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TO SAVE ONE LIFE
The Story of Righteous Gentiles

Text by Dr. William L. Shulman, Director

Queensborough Community College
The City University of New York • Bayside, New York

This catalogue has been made possible by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc., State Senator Frank Padavan, the Queensborough Community College Fund, Inc. and the individuals who are members of the Holocaust Resource Center.

THIS IS THE STORY OF HOW A SMALL PERCENTAGE OF INDIVIDUALS RISKED THEIR LIVES TO SAVE FELLOW HUMAN BEINGS FROM DESTRUCTION. IT IS NOT THE STORY OF THE HOLOCAUST. The people you will meet in this exhibit come from many different countries and from all walks of life. Each of them had a choice to make, whether or not to stand by while friends, neighbors, indeed sometimes strangers, were seized, transported and probably murdered, or to take action — to shelter, feed, and protect that person or several people from danger. These people were the rare exceptions. The overwhelming majority were bystanders or collaborators or perpetrators.

The Jews were singled out for destruction for no other reason than the Nazi decree that anyone with Jewish blood in his or her veins (even a Christian by belief) was a threat to the Germanic 'superior race' and had to be eliminated — men, women, and children, the elderly as well as infants. A sophisticated killing machine was improvised…reaching out to the far corners of the European continent, and all Jews in German-occupied countries…found themselves trapped and condemned to oblivion.

Mordecai Paldiel, Sheltering the Jews:
Stories of Holocaust Rescuers, p.3

The question is why did even a few people risk their lives to save Jews?

Nechama Tec has written:

Jewish rescue was a humane response to the Nazi measures of destruction. The appearance of righteous Christians signaled an opposition to, an interference with, the German policies of annihilation.

Eventually, each European country had some Christians who stood up for the persecuted Jews, but because these anti-Jewish measures were introduced in different places at different times, the timing of the appearance of these righteous Christians also varied from country to country.

Nechama Tec, When Light Pierced the Darkness, p.6

Even within the heart of the Nazi Empire, in Germany and Austria, there were those few individuals who acted to preserve Jewish lives. Yad Vashem has recognized 321 Germans and 80 Austrians as being "Righteous Among the Nations."

The German officer and his wife who hid a Jewish child during the war.   

Photo Credit:
Elka Borenstein, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

In Western Europe the opportunity for Jews to be saved was far greater than in Eastern Europe. Among the factors that contributed to this were:

It was possible for whole communities, indeed, in one case, for an entire nation, to act together to aid those in distress. But, even within that larger number, it was still a matter of individual judgment and action.

Portrait of a Jewish boy, Felix Zylbersztajn, in hiding at a Belgian convent in the village of Oulter.

Photo Credit: Felix Zylbersztajn, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives

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