The Righteous Among Nations The Righteous
In all countries occupied by the Nazis, there were those individual non-Jewish people who were prepared to risk their lives to rescue Jews from persecution and death. They were the exceptions to the rule. Because of their valiant and heroic efforts, thousands of Jews were rescued from the clutches of the Nazis.
Non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust, often at great personal risk, are honoured by Yad Vashem as the "Righteous Among The Nations". By saving Jews and others, these people proved that rescue was possible and by so doing they enhanced the dignity of humanity. More than 17,000 such people have been honoured. Only a few live in Australia. At each Exhibition we endeavour to have at least one Righteous Among the Nations to be present.
Lyndia & Johannes Huygens
Just opposite SS headquarters in Utrecht in Holland, 5 Jews were hiding. Hyman and Miep Degens with their 12-year-old daughter, Lenie, occupied one room, and, later, Miep’s sister Beppie Dresden and her husband, Barend, occupied the other......Click for more info:Huygens |
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Adrianus and Bertha van As
Adrianus has always fought injustice. When he saw the Nazi persecution of Jews in Holland, he and his wife, Bertha, immediately joined the underground.....Click for more info:Vanas |
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Maria Prow
In the small town of Otinya in Poland – now Ukraine – Maria Sulikowska, a young deserted wife with an infant daughter, was a tenant in the Prow household. After the Nazis came she moved to a small room in another house nearby......Click for more info:Prow
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Oskar Schindler
A gambler, shameless womaniser, black-marketeer and a Nazi to boot! Oskar Schindler was all of these. Yet by the end of the war, he had spent his last cent and risked his own life to save the lives of 1,200 Polish Jews! Schindler followed the Nazis into Krakow, Poland in 1939 with big profits on his mind. Buttering up local Gestapo with women, money and alcohol, he soon acquired a Jewish-owned factory, staffed by the cheapest of all labour – Jews! Yet he always ensured that they were fed and not beaten.
Raoul Wallenberg
Save Hungarian Jews! This was Wallenberg’s mission. In 1944, the young Swedish diplomat was sent to Budapest by the American government to achieve this end. Immediately, he set about his mission using two techniques. Firstly, he designed impressive passports, decorated with the official seal of Sweden, stating that the bearer was under Swedish government protection..... Click for more info:Wallenberg
Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara
On the morning of 27 July 1940, Chiune Sugihara looked out of the consulate windows in Kaunus (Kovno) in Lithuania, to see some 200 Jewish refugees from Poland outside the gate. Each day the numbers grew. They came to beg Sugihara for transit visas to escape Poland and travel across the Soviet Union to Japan..... Click for more info:Sempo Sugihara
Fedor Baranenko
Since his childhood in the Ukraine, Fedor Baranenko has combined deep religious commitment with genuine compassion for his fellow man.
The De Vries Family
The entire de Vries family – parents, children and grandchildren – had the courage to care. In the small town of Alkmaar in Holland, they were responsible for saving more than a dozen Jews.
Betty And Charles Niesten
Charles Niesten quickly joined the Dutch Underground when the Nazis invaded Holland. He had seen his best friend and his family perish because they refused to allow their Dutch friends to put themselves at risk by hiding them. This made him more determined to help Jews escape.
The Meboer Family
For Hendrika Stap, Perth is very far from Appeldoorn in Holland and the Holocaust! But from 1941 – 45, her life in Perth was just as unthinkable. During those difficult times, Hendrika, her parents, Gerrit and Johanna Meboer, and her 3 brothers, Gerrit, Nuy and Bertus, daily risked their lives hiding Mrs Cohen and her 2 children, Nancy and Tony.
How Righteous Among the Nations are selected
In 1953 the Knesset passed the Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority Law, which created the authority called Yad Vashem. The Remembrance Authority (Yad Vashem) was given the task of seeking out non-Jews who had risked their lives during the period of the Holocaust. These non-Jews did this in order to save persecuted Jews in the countries that had been under Nazi rule or had collaborated with the German regime.
We have put a new section about the Righteous on the Yad Vashem website. http://www1.yadvashem.org/righteous/index_righteous.html
The site has an extended experiential part with rescue stories (also arranged by country and topic) with by photos and testimonies from our files. There is also information about the Righteous, about the program and its history (including guidelines how to apply for the title, information about commemorative sites at Yad Vashem with virtual tours of the Avenue and the Garden of the Righteous); Frequently Asked Questions; a virtual wall of honor with the names of all the Righteous Among the Nations recognized by Yad Vashem since 1963; a selection of articles; and statistics.