Posted on 05/07/2006 6:58:33 PM PDT by Sabramerican
Finding a Righteous Gentile, 60 years later Etgar Lefkovits, THE JERUSALEM POST May. 5, 2006
It was a cold wintry evening in January 1945 when someone knocked on Jana Sudova's door. The Czech woman, who was home alone with her three-year-old daughter, asked who it was.
"A partisan," came the reply.
Sudova opened the door, and the man asked if he could spend the night.
After she answered in the affirmative, the man said he had a friend who wanted to spend the night as well. When the second man appeared at the doorstep, he too said he had a friend. The third man said the same thing.
"How many are you?" Sudova asked.
"Four, and that's final," they replied.
"If I take one of you in, I might as well take you all," she said.
The four men pretending to be partisans were actually Jews who had escaped a Nazi "Death March" and had made their way to the woman's home in a small Czech village, near the border with Poland.
Risking her own life, and that of her only child, Sudova agreed to hide the four in her attic, and provided them with food.
A one night's stay turned into six weeks.
Sudova, whose own husband was serving in the army, ignored warnings from her brother that she was endangering the whole family, telling him that she hoped someone would care for her husband the same way she was helping the four men.
Word soon spread in the village that Sudova was sheltering partisans, and sure enough an informer reported her to the Germans. One day, the Gestapo showed up at their door.
"We know that you have partisans here," they said.
"I don't have any partisans, I have a child here," she replied.
"Let's go see," they said, climbing to the attic.
The four Jews were nowhere to be seen. Sudova herself was dumbfounded, without a clue as to where they were hiding, her daughter Anna Gerlova, now 64, recalled in an interview Thursday.
The Germans left, and the whole household was saved.
After hiding there for six weeks, three of the four men decided to make their way to the Red Army's lines, even though the fourth man and Sudova urged them to stay.
The three men were caught and were apparently killed by the Nazis.
The fourth man, Polish-born Jakob Silberstein, stayed on, hiding inside a hollow tree - which he found on the property thanks to a hare - whenever Germans soldiers arrived.
He remained at the house for three and a half months, until he was liberated by the Russians.
When the war ended, Silberstein discovered that Sudova knew all along that they were Jews, and had nevertheless saved them despite the danger to her family.
Silberstein settled in Germany, where he married. All his children and grandchildren live in Israel.
Over the years, he has constantly thought of the kindly Czech woman who took him and his friends in to her home, and he searched for her in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic more than half a dozen times, he said.
But he didn't know her name or the exact name of her village. Silberstein, now 82, always came back empty handed.
All he had was a picture he drew of the house as he remembered it, and memories of the woman's three-year old daughter.
During those years Sudova, who had left the village, often wondered what had become of the four men she had saved, her daughter recalled, unaware that one of her house guests had been searching for her.
In 1993, Sudova died at the age of 88.
Last year, after years of searching, Silberstein was finally able to locate Sudova's daughter, who was living 120 kilometers away from their old village home.
On Thursday, Sudova was posthumously recognized by Yad Vashem as a "Righteous Among the Nations" at a ceremony in Jerusalem.
The Holocaust institute's highest honor was presented to her daughter on her late mother's behalf.
"I feel like I am walking in my mother's shoes," Gerlova said after the ceremony. "I am really speechless." Then, as she walked through the Garden of the Righteous on a brilliant spring day, a memory of her mother suddenly emerged.
"Every year she would think back to the story, and she always said that she was never afraid."
ANNA GERLOVA, whose late mother Jana Sudova hid four Jews from the Nazis, holds a certificate recognizing her mother as a Righteous Among the Nations at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem yesterday. Jakob Silberstein (second from right) is one of the men Sudova saved.
Wow, great story, thanks for posting. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
These tales of lonely courage of the "ordinary," with nothing to gain, and everything to lose, animated by basic humanity, and a sense of right and wrong, by which they hew, even when the going gets though, even when it is of the "other," are always very moving. If only most of us, could meet that standard. But of course, most of us do not and will not. And thus the reward, and the honor, is right and fitting. It recognizes the seemingly ordinary as extraordinary.
Wonderful story about the kindness one finds in human nature. It's all about goodness of the soul and recognizing right and wrong, even under the threat of losing all that you have. God bless this woman. I can only hope to have the guts she had to do what she did. I pray daily to have such strength.
I'm dealing with minatuae about the flip side of human nature today and this article brings it all into perspective. Thanks for posting this. It's inspiring!
That is a wonderful story.
Great story. There are many, many stories of human love and courage during WWII that never really get the attention they deserve. Many European Christians (Catholics) including many priests and nuns risked their lives to save Jews and many were sent to concentration camps and were killed. Many Christians died at the hand of the Nazis. It is a story that deserves attention.
I love the story Corrie Ten Boom told about how when she told her father that she didn't think she had the courage to hide the Jews even though she knew that would be the right thing to do. Her father then asked her to remember when she went to take the train to her grandmother's. He asked her when did he give her the train ticket? Corrie answered, when she got on the train. Her father then said that God also worked the same way, He would give her the courage exactly at the time she would need it.
I presume an undercover Gestapo man could never take on the look of desperation that a Jewish escapee would have had. However, making the distiction between an undercover Gestapo man and a partisan who was merely moving through an area might be difficult.
A simple act of kindness coupled with sensible resolve, a violent rage made survivable by the habits of a studied and chilled rabbit made a place to secret a grateful man long enough to set him on a course to right the terrible wrong that madness always brings; we may have reason to go on as well.
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Jewish Foundation for the Righteous
http://www.jfr.org/
The ultimate Blessing and Thank you.
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Thank you for the ping abu afak.
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That's a really nice way of putting it.
A wonderful story,thanks!
bump
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