List of people who assisted Jews during the Holocaust
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This is a list of people who helped victims to escape from the Nazi Holocaust during World War II, often called "rescuers". The list is not exhaustive, concentrating on famous cases, or people who saved the lives of many potential victims. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Israel, has recognized over 20,000 Righteous Among the Nations. [1].
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[edit] Countries
Some entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population.
- Denmark rescued around 8,000 Jews en masse in October 1943.
- The Nazi-allied government of Bulgaria, lead by Dobri Bozhilov, deported a higher percentage of Jews (from the areas of Greece and Macedonia that it occupied) to holding camps in Bulgaria and then onto death camps in the north, than did German occupiers in the region [2] [3]. In Bulgarian occupied Greece, the Bulgarian authorities arrested the majority of the Jewish population on Passover 1943 [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]. The active participation of Bulgaria in the Holocaust however did not extend to its pre-war territory and it did not deport its own 50,000 Jewish citizens.
- The government of Finland refused repeated requests from Germany to deport Finnish Jews to Germany. Requests that Norway and the Baltic states deport Jewish refugees were largely refused, as well.
- The country of Albania is reputed to have hid and saved not only all Albanian Jews, but also several hundred Jewish refugees from other countries, including Serbia, Greece, and Austria, although there are those who disagree with this [9]. In 1997, Albanian Muslim Shyqyri Myrto was honored for rescuing Jews, with the Anti-Defamation League's Courage to Care Award presented to his son, Arian Myrto. [10] In 2006, a plaque honoring the compassion and courage of Albania during the Holocaust was dedicated in Holocaust Memorial Park in Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn, New York, with the Albanian ambassador to the United Nations in attendance.
- In 1943, the Nazis asked Albanian authorities for a list of the country's Jews. They refused to comply. "Jews were then taken from the cities and hidden in the countryside," Goldfarb explained. "Non-Jewish Albanians would steal identity cards from police stations [for Jews to use]. The underground resistance even warned that anyone who turned in a Jew would be executed." ... "There were actually more Jews in the country after the war than before — thanks to the Albanian traditions of religious tolerance and hospitality." [11]
[edit] Leaders and diplomats
- Raoul Wallenberg - Swedish diplomat, saved up to 100,000 Jews. Wallenberg disappeared in January 1945 after saving the lives of tens of thousands of Jews condemned to certain death by the Nazis during World War II. He was captured by the Soviet troops who, in January 1945, took control of Budapest.
- Aristides Sousa Mendes - Portuguese diplomat in Bordeaux, who signed about 30,000 visas to help Jews and persecuted minorities to escape the Nazis and the Holocaust.
- Folke Bernadotte - Swedish diplomat, who negotiated the release of 27,000 people (a significant number of which were Jews) to hospitals in Sweden.
- Traian Popovici - Romanian mayor of Cernăuţi (Chernivtsi): saved 20,000 Jews of Bukovina.
- Frank Foley - British MI6 agent undercover as a passport officer in Berlin, saved around 10,000 people by issuing forged passports to Britain and Palestine (in British hands at the time).
- Henryk Slawik - Polish diplomat, saved 5,000-10,000 people in Budapest, Hungary.
- Per Anger, Swedish diplomat in Budapest who originated the idea of issuing provisional passports to Hungarian Jews to protect them from arrest and deportation. Anger collaborated with Raoul Wallenberg to save the lives of thousands of Jews.
- Giorgio Perlasca - Italian false Spanish consul in Hungary. Saved more than 5,000 Jews in Budapest.
- Paul Grueninger - Swiss commander of police who provided falsely dated papers to over 3,000 refugees so they could escape Austria following the Anschluss.
- Giovanni Palatucci - Italian police official who saved several thousand.
- Chiune Sugihara - Japanese consul to Lithuania, 2,140 (mostly Polish) Jews and an unknown number of additional family members were saved by passports, many unauthorized, provided by this Japanese diplomat in 1940.
- Varian Fry - American journalist who saved 2,000 - 4,000 Jews, including prominent artists and intellectuals.
- Irena Sendlerowa - Polish head of Zegota children's department: saved 2,500 Jewish children.
- Oskar Schindler - German businessman whose efforts to save his 1,200 Jewish workers were recounted in the book Schindler's Ark and the film Schindler's List.
- Karl Plagge Major in the German Army who issued work permits in order to save almost 1,000 Jews, see The Search for Major Plagge: The Nazi Who Saved Jews, by Michael Good
- Frits Philips - Dutch industrialist who saved 382 Jews by insisting to the Nazis that they were indispensable employees of Philips.
- Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas - Brazilian in charge of the Brazilian diplomat mission in France. He granted Brazilian visas to several Jews and other minorities persecuted by the Nazis. He was proclaimed as Righteous Among the Nations in 2003. [12]
- Władysław Bartoszewski - Polish Zegota activist
- Jan Karski - Polish emissary of Armia Krajowa to Western Allies and eye-witness of the Holocaust.
- Zofia Kossak-Szczucka - Polish founder of Zegota.
- Albert Göring - German businessman, who helped Jews and dissidents survive in Germany; ironically, he was the brother of Hermann Göring.
- Carl Lutz - Swiss consul in Budapest, managed to provide safe-conducts for emigration to Palestine to many thousands of Hungarian Jews.
- Paul V. McNutt - United States High Commissioner of the Philippines, 1937-1939, who facilitated the entry of Jewish refugees into the Philippines. [13]
- Manuel L. Quezon - President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, 1935-1941, assisted in resettling Jewish refugees on the island of Mindanao. [14]
- Sir Nicholas Winton - British stockbroker who organised the kindertransport which saved mainly Jewish children from Czechoslovakia and Austria after Kristallnacht. [15][16]
- Witold Pilecki - the only person who volunteered to be imprisoned in Auschwitz, organised a resistance inside the camp and as a member of Armia Krajowa sent the first reports on the camp attrocities to the Polish Government in Exile, from where they were passed to the rest of the Western Allies.
- Necdet Kent - Turkish Consul General at Marseille, who granted Turkish citizenship to hundreds of Jews. At one point entered an Auschwitz-bound train at enormous personal risk to save 70 Jews, to whom he had granted Turkish citizenship, from deportation.
- Dimitar Peshev - Head of the Bulgarian Parliament.
- Wilm Hosenfeld - German officer who helped Pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, among many others.
- Eduard Schulte - German industrialist, first to inform Allies about the mass extermination of Jews.
- Hiram Bingham IV, American Vice Consul in Marseilles, France 1940-1941
- Ho Feng Shan - Chinese Consul in Vienna, freely issued visas to Jews
[edit] Religious figures
- Archbishop Damaskinos - Archbishop of Athens during the German occupation. He formally protested the deportation of Jews and quietly ordered churches under his jurisdiction to distribute baptismal certificates to Jews fleeing the Nazis, saving thousands of Greek Jews in and around Athens.
- Archbishop Stefan of Sofia - Bishop of Sofia and Exarch of Bulgaria.
- Hugh O'Flaherty - an Irish Catholic priest who saved about 4,000 Allied soldiers and Jews; known as the "Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican". Retold in the film The Scarlet and the Black.
- Bernhard Lichtenberg - German Catholic priest at Berlin's Cathedral. Sent to Dachau because he prayed for Jews at Evening Prayer.
- Andrey Sheptytsky - Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, harbored hundreds of Jews in his residence and in Greek Catholic monasteries. He also issued the pastoral letter, "Thou Shalt Not Kill," to protest Nazi atrocities.
- The Sisters of Social Service, who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews; included Sister Sara Salkahazi, recognized by Yad Vashem as well as beatified
- Andre Trocme and Magda Trocme - A French pastor and his wife who led the Le Chambon-sur-Lignon village movement that saved 3,000-5,000 Jews.
- Pope Pius XII
[edit] Individual heroes
- Janis Lipke from Latvia, protected and hid around 40 Jews from the 'hands' of the Nazis in Riga
- Albert Bedane - of Jersey, provided shelter to a Jewish woman, as well as others sought by the German occupiers of the Channel Islands
- Michal Bar - Jakub Lorbenfeld
- Julia and Józef Bar - five members of Reisenbach family
- Victor Bodson helped Jews escape fom Germany through an underground escape route in Luxembourg.
- Corrie ten Boom, rescued many Jews in the Netherlands - was sent to Ravensbrück
- Father Alfred Delp, an agent who helped Jews escape to Switzerland while serving as a minister in suburban Munich; also involved with the Kreisau Circle.
- Sgt.-Major Charles Coward was an English POW who smuggled over 400 Jews out of Monowitz labour camp.
- Miep Gies, Jan Gies, Bep Voskuijl, Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman hid Anne Frank and 7 others in Amsterdam, Holland for two years.
- Alexandre Glasberg, Ukrainian-French priest who helped hundreds of French Jews escape deportation.
- Friedrich Kellner, justice inspector, who helped Julius and Lucie Abt, and their infant son, John Peter, escape from Laubach.
- Stanislaw Kielar - 2 girls from Reisenbach family
- Heralda Luxin, Young woman who sheltered Jewish children in her Cellar
- Józef and Stefania Macugowscy, hid six members of the Radza family, and several others, in Nowy Korczyn, Poland.
- Aristides Sousa Mendes, diplomat who freely issued visas to Jews fleeing to Portugal
- Shyqyri Myrto, Albanian rescuer of Jozef Jakoel and his sister Keti.
- Dorothea Neff, Austrian stage actress
- Algoth Niska Finnish gentleman rogue and alcohol smuggler; smuggled Jews via the Baltics.
- Irene Gut Opdyke, Polish hid twelve Jews in a German major's basement
- Jaap Penraat - Dutch architect who forged identity cards for Jews and helped many escape to Spain.
- Tim Pickert rescued dozens of Jews from the ghettoes of Krakow, Poland to hide them in his windmills located on his plush estate 23 kilometers northwest of the The Hague, Netherlands.
- Stefania Podgorska Burzminski and Helena Podgorska at age 16 and 7(Helena was her sister), they smuggled out of the ghettos and saved 13 Jews from the liquidation of the ghettos.
- Jan and Weronika Przybylak - Jakub Einhorn
- Nicolaus Rossini, helped many Jewish orphans - was executed in Krakow-Plaszow
- Suzanne Spaak, wealthy socialite who saved Jewish children in France
- Dorota and Antoni Szylar - 7 members of Weltz family
- Marie Taquet-Martens and Major Emile Taquet hid some seventy-five Jewish children in a home for disabled children they were running in Jamoigne-sur-Semois, Belgium.
- Wiktoria and Józef Ulm, their 6 children and unborn baby - shot dead by Germans- Szall and Goldman families
- Johan Hendrik Weidner, escape network rescued 800 Jews
- Gabrielle Weidner, escape network rescued 800 Jews
[edit] Villages helping Jews
- Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, in the Haute-Loire département in France, which saved up to 5,000 Jews
- Markowa, Poland, which saved 17 Jews
- Tršice, Czech Republic, many people from this village helped hide a Jewish family, six of them were given the honorific of Righteous Among the Nations
- Nieuwlande, The Netherlands - during the war this small village contained 117 inhabitants. They unanimously decided in 1942 and 1943 that every household would give shelter to one Jewish household or individual during the war, thus making it impossible that anyone in the small village would betray their neighbours. Dozens of Jews were thus saved. All inhabitants have been honored by Yad Vashem.
[edit] See also
- Righteous Among the Nations
- Zegota Council to Aid Jews in occupied Poland
