In August 2016, Project Witness released “Daring to Rescue: An Original Documentary of Unknown Stories of Jewish Heroism During the Holocaust,” produced by Project Witness. In April 2017, the University of Nebraska Press published Saving One's Own: Jewish Rescuers During the Holocaust by Dr. Mordecai Paldiel, former Director of the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.
Both are significant steps in furthering our understanding of the moral and religious issues Jews faced during the Shoah. Many in the concentration camps pleaded with their fellow inmates to inform the world what happened: “If you live, please tell our story.” The deepfelt need to document the systematic destruction of the Jews of Europe began in the ghettos and continued in the camps. Jews wanted to be remembered for how they lived; not by how they died.
In 1953, the Knesset passed the Martyrs and Heroes’ Remembrance Law creating Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. As part of its mandate, Yad Vashem established a Commission for the Designation of the Righteous to honor “the high minded Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews.” The commission is chaired by a member of the Supreme Court of Israel.
For Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis, the decision to honor righteous Gentiles was obvious: “The world is hungry for moral heroes. The world needs heroes of flesh and blood: contemporary heroes. The world needs heroes whose altruism is lived out in action; models of exemplary behavior who release our abstract ideals--human beings to be emulated.”
The Knesset’s directive did not include honoring Jews who helped their fellow Jews. Whether this policy will change is not clear. Yad Vashem’s decision does not absolve us from recognizing the role Jews played in helping their fellow Jews. We believe that Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, that all Jews are responsible for each other.
What are the Criteria?
In attempting to honor Jews, there are several issues. What are the criteria to determine who merits the recognition? What constitutes help and rescue? What proof is provided to justify acknowledgment? Mordecai Paldiel explains that Yad Vashem requirements are clear:
1. On his or her own initiative, the individual had been actively and directly involved in saving a Jew from being killed or sent to a concentration camp when the Jews were trapped in a country under the control of the Germans or their collaborators during the most dangerous periods of the Holocaust and totally dependent on the goodwill of non-Jews.
2. Risked everything including his own life, freedom, and safety.
3. Not received any form of remuneration or reward as a precondition for providing help.
4. Offered proof from the survivor or incontrovertible archival evidence that the deeds had “caused” a rescue that would not otherwise have occurred and thus went beyond what might be regarded as ordinary assistance
Risk is the basic criterion for granting this award — not altruism. Those who aided Jews in countries that were not under Nazi rule or who had diplomatic immunity where there was little or no risk are not eligible for consideration. The three basic criteria are thus: risk, survival, and evidence.
Halakhic Dilemmas
The halakhic dilemmas Jews faced were heart wrenching. Even with the best of intentions, the chances of success were never assured. Filip Müller, a Jewish member of the Sonderkommandos at Auschwitz, who worked in the gas chambers and crematoria, relates one example.
In the summer of 1943, a member of the Sonderkommandos recognized the wife of friend in a newly arrived transport. After his informing her, she told the group they would be gassed, and began tearing her hair, beating her breast, and scratching her face with her fingernails. When she warned the other men and women, they were initially quite skeptical. Soon a group of about 1,000 men began dressing and attempted to leave the building, which by then was completely surrounded by the SS.
After the SS assured the Jews that the rumor was false, the doors opened with SS guards, pistols in hand and flanked by barking dogs, ready to fire, if the Jews did not enter the “showers.” The woman who had warned the group was shot. The member of the Sonderkommando who had informed the woman was pushed into an oven and burned alive.
This experience taught the Sonderkommandos the futility of informing unsuspecting people about their impending doom unless they could provide possible means of escape. Warnings caused “fear and panic” without saving a single life.
Insights About Non-Jews
Dienke Hondius, a professor of contemporary history at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and an advisor and staff member at the Anne Frank House, offers a number of insights about non-Jews who provided assistance that might be useful in commemorating Jewish behavior.
We must be judicious, she warns, not to exaggerate their actions or their image. “The more ordinary, [and] banal aspects of the lives should not be erased.” However essential their efforts were, it was a brief period in their lives. It does not convey everything about them or their personalities.
If we want others to identify with them and recognize that an individual can make a difference, we must acknowledge their “ordinariness” which they themselves have noted, but which is generally discounted as “extreme modesty.” Teachers and others must control their inclination “to generalize, dramatize, simplify or glorify the stories.”
A Final Note
A more realistic account of their actions demonstrates that ordinary people can rise to the challenge and behave in an exemplary manner, that one does not have to be a tzadik to help others even under the most extreme circumstances.
Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME). He is author of The Palestinian Right To Israel. and co-author of Denying History: Who Says The Holocaust Never Happened And Why Do They Say It? He lives in Jerusalem.