Of the 8.86 million Jews who lived in
The Gestapo routinely offered a bounty for those who turned in Jews who were
hiding. This bounty consisted of a quart of liquor, four pounds of sugar, a
carton of cigarettes, or, at times, small cash payments. For many civilians,
these commodities were unobtainable through normal
channels, and thus they were provided with a powerful incentive to coope
Those who resisted the Gestapo and hid Jews did so at grave personal peril.
Any person caught hiding a Jew was immediately shot on the spot or taken out to
be publicly hanged by the S.S. At a time when living space, food, sanitation
facilities, and medicine were at a premium, those who hid Jews from the Nazis
sacrificed a great deal, including the risk to their lives.
Those non-Jews who worked at great risk to their personal safety to save
Jews became known as the "Righteous Gentiles." There are thousands of
stories of great valor which will never be told because the Nazis executed many
of these Righteous Gentiles. Among those whose stories are the most celeb
Raoul Wallenberg - He was a Swedish diplomat who made it a special, personal
mission to help save the Jews of Hungary. More than 30,000 Jews received
special Swedish passports from Wallenberg. He set up "safe houses,"
distributed food and medical supplies, and virtually single-handedly set up a
bureaucracy in
Dr. Jan Karski - He was the contact between the Polish resistance and the
Polish government in exile. He was smuggled into the
Cardinal Archbishop of Lwow (Count Andreas Szeptycki) - He was a member of
the Polish Catholic hierarchy who ordered that the clergy reporting to him act
to save Jews.
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski - He was a founder of the Polish resistance who
organized an underground organization, comprised mostly of Catholics, to save
Jews. He worked to provide false documents to Jews living outside the
Pastor Andre Trocme and Daniel Trocme - Pastor Trocme was the religious
leader of the Huguenot village of LeChambon-sur-Lignon,
Why did Gentiles risk their lives to save the Jews?