Book Review: Thwarting the Nazi Doom Machine

THE RIGHTEOUS The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust By Martin Gilbert Illustrated. 529 pages. Henry Holt. $35. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hitler intended to exterminate European Jews without exception, and he almost succeeded. Nevertheless, thousands survived in Nazi-occupied Europe, hiding or using false identities. They could not have survived without the help of non-Jews; the helpers were a minority but not an insubstantial one.

Some Jews hid in the sewers of big cities, others in isolated farmhouses; some found refuge in forests, others in convents. Help was extended even by courageous inmates inside Nazi camps, which often made the difference between survival and death. All the hidden Jews faced the constant danger of discovery or betrayal and would have been lost without the friends who were protecting them.

As Martin Gilbert shows in his new book, "The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust" (and as many authorities have argued before him) sometimes up to 30 or 40 helpers were involved in saving a single life, for the survivors had to change their hiding places frequently, and they needed money, false papers and food. Some children were saved by their nannies, some students by their teachers; friends provided false certificates of baptism.

Such brave people were found in every European country, even inside Germany and Austria, where controls were the strictest. A special department in the Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem has collected, over several decades, the evidence of such humanitarian help given at great risk during one of the darkest periods in the annals of mankind. After thorough investigation, thousands of the helpers were designated as "Righteous Among Nations," and their memory has been preserved for posterity in various ways. It was exceedingly difficult to find these unsung heroes after so many years; many shied away from publicity for a variety of reasons.

In my own search for the German industrialist who in 1942, at considerable risk to his life, was the first to convey to the outside world the information about Hitler's plan to murder European Jewry, I soon came to realize that he had done everything in his power to obliterate his tracks, and it took a whole battery of scholars a number of years to identify Eduard Schulte. Schulte's story is not mentioned in Mr. Gilbert's book; nor are the stories of some others who played leading roles, and there is hardly any mention of those who helped Jews escape to neutral countries, where they lived in relative safety.

Generally speaking Mr. Gilbert gives considerably more space to the fate of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe than those in Central Europe in the West. But this is probably justified because those communities were far more numerous.

Other "righteous gentiles" (a biblical but unfortunate term) disappeared without a trace. They had been killed or died soon after the war, and their children had no knowledge of their activities. Thus Yad Vashem faced an uphill struggle to find and honor these heroes. Claims were made that were quite unsubstantiated, and on the other hand many who deserved to be remembered were no longer there to have their good deeds recorded.

Thus many questions remain: How to explain that 20 times as many "righteous" were found in Ukraine as in Russia, or more than three times as many in Belgium as in the Netherlands, even though many more Jews perished in the Netherlands than in Belgium. How to account for the fact that more than 500 "righteous" were located in Lithuania but only 17 in Denmark, even though the great majority of Jews in Lithuania were killed, whereas most of the Danish Jews were saved?

Mr. Gilbert's book is based in the main on the material assembled in Jerusalem, but he also engaged in further searches in other archives and contacted hundreds of survivors or their offspring. As a researcher and collector of historical source material, Mr. Gilbert has no peer among contemporary historians; a man of awe-inspiring initiative and indefatigable productivity, he will leave no stone unturned in his searches.

His enterprise is admirable, for while many of the stories told in his book have been told before, only a few have reached a wider public. In the early postwar period, interest in the Holocaust was small, and even fewer people were interested in those who had tried to help the victims. By now we have "Schindler's List" and many hundreds of books and television documentaries and the publication of a five-volume encyclopedia of the "righteous" is under way. Mr. Gilbert's book is a work of deep commitment; more than that, a labor of love. It deserves to be read side by side with the studies claiming that there were no rays of light, no manifestations of humanity and goodness in those dark days.

But there is a downside to Mr. Gilbert's industry. His books have frequently been criticized for the disproportion between the assembly of facts, moving and interesting as they are, and their interpretation, and this book is no exception. Mr. Gilbert seems to believe that facts speak for themselves. This is sometimes the case, but very often it is not. There is in this book an almost unending flow of stories and anecdotes, ranging from Albania to Norway, of moving and often startling cases of help extended.

But readers would also like to know who these helpers were, from what sections of society they came, whether in the main they helped friends and neighbors or also strangers, whether they acted alone or in groups, what their motives were, what were their politics (if any).

In some countries the church, or to be precise, individual churchmen played a leading role in saving individual Jews. The reader would like to know more about the risks these helpers were running; this varied greatly from country to country, which is not made sufficiently clear.

In brief, this is a book that, with all its merits, leaves many questions open. One should be grateful for Mr. Gilbert's Herculean labors, but for a definitive work on this very important topic we shall have to wait a bit longer.

During the entire WWII certain Madeleleine Korbel was sheltered in Serbia by Serb patriots. Serbs saved her life!

The gratitude came fify years later. Madeleine Korbel, better known as Madeleine Albright villified Serbs using Nazi propaganda persuassion model. Serbs were likened to Nazis and real Nazis were likened to Jewish victims.

State Department follows x-Secretary of State instructions to the present day. Hacks on State Department payroll (Human Rights Watch, Soros disinformation network) use Holocaust as a main code to villify Serbs as Nazis and prepare plans to "denazify Serbs". This will be test run for "denazifying Israel"

This is the highest profile Holocaust revisionism I am aware of. Zundel and others are small fry to them.

"During the entire WWII certain Madeleleine Korbel was sheltered in Serbia by Serb patriots. Serbs saved her life!"

This is a complete fabrication. Madeleine Albright was born in 1937 to Josef Korbel who was a foreign-service officer in the liberal interwar Czechoslovakian government. Just after her birth he was posted to the Czech embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. But he was recalled two years later, when the Munich Pact essentially made Czechoslovakia a German province. Instead of going home, Korbel moved his family to London to join the Czech government-in-exile.

So Serb patriots saved her? How exactly? During the Blitz did they shield her from a bomb with their bodies maybe?

"The gratitude came fify years later. Madeleine Korbel, better known as Madeleine Albright villified Serbs using Nazi propaganda persuassion model. Serbs were likened to Nazis and real Nazis were likened to Jewish victims."

Had many elements of the Serbian nation not in fact acted like Nazis by engaging in genocide then many people in the world would not have accused it of acting in a Nazi-like fashion.

"State Department follows x-Secretary of State instructions to the present day. Hacks on State Department payroll (Human Rights Watch, Soros disinformation network) use Holocaust as a main code to villify Serbs as Nazis and prepare plans to "denazify Serbs". This will be test run for "denazifying Israel""

So, George Soros, who has never shown an iota of concern for the Jewish people (and indeed actively hates Israel) and instead donates much of his money to Eastern Europe, are in league with an anti-Serb, pro-Semitic State Department (the same Department which consigned so many Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust) to vilify Serbs?

Ah, another Jewish conspiracy.

And the difference between Israel and Serbia is that an anti-Semitic world has indeed defamed the former with the Nazi charge but actually got it dead on as regards your own nation.

Listen up to a fairly recent account (1999) about the recent upsurge of anti-Semitism in Serbia:

THE WINDS OF WAR AND THE JEWISH SCAPEGOAT

Until recently Yugoslavia was largely immune to anti-Semitic expressions and incidents. In fact, the Yugoslav media often contrasted the persistent pro-fascist, pro-Ustasha sentiments in Croatia with the friendly relations between Jews and Serbs in former Yugoslavia. During 1998, however, especially in the last quarter of the year, there were signs of a rising wave of anti-Semitism, some manifestations of which went unnoticed by the official
media.

In two violent incidents in November and December, synagogues in Belgrade and Novi Sad were attacked with Molotov cocktails. On two other occasions, in July and November, synagogue walls were daubed with swastikas and slogans such as "Long live Hitler" and "Death to the Jews." The rise in anti-Semitism is clearly linked to the tensions in the Balkans, and with the increasingly anti-Western rhetoric of the Belgrade regime, Jewish stereotypes patterned on those in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion have surfaced in the media. Yugoslav TV programs and publications provided a forum for claims of a "world Jewish conspiracy" and accusations that the Jews were anti-Serb and pro-Albanian in the Kosovo conflict, since the Jews allegedly supported the "wealthier" side. Jews were accused of undermining Yugoslavia's international position and, as an "extremely influential factor," were seriously damaging its interests. The journal Beli Orao published several anti-Semitic pieces on the "Satanic culture" propagated by Jews, while an article in Argument referred to "well paid Jews
in key positions who are involved wherever there is conflict in the world."

http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw98-9/yugoslav.html

No Jews around Moscow? St Petersburg?

Moscow and St.Petersburg were not occupied by Nazis - unless you do not know. Suburbs is US-specific post-war phenomenon - unless you do not know it.

Do you have a breakdown for Jewish distribution in the USSR?

Ever heard about "Pale of Settlement"? There were very few Jews outside Pale and they were concentrated in the big cities and this did not change much between 1917 and 1939. And the biggest cities (Moscow and St.Petersburg) were not occupied.

I suppose you can dig out the book below if you want a definitive answer. But even in 1989 the majority Jews lived in Ukraine (486,000) and Belorussia (112,000), against (536,000) in Russia proper with 98% living in biggest cities Moscow, St.Petersburg, Kiev and Odessa (the last two cities are Ukrainian if you do not know), see http://www.1upinfo.com/country-guide-study/soviet-union/soviet-union113.html

Altshuler, Mordechai. Distribution of the Jewish population of the USSR, 1939. 1993. 79 pp. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Centre for Research and Documentation of East-European Jewry: Jerusalem, Israel. In Eng.

Asher, first of all, welcome to the FR.

Let me show you around and point to the House rules:

1. No Lies and Fabrications. Freepers, especially BALKAN FRONT are experts in digging out documents and exposing NeoNazis. Don't mess with Texas, Freepers and don't mess with Balkan Front.

2 Those who defy the Rule No. 1 are frequently ridiculed :-)

Do you want test run?

First of all, thank you for proving my point that Soros disindformation network smears and denigrates Serbs with false accusations of being Nazi.

The article you have posted, although seemingly Israeli by source, was not written by an Israeli. It was written by Laslo Sekelj, a former communist apparatchik from Serbia. He was an unpatriotic ethnic Hungarian with an axe to grind with Serbs. Sekelj was connected to Soros disinformation network in Yugoslavia (helsinki, fund for open society) Unfortunatelly, he died in 2001 so he can not bear the legal consequences for his fabrications.

Institute for European Studies where Laslo Sekelj works is on SOROS OSI payroll. They admit it openly:

Here is the second chance for you:

1. Did Madelaine Korbel spend the WWII in Serbia or not?

2. Does State Department use the services of Open Society Institute for propaganda purposes in the Balkans and Former Soviet Union?

3. Does events prior to aggression on Yugoslavia constitute GENOCIDE under UN Declaration of Genocide?

4. Was NATO agression on Yugoslavia legal according to UN Charter and NATO's own charter?

Be careful. If you fail, you will be ridiculed. And your handlers will not be very impressed with your performance :-)

Good luck, you may start your composition.

Tip: try using your own sentences , not cut-and-paste sentences from OSI arsenal

And yes--I knew the Nazis didn't make it that far; but isn't that a better reason for all the Ukies to be righteous rather than the number of Jews in the Ukraine? That is, the Jews were caught (and saved ) where the nazis were...

Nazis occupied a pretty substantial parts of Russia, ever heard about Stalingrad ? Look it up on the map (now it is Volgograd), but there were no Jewish population there to speak about. BTW, my own great grandfater and two great aunts were killed in this part of Russia, but it does not make this event statistically significant.

Again, my point was that this moron from NYT has to have at least some idea what he is writing about.

"If you fail, you will be ridiculed. And your handlers will not be very impressed with your performance "

And now I'm part of the worldwide Jewish/Soros conspiracy to spread lies about the saintly Serbs? And the famed Steven Roth Institute of Tel Aviv University is really a cover for an unknown and coveniently dead Hungarian?

Sorry, but I don't respond to threats by paranoid thugs. You are the perfect representative of a people which has done so much to sully the formerly good name of Serbia.

I've always believed that by giving his money to certain countries in Europe instead of America or Israel, Soros is simply, for the most part, casting pearls before swine. Thank you so much for adding one more piece of evidence to the rapidly growing pile.

The post under title "THE WINDS OF WAR AND THE JEWISH SCAPEGOAT" use partial quotations from "Antisemitism and Jewish Identity in Serbia After the 1991 Collapse of the Yugoslav State" by Laslo Sekelj.

Partial quotation failed to quote the conclusion of the paper that says verbatim:

This leads us to the following conclusions:
Antisemitism in post-communist rump-Yugoslavia, although peripheral, is a constant phenomenon.

Unlike some other ex-communist states, antisemitism in FR Yugoslavia is limited to particular persons and a specific stratum of “half-educated intelligentsia” and their following. The Protocols were widely available in the critical period of UN sanctions and the deterioration of living standards; thus there was an attempt to explain the war in Croatia and Bosnia by this conspiracy theory, in which the Vatican, the Commintern, Americans and Germans, as well as Freemasons and Jews, were accused of causing the isolation and suffering of Serbia and the Serbs. Yet, for the general public there are only vague ideas about the actual identity of Jews and Freemasons. The lack of legal consequences for those who disseminate antisemitic propaganda in FR Yugoslavia is only one aspect of the absence of general legal protection for ethnic minorities and human rights. So many politicians, journalists, and writers have profited from the harassment of ethnic Croats, Albanians, and Muslims that in this context the absence of legal punishment for antisemitic behavior is self-explanatory. Thus we see that antisemitism in FR (Yugoslavia) is marginal.With the general relaxation of ethnic tensions and cooling of ethno-nationalism following the Dayton peace accord of 1996, antisemitism is less visible and is losing its political ground.

And the famed Steven Roth Institute of Tel Aviv University

And what did this Institute say about post-war Kosovo when Jews were driven out, when their houses were burned down? I couldn't find anything about this among the list of articles from your link. It's funny how they are selectively silent when politically correct people are doing the ethnic cleansing.

I Don't Have a Watch

by Enes Halilovic (AIM )

A luxurious red limousine cruises around Prizren with the license plate "ZJJARI 002". The limousine is driven by an Albanian who sets Serbian houses on fire. They say he also set two Jewish houses on fire. "Zjjari" in Albanian means fire. A Bosniak man says: "I wish that Slobo could come back if only for three days. These Shiptars [ethnic Albanians] have grown so oppressive. They do not allow us Bosniaks to utter a sound. They tell us that we must state that we are Shiptars or flee from Kosovo. I think they can't even stand themselves by now."

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