The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

by Gilbert, Martin

  Evil instincts are taken for granted; altruistic, humane behaviour appears to need special explanation. Is it possible, asks Paldiel, ‘that we are creating a problem where there ought not to be one? Is acting benevolently and altruistically such an outlandish and unusual type of behaviour, supposedly at odds with man’s inherent character, as to justify a meticulous search for explanations? Or is it conceivable that such behaviour is as natural to our psychological constitution as the egoistic one we accept so matter-of-factly?’1

  Agnes Hirschi, who, with her mother, was given sanctuary in Budapest by Carl Lutz, wrote about his motivation in issuing protective documents to Jews in Budapest: ‘The laws of life are stronger than man-made laws. That’s how my father thought and that’s how he acted. He was not born a hero, he was rather shy and introverted.’ In Budapest ‘it was not his task to rescue Jews, he was chief of the Swiss Legation’s Department of Foreign Interests, and he was in charge of the interests of fourteen belligerent nations, among them the United States and Great Britain.’ But the instinct to help was deep within him. ‘He had grown up in a Methodist family in eastern Switzerland. He was the second oldest of ten brothers and sisters. His mother was a strong personality. They were poor but she helped people in trouble and sick, as much as she could. She gave an example of humanity and was deeply admired by her son Carl.’ His motive was a simple one, which his stepdaughter encapsulated thus: ‘Carl Lutz, as an engaged Christian, could not tolerate the Jews being pursued and killed in Budapest. He had to protect and help these people. He felt, God gave him this task, and he was persuaded He would give him also the force to fulfil it.’2

  Those Christian values, which had first been shown when the Good Samaritan went out of his way on the road from Jericho to Jerusalem, were central to the actions of many thousands of rescuers. Good deeds do not necessarily come unsought. In 1964, when the Belgian priest Father Bruno was honoured for finding homes for as many as 320 Jews, he asked those gathered to honour him: ‘Saved? But who saved? What did I do? I searched; but searching without finding is perfectly fruitless: finding is essential. But finding was not my doing…finding meant that doors were opened, the door of a home, the door of a heart.’3 The Baptists in eastern Poland had been motivated by their religious belief that God was testing their Christian faith by sending them Jews in distress. Nor were Jews universally regarded as the enemy by Christian Europe in the inter-war years; when asked to give details about his rescue activities in Serbia, Risto Ristic would only say: ‘I did my best to save Jews because I love them.’4 There were many practising Christians, especially in the eastern regions of Europe, who went out of their way to harm Jews; there were others, even in the midst of this primitive hostility, who risked the disapproval of their Christian neighbours to try to save Jews, and were sometimes themselves betrayed by those neighbours—betrayed and then killed.

  Dislike of German occupation also motivated many rescuers: this was particularly true, for example, in Belgium, France and Holland, where helping Jews was for some an integral part of the pattern of resistance; indeed, in Holland, seven separate resistance organizations helped hide Jews. With regard to Warsaw, Zofia Lewin noted that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of the people who helped her survive on the ‘Aryan’ side of the city expressed, ‘by their whole attitude towards me’, their protest against the occupier. ‘Not only did they not let me feel that my very presence was dangerous, they also treated me as one of themselves, a person in greater danger due only to external reasons, due to the false principles of the occupying power and not because of any essential difference on my part.’5 Hatred of the occupier was a feature of rescue in many lands.

  There were also social characteristics and patterns of behaviour that affected the reception of Jews in search of refuge. When Refik Veseli, the first of sixty Albanians to be awarded the title of Righteous, was asked how it was possible that so many Albanians helped to hide Jews and protect them, he explained: ‘There are no foreigners in Albania, there are only guests. Our moral code as Albanians requires that we be hospitable to guests in our home and in our country.’ When asked about the possibility of Albanians reporting the presence of the Jews to the Germans, Veseli said that while such a thing was possible, ‘if an Albanian did this he would have disgraced his village and his family. At a minimum his home would be destroyed and his family banished.’ The discussion was pointless as ‘no Albanian disgraced us’.6

  Whole nations could, if circumstances allowed, prevent the deportation of Jews, or enable them to escape deportation. This was true of Italy and Hungary before the German military occupations of those countries in 1943 and 1944 respectively. It was true of Denmark on the eve of full German occupation. It was true of Finland and Bulgaria throughout the war. Reflecting on the reasons why Bulgarian Jews survived the Holocaust, and on what he calls ‘the fragility of goodness’, the historian of Bulgarian rescue efforts, Tzvetan Todorov, after describing the actions of ‘men of conscience and courage’ like the prelates Stefan and Kiril, has written that even the King would not have agreed to stand up to German pressure ‘without the swell of public opinion against the deportation, and without the intervention of many around him’. Todorov concludes that ‘the people were opposed to the anti-Semitic measures, but a community is powerless without leaders, without those individuals within its midst who exercise public responsibility—in this case, the metropolitans, the deputies, the politicians who are ready to accept the risks that their actions entailed. All this was necessary for good to triumph, in a certain place and at a certain time; any break in the chain and their efforts might well have failed. It seems that, once introduced into public life, evil easily perpetuates itself, whereas good is always difficult, rare, and fragile. And yet possible.’7

  Dislike of Nazism and its racial doctrines; a refusal to succumb to them, a refusal to be bullied, even by superior force; an unwillingness to allow evil to triumph, despite the overwhelming military and secret police powers of Nazi Germany; contempt for prejudice, a sense of decency: each played its part in making acts of rescue possible, even desirable. When Tine zur Kleinsmiede was honoured in Israel in 1983, she told the assembled officials she had done nothing special in hiding Jews in Holland: ‘Anyone would have done the same thing, in my place. Any decent person, that is.’ She put a special stress on the word ‘decent’.8

  In 1988, visiting the Lithuanian town of Naumiestis from which his family had come, and where virtually the whole Jewish community had been murdered, Dr Benjamin E. Lesin, a Los Angeles surgeon, asked his hosts, ‘Didn’t anybody help?’ and then ascertained that ‘dozens had’. He was told of a couple to whom a baby girl was passed through a ghetto fence; of a carpenter who saved twelve Jews; of a farmer, part of a network with two other farmers, who saved twenty-six. ‘I was overwhelmed by their modesty,’ Lesin recalled. ‘I asked the couple who had saved the baby (now living in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania) why they put themselves in so much danger. Their response was, “We did the only thing a decent person would do…what a good Christian would do.”’9

  The response of that Lithuanian couple—‘We did the only thing a decent person would do…’—was almost universal among rescuers. In 1989 Vitalija Rinkevicius received the Yad Vashem Medal of the Righteous on behalf of her parents, who had helped save Margaret and Joseph Kagan in Kaunas. During the ceremony she said she was happy and grateful for this honour to her parents and thanked everyone; but above all she wanted to convey what she felt sure her father would have said on this occasion: ‘I am no hero, have done nothing out of the ordinary, nothing other than any normal human being would have done.’10

  Reflecting on the altruistic behaviour of the Righteous, Samuel Oliner, who was himself saved as a youngster, commented in 1994: ‘Acts of heroic altruism are not the exclusive province of larger-than-life figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Schweitzer. Rather, they are manifestations of ordinary people whose moral courage is born out of the routine ways in which they live their liv
es—their characteristic ways of feeling, their perceptions of authority, the rules and examples of conduct they have learned from family, friends, religion, political leaders, their schools, workplaces, and all their associates.’11

  Asked about his motives for saving Jews in Bialystok during the war, the German paint-shop manager Otto Busse reiterated that he was a Christian, ‘and considered it his duty according to the way he interpreted his Christian conscience’. He did not belong to any denomination. ‘I do not hold with the institutionalized church. We must go back to early Christianity. We should be neither crusaders nor missionaries. Instead, we should let the idea of Christ come to new life in our hearts. If this had happened earlier, there would never have been the Hitler Holocaust.’12

  Major Helmrich and his wife, who had helped Jews in the Polish city of Drohobycz, reflected: ‘We were fully aware of the risks and the clash of responsibilities, but we decided that it would be better for our children to have dead parents than cowards as parents.’13 Major Karl Plagge—who had been a member of the Nazi Party from 1932 to 1939—spoke of why he had protected Jews in Vilna during the war. ‘There needed to be people who were doing something good for the German reputation,’ he said. ‘I was ashamed.’14

  One of those who took in Jewish children in France, Marie-Elise Roger, commented: ‘I did nothing unusual…I only took in a little guy who had just lost his parents…I loved him and gave him food to eat. If I had not done this, that would not have been normal.’15 Recalling the help given by French farmers at Dullin in hiding Jewish children, David Eppel—who later married one of those children—has written: ‘To meet and talk with these unpretentious farmers, long after it was all over, was truly to understand the meaning of the term “righteous”. No political or religious ideology compelled their actions. So why did they do it? “Why do you ask?” they answered.’16

  As to her motive in helping save Jews in France, Jeannette Brousse commented: ‘I felt horrified by the atrocious fate likely to befall all these innocent victims whose only “mistake” was to have been born Jewish. I did not know any Jews before these events. I discovered they were people like us, even though some influential newspapers presented them as scapegoats for all evils. I was determined to find solutions so that the greatest number of those who came to me could be saved.’17

  In explaining the motives of those who, like herself, gave shelter to Jews, Pastor Trocmé’s wife Magda, one of the French rescuers honoured at Yad Vashem, later remarked: ‘Those of us who received the first Jews did what we thought had to be done—nothing more complicated. It was not decided from one day to the next what we would have to do. There were many people in the village who needed help. How could we refuse them? A person doesn’t sit down and say I’m going to do this and this and that. We had no time to think. When a problem came, we had to solve it immediately. Sometimes people ask me, “How did you make a decision?” There was no decision to make. The issue was: “Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help!”’18

  ‘I took the risk because I am a humanist,’ a Dutch rescuer, Jan Schoumans, commented when, at a ceremony in his home in Toronto, he was presented with a Righteous Among the Nations Award.19

  Cecile Seiden, who was saved in Belgium, later reflected: ‘After the war, my mother, father and I wondered why our righteous Rescuers had saved us. We told the Spiessens that they were true heroes and they would simply answer, “No, we were not heroes but this was the correct thing to do!” We were also so grateful to the Stettler family for giving me a home and a wonderful new family and for sharing their lives and taking such good care of me. One can never repay the kindness and courage that the righteous Rescuers demonstrated during this period of unbelievable horror and inhumanity, when one nation tried to destroy another nation with blind hatred and ferocity unequalled in history.’20

  Michel Reynders, who as a teenager was involved with his uncle, Father Bruno, in helping to save Jews in Belgium, commented: ‘Our family is proud of having its name on a tree at Yad Vashem, but we think we only did our duty as Christians: to help people in necessity or in danger is one of the prime Christian obligations.’ Of those who did not heed the commands, Michel Reynders reflects: ‘We are sad and ashamed for these “black sheep” and hope that future generations will understand the message of love and charity more clearly.’21

  Flora Singer, one of those saved by Father Bruno, asked him many years later why, since conversion was not his goal, he had risked his life to save so many children. He told her, ‘Flora, why do you keep asking? I only did what I’m supposed to do.’22 Asked why he had taken such risks to hide the children in Nonantola, in Italy, Father Beccari commented—at the age of ninety-two, still living in the village: ‘It was simple. They were children in danger. What would you have done?’23

  Given the dangers faced by every person who hid or sheltered a Jew, given the ever-present prospect of severe punishment, of execution, and of the execution of one’s whole family, the number of those for whom evidence of rescue has been ascertained is indeed high. By the beginning of 2000 the Yad Vashem committee set up to commemorate those ‘who risked their lives to save Jews’ had located seventeen and a half thousand such people. A former member of the committee, Baruch Sharoni—who had left Poland for Palestine before the war—has asked: ‘Is the number 17,500 a final one? Not at all. First, the committee’s work is not done. Not all the names of these wonderful people have been submitted to it. Many died alongside the survivors. Others passed away without anyone to remember them. Still others have requested, for reasons known only to themselves, not to be revealed.’24

  The Jewish imperative in remembering and recognizing the work of the Righteous is also an important aspect of their story, for without the determination to find the eyewitnesses and record their stories the Righteous would not have been accorded their true place in history. During his two decades of work at Yad Vashem, Mordecai Paldiel has followed up information and requests from all over the world from those who want to honour their rescuers. ‘I must confess’, he has written, ‘that I have always viewed the work I perform here, within the framework of the “Righteous Among the Nations”, as a moral duty which we, the generation of the Shoah, have toward those within the non-Jewish population of German-dominated Europe who exerted themselves to save Jews, and thereby rescued the spirit and idea of man, as expressed in the best Biblical tradition.’25

  Recognition and remembrance continue into the twenty-first century, even as the number of those rescued, and the number of surviving rescuers, declines. When the Holocaust is finally beyond living memory, the desire to remember and honour those who extended a helping hand will remain. This is a question not only of recognizing individual bravery, but of providing a reminder that it is possible for human beings, in situations where civilized values are being undermined, to find the strength of character and purpose to resist the evil impulses of the age, and to try to rescue the victims of barbarity. Long after the Righteous of the Second World War have died, they will serve as models of the best in human behaviour and achievement to which anyone may choose to aspire. As Pierre Sauvage, one of the youngsters saved in the French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, explained when he made a film about the village, he wanted his son ‘to learn that the stories of the righteous are not footnotes to the past’.26 Above all, the stories of the Righteous emphasize, in the words of Mordecai Paldiel, ‘the belief that man, if he is to be appreciated as a unique creature, is indeed endowed with a great capacity for goodness; for moral and ethical behaviour. This bright and shining side of man, if put to full use, is more than enough to offset the other, and darker, side of man’s behaviour.’27

  The many survivors who have written to me about their rescuers feel strongly that these individual, selfless acts—the acts whereby they were saved—have not entered sufficiently into the general histories of the Holocaust, or indeed of the Second World War. Put succinctly,
as they see it, and as the material presented in this book surely underlines, human decency was also an integral part of the war years; and it was a decency that, had it been on an even larger scale, had it permeated even more deeply into the societies of that time, could have saved many more lives—thousands, even tens of thousands. The story of the Righteous is not only a story of the many successful individual acts of courage and rescue; it is also a pointer to what human beings are capable of doing—for the good—when the challenge is greatest and the dangers most pressing. Each of the nineteen thousand and more known stories—like each of the several hundred stories in these pages—must lead each of us to ask: ‘Could I have acted like this, in the circumstances; would I have tried to, would I have wanted to?’ One can only hope that the answer would have been—and would still be, if occasion rose—‘yes’.

  Maps of Places Mentioned in the Text

  1. WESTERN FRANCE

  2. CENTRAL FRANCE AND SWITZERLAND

  3. BELGIUM

  4. THE BRUSSELS REGION

  5. HOLLAND

  6. GERMANY

  7. CENTRAL EUROPE

  8. WESTERN POLAND

  9. CENTRAL POLAND

  10. LITHUANIA, EASTERN POLAND, BYELORUSSIA

  11. EASTERN GALICIA