Rescuers
Subtitle: portraits of moral courage in the Holocaust
By: Gay Block and Malka Drucker ; prologue by Cynthia Ozick ; afterword by Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis.
Contributors: Drucker, Malka.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Holmes & Meier
Published: 1992
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Trade Paperback
Number of pages: 255
Subjects: Righteous Gentiles in the Holocaust -- Biography.; World War, 1939-1945 -- Jews -- Rescue.
Description: Who are the rescuers, the men and women whose gripping personal narratives make up the core of this remarkable book? Why did they risk everything - their livelihoods, their homes, their lives, and even those of their families - to save Jews marked for death during the Holocaust? Are they ordinary people, as they themselves claim, or truly heroic? Malka Drucker and Gay Block spent three years visiting 105 rescuers from ten countries. Their psychologically revealing interviews and photographs speak directly to us in powerful words and images. Block's full-page color portraits accompany each narrative, inviting us to look at these men and women as they are today, people whose faces resemble our own. Would we act as they did? In their own words, forty-nine of the rescuers present a vivid picture of their lives before, during, and after the war as they grapple with the question of why they acted with humanity in a time of barbarism and whether they would do it again.

Their stories - infused with the deep memory that engages a terrible past - are unforgettable. Louisa Steenstra relives the Nazis' murder of her husband and of the Jews they were hiding in their attic in the Netherlands; Antonin Kalina of Czechoslovakia relates how he deceived the SS to save 1,300 children in Buchenwald. Others recall how they smuggled Jews out of the ghettos; worked in resistance movements; forged passports and baptismal certificates; hid Jews in cellars, barns, and behind false walls; shared their meager food rations; secretly disposed of waste; and raised Jewish children as their own. A landmark volume that includes maps, historic photographs from family collections, and a comprehensive introduction by Malka Drucker, Rescuers makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust, of the complex factors that made some people refuse the role of passive bystander, and of the profound psychological and ethical issues that still perplex us.

When asked about the prospects for acts of moral courage today, rescuer Liliane Gaffney told the authors: "It's very difficult for a generation raised looking out for Number One to understand it. This is something totally unknown here. But there, if you didn't live for others as well as yourself it wasn't worth living." For Jan Karski, however, the legacy of the rescuers is one of affirmation: "Do not lose hope in humanity." In the end, what is perhaps most striking about the rescuers is their modesty and simple humanness; yet, as Cynthia Ozick concludes in the Prologue, "It is from these undeniably heroic and principled few that we can learn the full resonance of civilization."
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 253).
Table of contents: title: The Netherlands. Johannes DeVries 22 -- Arie van Mansum -- Marion P. van Binsbergen Pritchard -- Bert Bochove -- Marguerite Mulder -- John Weidner -- Louisa Steenstra -- Arnold Douwes and Seine Otten -- Pieter and Joyce Miedema -- Semmy Riekerk -- Aart and Johtje Vos -- Tina Strobos -- Belgium. Germaine Belinne and Liliane Gaffney -- Esta Heiber -- Andrée Geulen Herscovici -- Marie Taquet -- France. Marc Donadille -- Emilie Guth and Ermine Orsi -- Ivan Beltrami -- Marie-Rose Gineste -- Germany. Gitta Bauer 136 -- Fritz Heine -- Gertrud Luckner -- Helene Jacobs -- Maria Countess von Maltzan -- Poland. Zofia Baniecka -- Gertruda Babilinska -- Jan Karski -- Agnieszka Budna- Widerschal -- Stefania Podgorska Burzminski -- Alex and Mela Roslan -- Irene Gut Opdyke -- Stefan Raczynski -- Czechoslovakia. Antonin Kalina -- Libuse Fries -- Hungary. Malka Csizmadia -- Gustav Mikulai -- Yugoslavia. Ivan Vranetic  -- Bulgaria. Mihael Michaelov -- Soviet Union / Ukraine. Jean Kowalyk Berger -- Orest Zahajkewycz and Helena Melnyczuk -- Amfian Gerasimov -- Faces : an afterword / Rabbi Harold M. Schuiweis -- Appendix : Righteous among the nations by country and ethnic origin.