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Holocaust
Remembrance
Click here for a downloadable
pdf file (version 1).
Click here for a downloadable
file (version 2).
Click here for a downloadable
file (version 3).
Click here for the 2008 file as
a booklet.
pdf file (version 1).
Click here for a downloadable
file (version 2).
Click here for a downloadable
file (version 3).
Click here for the 2008 file as
a booklet.
The Nazis came to power in Germany in January 1933. Among their
doctrines was the belief that Germans were "racially superior" and that
the Jews and other groups were deemed "inferior" The Nazi went so
far as to say Jews and others were "life unworthy of life" and “not quite
human.” Germany instituted systematic discrimination against Jews
from employment restrictions to seizing property and assets.
Hitler’s Final Solution sealed the fate for any Jew left in Germany and,
by then, occupied territories. An estimated nine million people were
killed during the Holocaust. Of that, six million were Jews. Nearly a
quarter of a million gypsies were killed. The remaining victims were
homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, the mentally
disabled, some of the Slavic peoples, and other minority groups.
The General Assembly of the United Nations designated January 27–
the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp–
as an annual International Day of Commemoration of the Holocaust.
Below are some historical tidbits and brief profiles of notable people of
the Holocaust. More information can be obtained from the U.S.
Holocaust Museum’s website at www.ushmm.org.
Victims
“Without pity or mercy..”: The Forgotten Holocaust
Just before invading Poland, Hitler declared to his general to kill without pity
or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language to
obtain the living space [lebensraum] needed for Germans. The professional
ranks were targeted; doctors, attorneys, professors and Christian clergy were
rounded up and executed. There were round up and mass executions of
common people as well.
The Nazis deported two million Polish gentiles for slave labor for the Third
Reich, and Polish land and farms were seized for Germans. Men, women and
children were forced from their homes with no warning. Blond, Polish children
were abducted from the families and placed in German homes to be raised as
Germans.
.
The majority of those killed in the Forgotten Holocaust died in concentration
camps. In total, three million non-Jewish Poles were killed in the Holocaust as
well as approximately three million Polish Jews. (based on www.remember.
org/forgotten and the PBS website)
For more information, see The Forgotten Holocaust, by Richard C. Lukas
(The University Press of Kentucky)
Unit 731 and The Holocaust in Asia
As early as 1931, Japan had begun a chemical warfare campaign in occupied
Asia. Unit 731 of Harbin, Manchuria, China (there were other units in
Nanking, Beijing and Changchun) was divided into several different labs,
each worked on a different kind of pathogenic germ ranging from dysentery
to typhus. These biological warfare agents were tried in human experiments
in prison complexes. French, British and American POWs were among the
victims. More horribly were the civilian victims including women, children and
even infants. They were largely Chinese but also Russian, Mongolian and
Korean.
Other medical experiments were conducted on prisoners including research
on air pressure, animal-human blood transfusions, starvation, frostbite, and
dehydration. There were other unspeakable experiments conducted. Tens
of thousands of people were victims. Unit 731 and other biological operations
troops disseminated cholera cultures in China. The cultures were dropped in
water wells, injected in ripe fruits, and distributed in cholera-infested rice
cakes and other food items. The infected food was either distributed directly
to hungry Chinese or mixed into baskets of vegetables that were left under
trees along roads or in front of farmhouses. More than a quarter of a million
people were infected and the majority died.
Tragically, those responsible for the atrocities were not punished. General
MacArthur struck a deal that shielded the doctors from accountability.
Based on Daniel Barenblatt’s A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret
Genocide of Axis Japan’s Germ Warfare Operation (Harper Collins, 2004)
St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe (1894-1941)
In Poland, the Nazis were brutal to both Jews and Catholics. Among the
victims of the Holocaust was the Polish born Franciscan monk, Maximilian
Mary Kolbe. He volunteered to take the place of another prisoner who was to
be executed.
Before the war, Kolbe had been a missionary in Asia and had returned to
Poland to do other mission work as well as to found religious communities
including Niepokalanow. After the invasion of Poland by the German
Wermacht in September of 1939, the friars dispersed and Niepokalanow was
ransacked. Kolbe and about 40 others were taken to holding camps, first in
Germany, and later in Poland. They were later released a few months later.
During the war the friars cared for about 5,000 Jewish refugees of the
Poznan district as well as providing a repair shop for the farming machinery of
the locale. Kolbe was later arrested for his religious work and anti-war
activities. He was taken to Pawiak Prison and later was transferred to
Auschwitz.
At Auschwitz, Kolbe counseled fellow prisons telling them to forgive and to
pray for their persecutors. He was noted for his generosity in surrendering
his food despite the starvation ration and for going to the end of the line of
the infirmary despite his illness.
On the night of August 3, 1941, a prisoner escaped the camp. In reprisal, the
prison camp commandant ordered death by starvation for 10 men chosen at
random. One of the condemned men cried out that he would never see his
wife and children again. Kolbe volunteered to take the man’s place. Ten
days later, having led the other nine in prayers and hymns, Kolbe was
executed by lethal injection. (Based on www.ewtn.com)
Edith Stein (later Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
Born Jewish, Edith Stein converted at age 30 during her academic career to
Catholicism and ten years later joined the Carmelites. She was sent to a
convent in the Netherlands to evade nazi persecution in 1938. After Catholic
bishops read a pastoral letter denouncing the deportations of Jews, the
Gestapo retaliated by rounding up Catholics who had converted from
Judaism. She was arrested. At Auschwitz, Stein took charge of the children,
taking care of their hygiene and finding them food. She was executed in the
gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1942. Pope John Paul II canonized her in
1998. (based on an article by Laurie Goodstein, Washington Post, May 23,
1997)
Heroes
“Whoever saves one life saves the entire world.” Koran: Muslim
Rescuers
Historians sparingly discuss the role of Muslims in the Holocaust. Many
Muslims bravely protected innocent people during the Holocaust. Among
them, the Sultan of Morocco and the Bey of Tunisia gave help to Jewish
subjects. For instance, 60 Jewish internees in Tunisia escaped from a labor
camp to the farm of Si Ali Sakkat who hid them until liberation. In North Africa,
there were no death camps but there were more than a 100 brutal, slave
labor camps created mostly to hold Jews, who were tortured and murdered by
guards. At these camps, Nazis often used Arabs to guard and execute
prisoners. During the occupation, like Europe's Judenrat, North African
Jewish councils, "consistories," were set up to administer Nazi demands for
slave laborers and to hand over Jewish property and assets.
Among the other heroes were common and wealthy private people. In the
Tunisian coast town of Mahdia, Khaled Abdul Wahhab sheltered Jewish
families at his countryside estate to protect the women from rape. Some Arab
families opened their homes to Jews and protected Jewish property from
confiscation by the Nazis. They also shared their food rations. In Europe, Si
Kaddour Benghabrit, the leader of the Great Mosque of Paris, saved as many
as 100 Jews by issuing them certificates of Muslim identity. In addition, the
Central Mosque of Paris provided shelter for hundreds of French Jewish
children.
Based on an article by Abraham H. Foxman, The Anti-Defamation League’s
website, and an article by Sheila Musaji. For Further Reference, read the
book Among the Righteous: Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into
Arab Land by Robert Satloff or view Derri Berkani’s 1991 film, “Their
Children Are Like Our Own Children, A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of
Paris.”
Martha and Waitstill Sharp
Americans Martha and Waitstill Sharp left for Prague on assignment just
before war broke out. Waitstill Sharp was a Unitarian minister and their goal
was to rescue Unitarians and others targeted by the Nazis. They stayed well
into the Nazi takeover in March 1939 and were able to assist many in
escaping. With Martha Sharp facing imminent arrest, the couple narrowly
escaped the Gestapo and safely returned to the U.S.
A few months later, the Unitarian Service Committee had a new assignment
for them. They left for France then working with famed Holocaust rescuer
Varian Fry, they helped to set up an underground railroad to help refugees
cross into Spain and Portugal. The Sharps focused on two especially
vulnerable constituencies: prominent intellectuals and refugee children.
The couple learned the legal and illegal escape routes out of occupied
France then traded U.S. currency on the black market in order to bribe
border guards and pay for rail, air, or sea transportation for the refugees. On
occasion, they personally escorted high-profile refugees out of France.
Among their rescues were Nobel laureate physicist Otto Meyerhof and writers
Heinrich Mann (brother of Thomas), Franz Werfel (''The Song of
Bernadette"), and Lion Feuchtwanger (''Proud Destiny"). Feuchtwanger had
been on the Nazi’s most wanted list.
The Sharps made it possible for almost 2,000 stranded refugees, many of
them Jews, to survive. In addition to the rescues of intellectuals, Martha
Sharp toured refugee camps and established a vital milk-distribution network
in southern France for starving children and she personally arranged for the
escape of 27 children, including 9 who were Jewish.
After the war, the Sharps traveled abroad on international relief missions,
raising money and awareness for the Unitarian Service Committee and other
organizations. On October 19, 2005, Yad Vashem conferred posthumously
upon Martha Sharp and Waitstill Sharp the title Righteous Among the
Nations. (based on the ADL website and a Boston Globe article by Joseph
P. Kahn)
Magda and Andrew Trocme and the Villagers of Chambon, France
During the Holocaust, Magda and Andrew Trocme led a small French village’s
rescue of Jews. Through word of mouth, the community became a place of
shelter for 5,000 refugees, mostly Jews during WWII. There were also
Spanish refugees from Franco’s regime there. Sheltering mainly children at
first, the Chambon villagers turned no one away.
Showing incredible courage and Christian principles, the night her husband
was arrested by Vichy police, Mrs. Trocme served dinner to the officers. Her
husband was later released.
Her family was dedicated to fighting injustice. Her Russian ancestors had
advocated rights of peasants under the czar and her Italian great grandfather
was jailed for protesting the government’s treatment of the poor. The entire
village was honored at the Yad Vashem. Born in 1902, Magda Trocme died
in 1996. (based on an Associated Press article)
For more information see the book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip
Hallie and the 1990 documentary “Weapons of the Spirit” by Pierre
Sauvage.
Count Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli
Count Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, an Italian aristocrat, was best known as
an accomplished archaeologist and historian. Before the war, he published
several works on ancient Roman and Roman and Greek art. At the time, he
was one of Italy’s most famous art historians. As such, it was he who was
selected by Mussolini to show Hitler around Rome. Despite this “honor,”
Count Bandinelli was an ardent anti-fascist.
The Count and his wife lived at the family estate during the war, hiding
several Jewish and anti-fascist friends. At the end of the war as the Germans
were withdrawing, the Nazis had planned to blow up the villa. The count
convinced the German officer that Goethe had stayed at the villa, and the
Germans abandoned the plan as a “sacrilege” against Aryan culture. The
villa and those it sheltered survived. (based on an Architectural Digest article)
Max Schmelling
Though at one time the pride and joy of Hitler, Max Schmelling is well
remembered for his boxing victory and even more stunning loss in his boxing
rematch with America’s Joe Louis. However, Schmelling should also be
remembered for his other actions. During the Holocaust, Schmelling actually
protected and hid Jewish friends in his home during the war. Schmelling was
quite a contraction in expectations. Though Hitler once had boasted of him
being a symbol of Aryan pride, Schmelling rejected Nazi policies of white
supremacy. He protected Jews and ultimately became lifelong friends with Joe
Louis.
Per Anger
In late 1942, Sweden posted its diplomat Per Anger to the Swedish embassy
in Hungary. It was a-decision that would change history. During WWII,
Sweden was officially neutral and Hungary was an ally of Germany and had
declared war on the Soviet Union. Hungary had enacted anti-Semitic laws at
German behest but Hungary's government did not enforce those acts,
however.
Then in March 1944, Germany invaded. Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest
shortly afterwards and started to organize the murders of Hungary’s one
million Jews. The danger was clear and present, but Anger’s response was
swift and certain. Anger began issuing a schutzpass, a temporary, protective
pass to any Jew arriving at the Swedish legation. The passes identified the
bearers as Swedish citizens. Anger also requested help from Stockholm.
Among the Swedish reinforcements to arrive in Budapest in July 1944 was
Raoul Wallenberg. History credits the two men saving more than 100,000
lives.
Anger and Wallenberg reached agreement with the Hungarian government,
which still had some power, to honor their "passes." They even bluffed
German authorities, who knew that Berlin valued Sweden's trade and
neutrality, into tolerating many of their actions. They set up safe houses,
disguised as Swedish libraries and research offices. During the occupation,
Anger bluffed his way aboard a train with a load of Jews headed for a Polish
death camp, saying there were Swedish citizens aboard and warning SS
guards "not to interfere in official Swedish business." While "searching" the
train, he, with the help of a Hungarian policeman, handed out passes
enabling more than 150 people to leave the train.
Towards the end of the war and after Allied bombers had destroyed the
Hungarian rails, the SS organized a death march of Jews toward Germany.
Wallenberg and Anger managed to accompany the march in a car with
diplomatic plates, pulling Jews from the line with sudden passes and offering
food and drink to others fighting exhaustion and instant execution. In addition
to the Swedes, Hungary's Jews also received aid from Swiss and Spanish
diplomats and the papal nuncio. During Nazi Germany's final days, Anger
convinced Nazi officials in Budapest that it would be unwise to continue the
final solution and the killings stopped.
After the war, Anger devoted much of the rest of his life to trying to get
information about Rauol Wallenberg from Soviet authorities and organizing
pressure for his release. After the war, he continued in the diplomatic
service. He was serving in Vienna in 1956 during the bloody Hungarian
uprising against the Soviet Union. As before, he issued passes to help
Hungarian freedom fighters escape across the Austrian border some of whom
were the same people he had saved during WWII. In 1982, Anger was named
by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Among Nations." In 1995, he was awarded
Hungary's Order of Merit. He died in 2002.
Based on an article by Richard Pearson in the Washington Post, September
2, 2002. For more information, see A Quiet Courage -- Per Anger,
Wallenberg's Co-Liberator of Hungarian Jews by Elisabeth R Skoglund
(Baker Books, 1997).
Survivors
Tibor “Ted” Rubin
Just a teenager, Hungarian Jew Tibor Rubin was a prisoner for 14 months in
a German concentration camp before the camp was liberated. He was his
family’s sole survivor of the Holocaust and Rubin emigrated to the United
States after the war. Five years later, he volunteered for the Army during the
Korean War. During the war, he was captured by North Korean and became
a prisoner of war (POW) for 30 months. During his brutal capture, Rubin
would steal food from guards and make soup out of grass for him and his
fellow POWs. Rubin would boil snow in a helmet to clean bandages and tend
wounds of soldiers. One former POW recalled that Rubin foraged for
maggots to suck the infection out of a badly infected wound. Rubin credited
the survival skills he was forced to learn during the Holocaust to help him and
his fellow POWs survive the Korean POW camp.
Before his capture by the Koreans, Rubin single handedly held off a North
Korean advance by scrambling from foxhole to foxhole wildly firing weapons
and throwing hand grenades to make the advancing troops think they were
facing a large number of soldiers. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor
but the paperwork was not completed. His commander was killed before the
nomination would be submitted and the company’s first sergeant was anti-
Semitic and allegedly threw away the paperwork. Former comrades, crediting
their lives to Rubin, started a campaign some 20 years ago to have the Medal
of Honor awarded. In September 2005, Rubin was finally awarded the Medal
of Honor. (based on an U.S. News and World Report article by Julian E.
Barnes)
Heinz Berggruen
Heinz Berggruen fled his native Berlin in 1936. He went on to study at the
University of California, Berkley and later worked as an art critic. When the U.
S. entered the war, Berggruen volunteered for the army and served in
Europe.
Later after the war, a job with the U.S. UNESCO delegation took him to Paris
where he stayed an opened an art gallery in 1947. Two years later, his
business took off when he met Pablo Picasso. A close friendship and
business relationship developed between them. Upon retiring from art
dealing in 1980, Berggruen became an avid collector.
Later in an act of forgiving benevolence and perhaps defiant retribution,
Berggruen sold a large collection of modern art to the State Museums of
Berlin for $12 million, a fraction of their market value. Berggruen relished the
opportunity to have works by artists that Hitler had labeled as ‘degenerate’
housed in the Berlin Museums. He died in February 2007 at age 93. (based
on article by Stephanie Cash and David Ebony in Art in America magazine,
April 2007)
In Memoriam
In late 2007, the world lost Raul Hilberg. He is credited with being the founder
of Holocaust studies. His book, The Destruction of the European Jews,
(1961) uncovered the fact that the Holocaust was attributable to both the will
of a mad man but also to the willingness of German officials and the common
man to permit the Holocaust.
On the Net:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org
Yahad-In Unum, http://www.yahadinunum.org/index.en.html
French Holocaust Memorial, http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/
doctrines was the belief that Germans were "racially superior" and that
the Jews and other groups were deemed "inferior" The Nazi went so
far as to say Jews and others were "life unworthy of life" and “not quite
human.” Germany instituted systematic discrimination against Jews
from employment restrictions to seizing property and assets.
Hitler’s Final Solution sealed the fate for any Jew left in Germany and,
by then, occupied territories. An estimated nine million people were
killed during the Holocaust. Of that, six million were Jews. Nearly a
quarter of a million gypsies were killed. The remaining victims were
homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Communists, the mentally
disabled, some of the Slavic peoples, and other minority groups.
The General Assembly of the United Nations designated January 27–
the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp–
as an annual International Day of Commemoration of the Holocaust.
Below are some historical tidbits and brief profiles of notable people of
the Holocaust. More information can be obtained from the U.S.
Holocaust Museum’s website at www.ushmm.org.
Victims
“Without pity or mercy..”: The Forgotten Holocaust
Just before invading Poland, Hitler declared to his general to kill without pity
or mercy, all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language to
obtain the living space [lebensraum] needed for Germans. The professional
ranks were targeted; doctors, attorneys, professors and Christian clergy were
rounded up and executed. There were round up and mass executions of
common people as well.
The Nazis deported two million Polish gentiles for slave labor for the Third
Reich, and Polish land and farms were seized for Germans. Men, women and
children were forced from their homes with no warning. Blond, Polish children
were abducted from the families and placed in German homes to be raised as
Germans.
.
The majority of those killed in the Forgotten Holocaust died in concentration
camps. In total, three million non-Jewish Poles were killed in the Holocaust as
well as approximately three million Polish Jews. (based on www.remember.
org/forgotten and the PBS website)
For more information, see The Forgotten Holocaust, by Richard C. Lukas
(The University Press of Kentucky)
Unit 731 and The Holocaust in Asia
As early as 1931, Japan had begun a chemical warfare campaign in occupied
Asia. Unit 731 of Harbin, Manchuria, China (there were other units in
Nanking, Beijing and Changchun) was divided into several different labs,
each worked on a different kind of pathogenic germ ranging from dysentery
to typhus. These biological warfare agents were tried in human experiments
in prison complexes. French, British and American POWs were among the
victims. More horribly were the civilian victims including women, children and
even infants. They were largely Chinese but also Russian, Mongolian and
Korean.
Other medical experiments were conducted on prisoners including research
on air pressure, animal-human blood transfusions, starvation, frostbite, and
dehydration. There were other unspeakable experiments conducted. Tens
of thousands of people were victims. Unit 731 and other biological operations
troops disseminated cholera cultures in China. The cultures were dropped in
water wells, injected in ripe fruits, and distributed in cholera-infested rice
cakes and other food items. The infected food was either distributed directly
to hungry Chinese or mixed into baskets of vegetables that were left under
trees along roads or in front of farmhouses. More than a quarter of a million
people were infected and the majority died.
Tragically, those responsible for the atrocities were not punished. General
MacArthur struck a deal that shielded the doctors from accountability.
Based on Daniel Barenblatt’s A Plague Upon Humanity: The Secret
Genocide of Axis Japan’s Germ Warfare Operation (Harper Collins, 2004)
St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe (1894-1941)
In Poland, the Nazis were brutal to both Jews and Catholics. Among the
victims of the Holocaust was the Polish born Franciscan monk, Maximilian
Mary Kolbe. He volunteered to take the place of another prisoner who was to
be executed.
Before the war, Kolbe had been a missionary in Asia and had returned to
Poland to do other mission work as well as to found religious communities
including Niepokalanow. After the invasion of Poland by the German
Wermacht in September of 1939, the friars dispersed and Niepokalanow was
ransacked. Kolbe and about 40 others were taken to holding camps, first in
Germany, and later in Poland. They were later released a few months later.
During the war the friars cared for about 5,000 Jewish refugees of the
Poznan district as well as providing a repair shop for the farming machinery of
the locale. Kolbe was later arrested for his religious work and anti-war
activities. He was taken to Pawiak Prison and later was transferred to
Auschwitz.
At Auschwitz, Kolbe counseled fellow prisons telling them to forgive and to
pray for their persecutors. He was noted for his generosity in surrendering
his food despite the starvation ration and for going to the end of the line of
the infirmary despite his illness.
On the night of August 3, 1941, a prisoner escaped the camp. In reprisal, the
prison camp commandant ordered death by starvation for 10 men chosen at
random. One of the condemned men cried out that he would never see his
wife and children again. Kolbe volunteered to take the man’s place. Ten
days later, having led the other nine in prayers and hymns, Kolbe was
executed by lethal injection. (Based on www.ewtn.com)
Edith Stein (later Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
Born Jewish, Edith Stein converted at age 30 during her academic career to
Catholicism and ten years later joined the Carmelites. She was sent to a
convent in the Netherlands to evade nazi persecution in 1938. After Catholic
bishops read a pastoral letter denouncing the deportations of Jews, the
Gestapo retaliated by rounding up Catholics who had converted from
Judaism. She was arrested. At Auschwitz, Stein took charge of the children,
taking care of their hygiene and finding them food. She was executed in the
gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1942. Pope John Paul II canonized her in
1998. (based on an article by Laurie Goodstein, Washington Post, May 23,
1997)
Heroes
“Whoever saves one life saves the entire world.” Koran: Muslim
Rescuers
Historians sparingly discuss the role of Muslims in the Holocaust. Many
Muslims bravely protected innocent people during the Holocaust. Among
them, the Sultan of Morocco and the Bey of Tunisia gave help to Jewish
subjects. For instance, 60 Jewish internees in Tunisia escaped from a labor
camp to the farm of Si Ali Sakkat who hid them until liberation. In North Africa,
there were no death camps but there were more than a 100 brutal, slave
labor camps created mostly to hold Jews, who were tortured and murdered by
guards. At these camps, Nazis often used Arabs to guard and execute
prisoners. During the occupation, like Europe's Judenrat, North African
Jewish councils, "consistories," were set up to administer Nazi demands for
slave laborers and to hand over Jewish property and assets.
Among the other heroes were common and wealthy private people. In the
Tunisian coast town of Mahdia, Khaled Abdul Wahhab sheltered Jewish
families at his countryside estate to protect the women from rape. Some Arab
families opened their homes to Jews and protected Jewish property from
confiscation by the Nazis. They also shared their food rations. In Europe, Si
Kaddour Benghabrit, the leader of the Great Mosque of Paris, saved as many
as 100 Jews by issuing them certificates of Muslim identity. In addition, the
Central Mosque of Paris provided shelter for hundreds of French Jewish
children.
Based on an article by Abraham H. Foxman, The Anti-Defamation League’s
website, and an article by Sheila Musaji. For Further Reference, read the
book Among the Righteous: Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into
Arab Land by Robert Satloff or view Derri Berkani’s 1991 film, “Their
Children Are Like Our Own Children, A Forgotten Resistance: The Mosque of
Paris.”
Martha and Waitstill Sharp
Americans Martha and Waitstill Sharp left for Prague on assignment just
before war broke out. Waitstill Sharp was a Unitarian minister and their goal
was to rescue Unitarians and others targeted by the Nazis. They stayed well
into the Nazi takeover in March 1939 and were able to assist many in
escaping. With Martha Sharp facing imminent arrest, the couple narrowly
escaped the Gestapo and safely returned to the U.S.
A few months later, the Unitarian Service Committee had a new assignment
for them. They left for France then working with famed Holocaust rescuer
Varian Fry, they helped to set up an underground railroad to help refugees
cross into Spain and Portugal. The Sharps focused on two especially
vulnerable constituencies: prominent intellectuals and refugee children.
The couple learned the legal and illegal escape routes out of occupied
France then traded U.S. currency on the black market in order to bribe
border guards and pay for rail, air, or sea transportation for the refugees. On
occasion, they personally escorted high-profile refugees out of France.
Among their rescues were Nobel laureate physicist Otto Meyerhof and writers
Heinrich Mann (brother of Thomas), Franz Werfel (''The Song of
Bernadette"), and Lion Feuchtwanger (''Proud Destiny"). Feuchtwanger had
been on the Nazi’s most wanted list.
The Sharps made it possible for almost 2,000 stranded refugees, many of
them Jews, to survive. In addition to the rescues of intellectuals, Martha
Sharp toured refugee camps and established a vital milk-distribution network
in southern France for starving children and she personally arranged for the
escape of 27 children, including 9 who were Jewish.
After the war, the Sharps traveled abroad on international relief missions,
raising money and awareness for the Unitarian Service Committee and other
organizations. On October 19, 2005, Yad Vashem conferred posthumously
upon Martha Sharp and Waitstill Sharp the title Righteous Among the
Nations. (based on the ADL website and a Boston Globe article by Joseph
P. Kahn)
Magda and Andrew Trocme and the Villagers of Chambon, France
During the Holocaust, Magda and Andrew Trocme led a small French village’s
rescue of Jews. Through word of mouth, the community became a place of
shelter for 5,000 refugees, mostly Jews during WWII. There were also
Spanish refugees from Franco’s regime there. Sheltering mainly children at
first, the Chambon villagers turned no one away.
Showing incredible courage and Christian principles, the night her husband
was arrested by Vichy police, Mrs. Trocme served dinner to the officers. Her
husband was later released.
Her family was dedicated to fighting injustice. Her Russian ancestors had
advocated rights of peasants under the czar and her Italian great grandfather
was jailed for protesting the government’s treatment of the poor. The entire
village was honored at the Yad Vashem. Born in 1902, Magda Trocme died
in 1996. (based on an Associated Press article)
For more information see the book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed by Philip
Hallie and the 1990 documentary “Weapons of the Spirit” by Pierre
Sauvage.
Count Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli
Count Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli, an Italian aristocrat, was best known as
an accomplished archaeologist and historian. Before the war, he published
several works on ancient Roman and Roman and Greek art. At the time, he
was one of Italy’s most famous art historians. As such, it was he who was
selected by Mussolini to show Hitler around Rome. Despite this “honor,”
Count Bandinelli was an ardent anti-fascist.
The Count and his wife lived at the family estate during the war, hiding
several Jewish and anti-fascist friends. At the end of the war as the Germans
were withdrawing, the Nazis had planned to blow up the villa. The count
convinced the German officer that Goethe had stayed at the villa, and the
Germans abandoned the plan as a “sacrilege” against Aryan culture. The
villa and those it sheltered survived. (based on an Architectural Digest article)
Max Schmelling
Though at one time the pride and joy of Hitler, Max Schmelling is well
remembered for his boxing victory and even more stunning loss in his boxing
rematch with America’s Joe Louis. However, Schmelling should also be
remembered for his other actions. During the Holocaust, Schmelling actually
protected and hid Jewish friends in his home during the war. Schmelling was
quite a contraction in expectations. Though Hitler once had boasted of him
being a symbol of Aryan pride, Schmelling rejected Nazi policies of white
supremacy. He protected Jews and ultimately became lifelong friends with Joe
Louis.
Per Anger
In late 1942, Sweden posted its diplomat Per Anger to the Swedish embassy
in Hungary. It was a-decision that would change history. During WWII,
Sweden was officially neutral and Hungary was an ally of Germany and had
declared war on the Soviet Union. Hungary had enacted anti-Semitic laws at
German behest but Hungary's government did not enforce those acts,
however.
Then in March 1944, Germany invaded. Adolf Eichmann arrived in Budapest
shortly afterwards and started to organize the murders of Hungary’s one
million Jews. The danger was clear and present, but Anger’s response was
swift and certain. Anger began issuing a schutzpass, a temporary, protective
pass to any Jew arriving at the Swedish legation. The passes identified the
bearers as Swedish citizens. Anger also requested help from Stockholm.
Among the Swedish reinforcements to arrive in Budapest in July 1944 was
Raoul Wallenberg. History credits the two men saving more than 100,000
lives.
Anger and Wallenberg reached agreement with the Hungarian government,
which still had some power, to honor their "passes." They even bluffed
German authorities, who knew that Berlin valued Sweden's trade and
neutrality, into tolerating many of their actions. They set up safe houses,
disguised as Swedish libraries and research offices. During the occupation,
Anger bluffed his way aboard a train with a load of Jews headed for a Polish
death camp, saying there were Swedish citizens aboard and warning SS
guards "not to interfere in official Swedish business." While "searching" the
train, he, with the help of a Hungarian policeman, handed out passes
enabling more than 150 people to leave the train.
Towards the end of the war and after Allied bombers had destroyed the
Hungarian rails, the SS organized a death march of Jews toward Germany.
Wallenberg and Anger managed to accompany the march in a car with
diplomatic plates, pulling Jews from the line with sudden passes and offering
food and drink to others fighting exhaustion and instant execution. In addition
to the Swedes, Hungary's Jews also received aid from Swiss and Spanish
diplomats and the papal nuncio. During Nazi Germany's final days, Anger
convinced Nazi officials in Budapest that it would be unwise to continue the
final solution and the killings stopped.
After the war, Anger devoted much of the rest of his life to trying to get
information about Rauol Wallenberg from Soviet authorities and organizing
pressure for his release. After the war, he continued in the diplomatic
service. He was serving in Vienna in 1956 during the bloody Hungarian
uprising against the Soviet Union. As before, he issued passes to help
Hungarian freedom fighters escape across the Austrian border some of whom
were the same people he had saved during WWII. In 1982, Anger was named
by Yad Vashem as "Righteous Among Nations." In 1995, he was awarded
Hungary's Order of Merit. He died in 2002.
Based on an article by Richard Pearson in the Washington Post, September
2, 2002. For more information, see A Quiet Courage -- Per Anger,
Wallenberg's Co-Liberator of Hungarian Jews by Elisabeth R Skoglund
(Baker Books, 1997).
Survivors
Tibor “Ted” Rubin
Just a teenager, Hungarian Jew Tibor Rubin was a prisoner for 14 months in
a German concentration camp before the camp was liberated. He was his
family’s sole survivor of the Holocaust and Rubin emigrated to the United
States after the war. Five years later, he volunteered for the Army during the
Korean War. During the war, he was captured by North Korean and became
a prisoner of war (POW) for 30 months. During his brutal capture, Rubin
would steal food from guards and make soup out of grass for him and his
fellow POWs. Rubin would boil snow in a helmet to clean bandages and tend
wounds of soldiers. One former POW recalled that Rubin foraged for
maggots to suck the infection out of a badly infected wound. Rubin credited
the survival skills he was forced to learn during the Holocaust to help him and
his fellow POWs survive the Korean POW camp.
Before his capture by the Koreans, Rubin single handedly held off a North
Korean advance by scrambling from foxhole to foxhole wildly firing weapons
and throwing hand grenades to make the advancing troops think they were
facing a large number of soldiers. He was nominated for the Medal of Honor
but the paperwork was not completed. His commander was killed before the
nomination would be submitted and the company’s first sergeant was anti-
Semitic and allegedly threw away the paperwork. Former comrades, crediting
their lives to Rubin, started a campaign some 20 years ago to have the Medal
of Honor awarded. In September 2005, Rubin was finally awarded the Medal
of Honor. (based on an U.S. News and World Report article by Julian E.
Barnes)
Heinz Berggruen
Heinz Berggruen fled his native Berlin in 1936. He went on to study at the
University of California, Berkley and later worked as an art critic. When the U.
S. entered the war, Berggruen volunteered for the army and served in
Europe.
Later after the war, a job with the U.S. UNESCO delegation took him to Paris
where he stayed an opened an art gallery in 1947. Two years later, his
business took off when he met Pablo Picasso. A close friendship and
business relationship developed between them. Upon retiring from art
dealing in 1980, Berggruen became an avid collector.
Later in an act of forgiving benevolence and perhaps defiant retribution,
Berggruen sold a large collection of modern art to the State Museums of
Berlin for $12 million, a fraction of their market value. Berggruen relished the
opportunity to have works by artists that Hitler had labeled as ‘degenerate’
housed in the Berlin Museums. He died in February 2007 at age 93. (based
on article by Stephanie Cash and David Ebony in Art in America magazine,
April 2007)
In Memoriam
In late 2007, the world lost Raul Hilberg. He is credited with being the founder
of Holocaust studies. His book, The Destruction of the European Jews,
(1961) uncovered the fact that the Holocaust was attributable to both the will
of a mad man but also to the willingness of German officials and the common
man to permit the Holocaust.
On the Net:
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, http://www.ushmm.org
Yahad-In Unum, http://www.yahadinunum.org/index.en.html
French Holocaust Memorial, http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/
