - Isaiah 56:5 Garden of the Righteous Avenue of the Righteous

36. Righteous Among the Nations

37. American Righteous Gentiles Martha and Waitstill Sharp Varian Fry Lois Gunden Roddie Edmons

38. You read what was accomplished by a handful of men and women, and you try to imagine what could have been accomplished if more people had shown that they cared. - Elie Wiesel