Saving the Jews

November 15, 2000
Presented here are 47 accounts of Gentiles who saved Jews during the Holocaust, nonJews who have been honored by Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial as Righteous Gentiles. Paldiel, director of the Righteous Among the Nations program at Yad Vashem, was rescued (along with his family) by a French priest during the Holocaust; the priest helped them escape from France into Switzerland. Of the 70 people Paldiel chronicles (some accounts involve more than one person, and one story concerns 10 British POWs), Varian Fry is the only recognized hero. Fry, an American, saved thousands of Jews in France by providing them with escape routes and visas and passports--some valid, some false. Among the other men and women documented are a Lithuanian carpenter who hid 12 Jews (and was assassinated by a fellow Lithuanian in 1952), and a Turkish consul general in Rhodes who saved 50 Jews by declaring them to be Turks. This is a perceptive and moving account of little-known individuals who risked their lives and the lives of their loved ones.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)