19505_HMD_Cover:Layout 1 - Holocaust Education Trust Ireland

Righteous Among the Nations
Holocaust Memorial Day 2013
Individuals, groups of people, Arabs and Muslims,
diplomats, businessmen, who saved Jews
during the Holocaust
Magda and André Trocmé
of Le Chambon sur Lignon,
France the Huguenot village
that hid Jews
Irena Sendler saved 2,500
Jewish children in the Warsaw
ghetto
Miep Gies, Amsterdam,
looked after Anne Frank and
her family
Khaled Abdelwahhab, one of
many Arabs who saved Jews
Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty,
from Co Kerry, was a member
of the Vatican Diplomatic Service
and worked in the Vatican Holy Office
from 1938. The Vatican remained an independent
state during the war and did
not come under Nazi control. In 1942
Monsignor O’Flaherty started smuggling
Jewish and non-Jewish refugees to safety Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty
through a network of tunnels and safe
houses. His organisation is estimated to have saved approximately
6,500 people.
Mary Elmes, an Irishwoman
from Cork and a scholar of
Trinity College Dublin found
herself in Vichy, France during the war.
Having worked with the Quakers during
the Spanish Civil War, Mary joined hundreds
of refugees who fled over the Pyrenees
into France in 1939. When France Mary Elmes
fell in 1940 thousands of Jews fled south
and were incarcerated in the Rivesaltes Transit camp whence they
were deported to Auschwitz and other Nazi camps in 1942. Mary
and her colleagues organized ‘children’s colonies’ and succeeded in
saving a great number of Jewish children from the Nazis.
Oskar Schindler, German industrialist,
who saved some
12,000 Jews in Krakow
Raoul Wallenberg, Swedish
diplomat in Hungary, saved
thousands of Hungarian Jews
But we have not forgotten…and we have not
forgotten those who stood beside us and risked their
lives to save Jews.
Abraham Foxman ADL Bnei Brith
In 1953 the State of Israel
established Yad
Vashem, the Holocaust
Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance
Authority, in
order to document and
record the history of the
Jewish people during the
Holocaust. Yad Vashem
inaugurated the award
Righteous Among the Nations
in 1963 to honour
non-Jews who saved Jews
during the Second World
War. Over 24,500 people
from 44 different countries
have received the award. There are countless others who
have never received any recognition, and many more who
were killed by the Germans for assisting Jews.
The Righteous come from all levels of society, from
different backgrounds, ages, religions and ethnic groups.
They are individuals such as simple villagers in occupied
countries, families, groups of friends or members of organised
efforts such as the Dutch Resistance, the village of Le
Chambon sur Lignon in France, or Zegota (the Council for
Aid to Jews) in Poland. They include well known efforts,
such as that of businessman Oskar Schindler, and assistance
by diplomats such as the Swedish consul Raoul Wallenberg
in Hungary or the Japanese official Sempo Sugihara in
Lithuania. Many Jews who survived the Holocaust owe their
survival to Righteous Among the Nations.
The Righteous refute the notion that there was
no alternative to passive complicity with the
enemy. The farmers, priests, nuns and soldiers,
believers and non-believers, the old and the
young from every background in every land
made the impossible possible. Their altruism
calls us to understand the different choices that
individuals make and to commit to challenging
every example of intolerance that we witness.
The challenge of our time is not whether to remember
but what to remember and how to
transmit our memory to our children and our
children’s children.
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