As each participant enters the cattle car, they will be given a card that resembles a student card. The student card will consist of an individual, a couple or in one case, a country that risked everything to save the lives of the Jewish people.
Once given the student card, each participant will scan the QR code on the card that will lead them to a page that tells them detailed information about their card and who is on it.
Throughout the Holocaust there were many people who were not Jewish who risked their occupations and lives to save the lives of many Jewish people. These individuals are commonly referred to as the Righteous Among the Nations. They were ordinary people who wanted to help. They came in big and small acts. Their stories show how an act of kindness and bravery can go a long way. This is the story of Nicholas Winton.
Nicholas Winton was born on May 19, 1909 in England. He was a stockbroker by profession, but became a hero to hundreds of children at the start of World War II.
In December 1938, Winton travelled to Czechoslovakia. There, he witnessed many refugee camps that were filled with Jews trying to escape the Nazis and was alarmed by what he saw and the violence increasing around him. Winton decided he would start a mission to save Jewish children from the hands of the Nazis and bring them to Great Britain.
This was not a simple operation. He quickly received thousands of applications from parents trying to save their children. He first worked out of his hotel room and then from an office where lineups formed outside. He had to raise enough money to
transport the children and find families in Great Britain that were willing to take the children in once they arrived.
The very first transport of children to safety left Prague on March 14th, 1939, the day before the Germans invaded Czech territory. The children travelled by plane to Great Britain. After this mission, Winton conducted seven more transports that departed by train from Prague and across Germany to the Atlantic Coast, then by boat across the English Channel to Great Britain. The last train of children left Prague on August 2, 1939, less than a month before Britain declared war in Germany, at which point his operations were forced to stop.
When the children arrived in London, they were greeted by their British foster parents. Though the total number of children saved my Winton’s missions is ucertain, it is estimated that he rescued 669 children in a span of five months.
For 50 years, Winton did not tell anyone about his rescue mission- even his own wife. It was not until 1988 when Gete, his wife, found a scrapbook filled with all the children’s names and photos that he kept, did the world find out about this ordinary man who did an extraordinary thing.
Watch this inspiring clip from the BBC where the children Nicholas Winton is reunited with the children he saved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFuJAF5F0
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Throughout the Holocaust there were many people who were not Jewish who risked their occupations and lives to save the lives of many Jewish people. These individuals are commonly referred to as the Righteous Among the Nations. They were ordinary people who wanted to help. They came in big and small acts. Their stories show how an act of kindness and bravery can go a long way. This is the story of Captain Francis (Frank) Foley.
Captain Francis (Frank) Foley was born in 1884, and was a veteran of World War I. After WWI, Captain Foley was recruited to the British Secret Intelligence Service and became one of Britain’s most successful spies.
From 1922-1939 he was stationed in Berlin as a Passport Control Officer. He used his role at the embassy to save thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps. In those days, immigration rules were very strict, and as hatred and discrimination continued to rise, it became more evident that there was a desperate need for the Jewish people to leave Germany.
Captain Foley risked his career and life to defy the Foreign Office and bent the rules to issue 10,000 visas for British Mandatory Palestine (the region was under British control at the time) His rescuing efforts persisted and by time Kristallnacht occurred in November 1938, Captain Foley and his wife were even sheltering Jewish individuals overnight in their apartment.
Foley and his wife left Germany when the war started. Even then, his efforts to save did not stop. He left behind in Germany, a mass amount of pre-approved visas, with instructions attached that the visas should be given to those trying to escape Nazi terror.
Captain Foley passed away in 1958. Michael Smith, A Daily Telegraph journalist wrote a book, Foley, the Spy who saved 10,000 Jews (1999) to bring his story to light. Yad Vashem recognized Francis Foley as Righteous Among the Nations on February 25, 1999 and planted a tree in his honour.
Source: Yad Vashem
Throughout the Holocaust there were many people who were not Jewish who risked their occupations and lives to save the lives of many Jewish people. These individuals are commonly referred to as the Righteous Among the Nations. They were ordinary people who wanted to help. They came in big and small acts. Their stories show how an act of kindness and bravery can go a long way. This is the story of Miep Gies and Jan Augustus.
Miep Gies, was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1909. Miep originally came to the Netherlands after World War I as a child suffering from undernourishment and poor health. She was fostered by a family in Amsterdam and remained there. In 1941 Miep married her boyfriend Jan Gies and became a Dutch citizen.
In 1933, Miep started working at a company owned by a Jewish man named Otto Frank. In the spring of 1942 as the situation in Europe became extremely dangerous for Jews, Otto Frank and his family, including his daughter, young Anne Frank went into hiding in the secret annex of his business concealed behind a bookcase.
Miep was one of the only ones that knew of their location and it was up to her to keep them alive while ensure that it remained a secret. For 2 years she completed all tasks for them, including delivering food to their hiding place. Jan, her husband, also actively assisted. He secretly visited the annex each day after lunch, report the latest news, and even bring books for the Jews in hiding.
When the Nazis discovered the secret annex on August 4th, 1944, Miep further put herself at risk by trying to offer them money to release the 8 Jewish people. Unfortunately, despite Miep’s many efforts, the mission was unsuccessful and the family was deported to the concentration camps.
Miep was absolutely devasted. Even though entering the hiding place was now forbidden she secretly went in and collected Anne Frank’s diaries and gathered the many loose pages spread all throughout the annex. Miep stored the pages in her desk until after the war. She was someone who did not give up trying to help people in need.
Of all the people in hiding, only Otto Frank, Anne’s father survived the war. Miep found Otto after the war and gave him Anne’s diary entries; she said to Otto, “This is the legacy of your daughter.” (Yad Vashem). This is how the Diary of Anne Frank was created.
On March 8, 1972, Yad Vashem recognized Jan Augustus Gies and his wife, Hermine (Miep) Gies-Santrouschitz, as Righteous Among the Nations.
Source: Yad Vashem
Throughout the Holocaust there were many people who were not Jewish who risked their occupations and lives to save the lives of many Jewish people. These individuals are commonly referred to as the Righteous Among the Nations. They were ordinary people who wanted to help. They came in big and small acts. Their stories show how an act of kindness and bravery can go a long way. This story is unique though. It is not just about one person, it is the story of an entire country, Denmark.
Denmark was the only occupied country that actively resisted the Nazi regime’s plan to deport the Jews living there. The Danes took great measures to save their Jewish citizens.
On September 28, 1943, a German diplomat stationed in Demark, named Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, secretly informed the Danish resistance that the Nazis were planning to deport all the Danish Jews. Action was quickly taken by the regular Danish people. They organized a spontaneous nationwide plan to save every Jewish citizen by smuggling them by sea to Sweden, which was neutral territory.
Immediately, Danish citizens began hiding Jews in homes, hospitals and churches and within a few weeks, ordinary fishermen ferried about 7,200 Jews and 680 non-Jewish family members across the water to Sweden.
All but 500 Jews were ferried to safety in three weeks. 500 Danish Jews were arrested and deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Even at this point Danish officials continued to pressure the Germans to ensure the wellbeing of their citizens that had been deported. After much negotiation, all but 51 of the deported, were handed off to the Swedish Red Cross and saved. With the help of Sweden, the Danish rescue efforts saved their Jewish population. This is an example of how a country of ordinary people doing little things came together to ensure the safety of their people.
Source: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/rescue-in-denmark)
Throughout the Holocaust there were many people who were not Jewish who risked their occupations and lives to save the lives of many Jewish people. These individuals are commonly referred to as the Righteous Among the Nations. They were ordinary people who wanted to help. They came in big and small acts. Their stories show how an act of kindness and bravery can go a long way. This is the story of Jan and Antonina Zabinski.
The Warsaw Zoo had become one of Europe’s largest zoos by the 1930’s. Sadly, when World War II broke out, much of the zoo was destroyed. Dr. Jan Zabinski was the director of the zoo. He was also an author to many books about biology and psychology of animals, as well a producer of radio-shows.
Although he himself, was facing enormous problems due to wartime and the destruction of his zoo, he was not blind to the suffering of the Jewish people. Jan and his wife began helping their Jewish friends who were relocated to the Warsaw ghetto.
Due to the fact that he was an employee of the Warsaw municipality he had special permission to enter the ghetto. Under the pretext of tending to the trees and small public garden within the enclosed ghetto, he was allowed inside and used this opportunity to assist in any ways he could. As the situation in the ghetto continued to get worse, he offered them shelter.
Jan and his wife, Antonina, did all they could to help save their Jewish friends and strangers, managing to figure out how to get them out of the ghetto to the Aryan side, providing them with personal documents and locating accommodations for them. They even hid them at their villa or on the zoo’s grounds. Many Jews found temporary shelter in the zoo’s abandoned animal cells and about a dozen were held in their private home.
Their son also helped by supplying food and looking after the needs of those in hiding. Jan was a member of the Polish underground Armia Krakow (Home Army) and upon its defeat he was taken as a prisoner to Germany. Even without Jan by her side, his wife continued to help the Jewish people in the city. The Zabinskis were regular people dedicated to human ideals. They realized that all hateful presumptions present in society were untrue and committed to doing something about it.
On September 21, 1965, Yad Vashem recognized Jan Zabinski and his wife, Antonina Zabinska, as Righteous Among the Nations. On October 30, 1968 Dr. Jan Zabinski planted a tree on the Mount of Remembrance.
Source: Yad Vashem
Throughout the Holocaust there were many people who were not Jewish who risked their occupations and lives to save the lives of many Jewish people. These individuals are commonly referred to as the Righteous Among the Nations. They were ordinary people who wanted to help. They came in big and small acts. Their stories show how an act of kindness and bravery can go a long way. This is the story of Raoul Wallenberg.
Raoul Wallenberg was born on August 4, 1912, in Stockholm, Sweden. He studied in the United States in the 1930s and created a business career in Sweden. In June 1944 Wallenberg was recruited by the US War Refugee Board (WRB) to travel to Hungary. It was his task was to do all he could to help and save the Jews in Hungary.
He arrived in Budapest, Hungary on July 9th, 1944 as the first secretary to the Swedish legation in Hungary. With the permission of the Swedish government, Wallenberg began distributing certificates of protection to Jews in Budapest. He also used funds from WRB and Sweden to create hospitals, nurseries and a soup kitchen, and established more than 30 “safe” houses that formed the "international ghetto" in Budapest. The international ghetto was for Jews and their families who held certificates of protection from a neutral country.
While deportations continued daily, Wallenberg took a stand and continuously intervened to ensure the release of those who held the certificates of protection or forged papers. He wanted to save as many people as he could.
Raoul Wallenberg’s efforts and dedication saved an estimate of 100,000 Jews. His work with the WRB prevented thousands of Hungarian Jews from being deported. Raoul Wallenberg led one of the most extensive and successful rescue missions during the Holocaust.
Raoul Wallenberg disappeared after the war when he was detained by Soviet forces. We are not sure what happened to this ordinary man who accomplished an extraordinary feat.
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC