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“Righteous Among the Nations”:
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The "Righteous Among the Nations" (also referred to as "Righteous Gentiles") helped to save Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust, often at great risk to their personal safety and that of their families. The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum currently recognizes 24,811 saviors.
There are thousands
of stories of great valor which will never be told because the Nazis
executed many of the righteous saviors.
Among those whose stories
are the most celebrated include:
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Oskar SchindlerOne of the most famous Righteous Gentiles from the Holocaust, Schindler helped to save thousands of Polish Jews by shielding them as workers in his factories. Refering to them as his “Schindlerjuden,” Schindler ensured that the Jews in his factories worked but were also fed, no-one was beaten, and no-one was killed. It became an oasis of humanity in a desert of moral torpor. His story his immortalized in a film called "Schindler's List." |
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Raoul WallenbergWallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews. Wallenberg provided thousands of Jews with special Swedish passports and also set up a bureaucracy
in Budapest designed to protect Jews by using "safe houses" where they could receive food
and medical supplies. More than 90,000 Budapest Jews were deported
to death camps; Wallenberg's efforts may have saved an equal number. Following the
liberation of Budapest, Wallenberg was arrested by
the Soviets and was never heard from again. |
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Dr. Jan KarskiDr. Karski was the contact between the Polish resistance and the Polish government in exile. He repeatedly crossed enemy lines to act as a courier between his occupied nation and the West. Prior to his last departure from Poland, he was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto by the Jewish underground in order to witness the horrendous conditions. Asked to tell the story to the rest of the world, he reported on his experience to many world leaders, including American President Franklin Roosevelt. |
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Count Andrey Szeptycki (Cardinal Archbishop of Lwow)Szeptycki (also spelled Sheptytskyi) was a member of the Polish Catholic hierarchy who ordered that the clergy reporting to him act to save Jews. At first, Andrey worked with his brother Abbot Kliment to help a Jewish boy, Kurt Lewin, whose parents had been murdered by the Nazi's by keeping him safe in one of their monasteries in western Ukraine. During the course of the Holocaust, Szeptycki saved a number of Jews by allowing them to find shelter within the monasteries affiliated with the Greek Catholic Church. |
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Wladyslaw BartoszewskiBartoszewski was a founder of the Polish resistance who organized an underground organization, comprised mostly of Catholics, to help save Jews. He worked to provide false documents to Jews living outside the Warsaw ghetto. In the fall of 1942, he helped found an organization (Council for Aid to Jews) which successfully saved many Jews from the gas chambers. Bartoszweski was actually imprisoned in the Auschwitz Concentration Camp between 1940 and 1941, and after his release was secured by the Red Cross he reported on the camp. |
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Pastor Andre TrocmePastor Trocme (together with his wife Magda Trocme) was the religious leader of the Huguenot village of LeChambon-sur-Lignon, France, which hid and saved 5,000 Jews. His brother, teacher Daniel Trocme was deported with his students in the only successful Gestapo raid of the village; Daniel later died at the Majdanek concentration camp. |
Source: Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum
