The Quality Of Mercy (The Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives to rescue Jews in the Holocaust)

What was the moral motivation of gentiles who rescued Jews during the Holocaust? During a recent conference at Yad Vashem, Prof. Wolfgang Bialas of the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden, Germany presented some research findings on the mindset of non-Jewish Berliners who sheltered Jews and helped them survive. Apart from "the usual mix of motives," some common factors distinguish the psychological profile of the rescuers. First of all, they were independent people who set their own rules and priorities and were not easily influenced by propaganda. In addition, they were righteous, empathic individuals, guided by an innate sense of morality and sound values. They found it a moral imperative to oppose cruel, humiliating treatment and not to reject people in distress. Many didn't see a choice. Despite the risks, they simply did what they felt they had to do and considered it their duty.

Chiune Sugihara, Japanese vice-consul in Lithuania during World War II, shared the traits of these righteous gentiles. He issued thousands of Jews transit visas to Japan against the direct orders of his superior in Berlin. It is estimated that he saved between six and ten thousand Jewish Polish-Lithuanian refugees. He was aided by his first wife in this frenetic task, while some yeshiva students pitched in with the pen work, and did not flinch from the unfamiliar Japanese script. Rabbi Eli Hecht explains how the students laboriously copied a visa in its entirety, including the name, so that "All 300 Mirrer Yeshiva students were thus named Rabinovitz as far as the visas were concerned. Yet, inexplicably, the Japanese border guards let the visas pass -- a 'strange conspiracy of goodness'" (www.eilatgordinlevitan.com/kovno-pages).

Sugihara is quoted as saying, "I have decided of my own accord to help these people. If that will result in punishment from my government, then I will have to live with that. I had to go through with my faith and beliefs as a human being."

Some refugees arrived in Shanghai before the war broke out. A majority had to leave their temporary dwellings in Japan and were confined to the Shanghai ghetto from 1941 until 1947 when most left for other destinations. Though conditions were difficult and crowded, the Jews organized a full spectrum of religious and cultural community activities, and on the whole came through the experience without undue harm.

Working in conjunction with Sugihara was another contemporary hero, the acting Dutch Consul in Kovno or Kaunus, Lithuania. As word spread like wildfire, part-time consul Jan Zwartendijk, director of the Philips' plants in Lithuania, issued over 1,400 transit visas to Curaçao and Surinam - islands in the Dutch West Indies - during three hectic weeks in the summer of 1940. One visa could cover an entire family. These lifesaving documents declared that no visa was necessary to enter Curaçao, a true statement, but deliberately omitted the standard caveat that entry was contingent upon the permission of the governor of Curaçao. It is estimated that Zwartendijk, the "Angel of Curaçao," saved at least 2,139 Jewish lives. This nonconformist hero never spoke publicly about his actions.

A second oriental rescuer of European Jews was Dr. Feng Shan Ho, the Chinese Consul General in Vienna. Ho saved the lives of thousands of Jews in Vienna during WWII by issuing them Chinese visas. He issued the visas for two years after the German Anschluss or annexation of Austria, despite explicit instructions to the contrary. Not every Jew arrived in China, but all desperately needed a visa of some kind, any kind, to leave Austria. Merciful Ho's perspective on supplying these documents was: "I thought it only natural to feel compassion and to want to help. From the standpoint of humanity, that is the way it should be."

These three rescuers of the Jewish people were all honored posthumously by Yad Vashem. In addition, the Chiune Sugihara Memorial in the town of Yaotsu (his birthplace in Japan) was built by the townsfolk in Sugihara's honor. Whatever little we knew about these rescuers previously, we were certainly updated on their activities in Shanghai.

During our recent visit to China we spent several days in Shanghai. Our apartment hotel was conveniently situated inside the Chabad complex though a little outside the center. Rabbi Shalom Greenberg and his wife Dina are very accommodating to all guests. Shabbat meals are also available downtown at the Chabad Jewish Center of Pudong and at the restored Sephardic synagogue, Ohel Rachel, distinguished for its elegant architecture. Shanghai is a city of extremes - showing a marked contrast between the older, poorer areas outside the tour bus routes and the elegant high rise buildings downtown and along both riverbanks. The riverside boulevard known as the Bund is brilliantly lit up at night as packed tour boats ply the waterway.

On Friday morning we explored the former Jewish quarter or Hongkou District (once the Hongkew Ghetto) of Shangai. Lintong Road off Changang Road is a poor area of town, still lacking indoor plumbing. A man shampooed his hair in the alley; a woman vigorously brushed her teeth at an outdoor sink beside a kiosk, while another sat knitting on a curbside stool. Through an open doorway came the smell of fish cooking. An old woman sat at a plain wooden table in the dim interior eating her rice porridge. On Zhonshan Road are tall brick European style buildings. Metal wash lines with laundry are strung across the building facades below the windows, between the lampposts and even attached to the traffic light poles.

We walked on Haimen Road, the former site of the Refugee Café, now full of Buddhist restaurants and stores peddling incense sticks and other paraphernalia. The Japanese wartime authorities converted the small, crowded area of Houshan Park to a de facto ghetto to restrict the residence and business activities of the stateless Jewish refugees.

A main attraction is the recently renovated Ohel Moshe synagogue on Ward Road in Hongkou. When it was built in 1927 it could accommodate a thousand worshippers. A small museum focusing on the Jewish experience has been set up adjacent to the synagogue. The Beth Aharon synagogue, a splendid edifice on Museum Road near the Bund, was also established in 1927 but was destroyed by the authorities in 1985. Its complex included a Talmud Torah and a mikveh. Sir Silas Hardoon, an eccentric though colorful figure who gradually estranged himself from the Jewish community, had financed the entire complex. Legend has it that Aharon Hardoon appeared to his son Silas in a dream, ordering him to build this sacred structure and name it after him. Beth Aharon formerly seated 400 and served as an ideal study hall for the Mir Yeshiva in wartime Shanghai.

Our next Shabbat was spent in Guangzhou where we heard another wartime rescue story. After a bracing excursion to the Yellow Mountains, we flew into the large commercial city of Guengzo late Thursday night. Standing in the usual crowd, it was a hassle to find a taxi to the hotel. We finally boarded one with our luggage only to discover that the driver didn't know English - a common pitfall - and couldn't read Chinese! Luckily he was resourceful enough to find a policeman who read him our destination with the properly sibilant Chinese intonation. As the annual Canton fair was on, the town was packed with visitors. Chabad on Shabbat was inundated with importers, buyers and business people.

Our friends, the Greenfields, formerly of Raanana, live in a compound very close to Chabad and had kindly invited us to eat with them. During the lively conversation our gracious hostess, Adina, related the following story of survival. Though not connected to China, it shows the same qualities of mercy and empathy that characterize other rescuers.

"Every year in the springtime a woman named Ada would appear on our doorstep in Givatayim. Invariably she carried a large bouquet of flowers and would loudly proclaim, 'Happy Birthday' with a broad smile on her face.

"When I got to the age of reason, and this scene repeated itself year after year, I asked my mom, Sara Goldstein of blessed memory, what this annual visit was all about. Even though my mother always understated her deeds out of modesty, over the years Ada filled in the details for me. The story that follows reflects my mother's sterling character and her concern for others:

"Sara Jozik was born to a religious Jewish family in Lodz, Poland in 1910. She grew into a beautiful young woman with curly hair. Sara went to university to study literature, while working in a garment factory tofinance her studies. At age 22 she married a man whose last name was Epstein.

"When the Nazis invaded Poland, Sara was 29 years old. Though she was already married for seven years, she and her husband had not been blessed with children. All the doctors she visited told her that she was infertile. She supported her husband, his six brothers and her old, sick father-in-law in the difficult conditions of the ghetto by working in a garment factory as a machinist.

"In 1943, when the Lodz Ghettowas liquidated, Sara was deported, first to Auschwitz, then to Bergen Belsen, where she worked in the munitions factory. At night she would receive a small piece of stale black bread for supper. One night, collapsing on her bunk from fatigue, she still held the piece of bread in her hand. Too overwrought to eat, she dozed off briefly, and when she came back to herself, she realized that her precious piece ofbread had disappeared.

"On the bunk immediately below her lay Ada in an almost lifeless condition. As Ada was too sick and feeble to work or even to get off her bunk, she was considered a goner. Her body was all swollen from malnutrition. Clearly, her days were numbered, and everyone believed that she would soon end up in the crematorium.

"Sara knew that Ada had eaten the bread but told no one about it. She also made a decision. Each night she took the trouble to soften her hard slice of black bread by dipping it into some water or into the murky liquid that passed for soup. She would then pretend that she was too fatigued to eat and dangle her arm over the side of the bunk. Sara repeated this action faithfully, sharing her meager rations with Ada. In this selfless way she sustained the young woman below and gradually restored her to life. Her own belly soon swelled from malnutrition, but she had saved a Jewish life in Israel.

"The woman who appeared at our house every year bearing flowers was that young girl - dear Ada, we called her. This special day that she celebrated so regularly was not her actual birthday, but the day when she came back to life and was finally able to get off her bunk. She considered mother her rescuing angel and greatly appreciated and loved her."

The happy ending to this story is that both women survived the Holocaust and subsequently remarried. Both Sara (Epstein) Goldstein z"l and Ada z"l were blessed with children and left descendants - now beautiful large families in Israel - as testimony to the world that the evils perpetrated by the German Nazis and their henchmen could be overcome.

-- The writer, who lives in Raanana, Israel, is an editor and translator from French, German and Hebrew into English

Chiune Sugihara and his wife, Yukiko.

In 1940, Chiune Sugihara was the Consul General for Japan in Lithuania. Thousands of Jews fleeing Poland came to his door seeking visas to help them escape.

Defying orders of the Japanese military government, and risking his life and career, Sugihara wrote over 2,000 visas for life, saving more than 6,000 lives during the Holocaust.

Irena Sendler

Irena Sendler is credited with having saved the lives of 2,500 Jewish children in the Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War.

Irena Sendler [pictured above] was a Polish Roman Catholic social worker who had links with Zegota, the code name for the Council for Aid to Jews. [T]he ultimate destination of the Jews was to be the Treblinka death camp and Zegota decided to try to save as many children as possible. Using the codename "Jolanta" Irena Sendler [led] this escape network.

One baby was spirited away in a mechanic's toolbox. Some children were transported in coffins, suitcases and sacks; others escaped through the sewer system beneath the city.

In later life Irena Sendler recalled the heartbreak of Jewish mothers having to part from their children: "We witnessed terrible scenes. Father agreed, but mother didn't. We sometimes had to leave those unfortunate families without taking their children from them. I'd go back there the next day and often found that everyone had been taken to the railway for transport to the death camps."

[In] 1943, her house was raided by the Gestapo and the Nazis took Sendler to the prison, where she was tortured; although her legs and feet were broken, and her body left permanently scarred, she refused to betray her network of helpers or the children whom she had saved. Sentenced to death, she escaped thanks to Zegota, who bribed a guard to set her free. She immediately returned to her work using a new identity.

In her later years Irena Sendler was cared for in a Warsaw nursing home by Elzbieta Ficowska, who - in 1942, at six months old - had been smuggled out of the ghetto by Irena in a carpenter's workbox.

She was nominated in 2007 for the Nobel Peace Prize ( she was still alive at age 97 ). Al Gore was given the prize for that year instead of her. Irena Sendler died the next year, age 98.

Another part of the Irena Sendler story:

After the war and the Soviet takeover of Poland, Irena Sendler was persecuted by the Communist Polish state authorities for her relations with the Polish government in exile and with the Home Army. During this period she miscarried her second child.

The Polish Communist authorities were not interested to reward her for the help rendered to Jewish children during the war. But the Jews did not forget. In 1965, Irena Sendler became one of the first “Righteous Gentiles” honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem for wartime heroics. Polish authorities did not allow her to go to Israel to be praised there. Only in 1983, she could collect the award (a medal “Righteous among the Nations”), confirmed by the Knesset. In 1991, she became an honorary citizen of Israel.

Earlier, in 1968, when the Communist authorities cracked down on Polish Jews, calling them “Zionists” and expelling some 20,000 from Poland, Mrs. Sendler announced she was ready to hide Jews again. For her statement, the authorities expelled her children from the Warsaw University.

It has always puzzled me as to why the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize Committee did not award the Prize to Irena Sendler. Surely if anyone has shown that she deserved the prize, it would be her.

Also, she was 97 years old and did not have long to live. If they wanted to award the prize to Gore ( assuming he deserved it ), they could have waited another year to do it.

Then after reading a few articles about Norway (where the Peace Prize Committe is located), it suddenly dawned on me -— this country has a strong Anti-Semitic streak going on very recently.

See here for example :

http://nordicvoices.blogspot.com/2009/04/anti-semitism-in-norway-3.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704474804576222561887244764.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4048299,00.html

For those who don’t know what Yad Vashem is, a brief introduction :

Yad Vashem (”Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority”) is Israel’s official memorial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust established in 1953 through the Yad Vashem Law passed by the Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

The origin of the name is from a Biblical verse: “And to them will I give in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name (Yad Vashem) that shall not be cut off”.

Located at the western region of Mount Herzl on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem, Yad Vashem is a 45-acre (180,000 m2) complex containing the Holocaust History Museum, memorial sites, such as the Children’s Memorial and the Hall of Remembrance, The Museum of Holocaust Art, sculptures, outdoor commemorative sites such as the Valley of the Communities, a synagogue, archives, a research institute, library, publishing house and an educational center, The International School for Holocaust Studies.

Non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust, at personal risk, are honored by Yad Vashem as “Righteous among the Nations”.

Yad Vashem is the second most visited tourist site in Israel, after the Western Wall, with over 800,000 visitors in 2009. Admission is free.

Read The Hiding Place...by Corrie ten Boom....

..she survived the concentration camp where she was sent --after hiding many Jewish famlies in her home....but her sister, father, nephew didn't.....

Her story is compelling....and she is counted among the Righteous...here on earth....and in Heaven.

Thank you for posting those Beautiful pictures of Yad Vashem’s Garden of the Righteous.

The trees there are carob, which tastes like chocolate. Every Gentile declared “Righteous” has a tree dedicated to them.

When I was there, there was a brand new sapling dedicated to Corrie ten Boom. Our Guide explained that there had been a full grown tree for Corrie, but it DIED the same day she did, and had to be replaced with a new tree.

A strange little story from a very special place.

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