Rescue Of Jews Research Articles

In the Shadow of Babyn Yar: Anatoly Kuznetsov’s Eyewitness Account of the Betrayal and Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust in Kyiv

Abstract The article explores the motivation for betrayal and rescue of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Kyiv. Unfortunately, significantly more gentiles betrayed Jews during the occupation of the city than rescued them. The motivations for betrayal varied: traditional anti-Semitism reinforced by Nazi propaganda, some gentiles desired to enrich themselves on the account of Jewish property, to occupy Jewish apartments and to demonstrate their loyalty to the Nazis. Betrayal of Jews was encouraged and rewarded by the Nazis, while rescue of Jews put under mortal risk the gentiles who helped them. Only a few hundred Jews survived in Kyiv during the occupation. Some of them lived under bogus identities, which listed their nationality as Russians or Ukrainians. Others were hidden by their friends, neighbors and gentile spouses. In several cases Jewish children were adopted by gentile families. The article is based on scholarly and memoir literature, and archival materials. Anatoly Kuznetsov provided the most complete eyewitness account of the Nazi occupation of Kyiv and the Babyn Yar massacre in his book Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel, which is one of the main sources for the article.

Albanian Customary Law, Religion, and the Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust

ABSTRACT Albania was the only German-occupied country in which the number of Jews increased after World War II. Almost all native Jews of Albania survived the Holocaust, and thousands of Jewish refugees from other European countries were assisted and protected during the years 1933–1945. The rescue was facilitated by a unique mixture of factors, but the main common motivation of Muslim, Catholic, and Orthodox rescuers was Besa, the crucial element of Kanun, the Albanian customary law.

“Other Germans”: Exceptions and Rules in the Memory of Rescuing Jews in Postwar Germany

AbstractThe rising German interest in rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust has been accompanied by an emphasis on their exceptionality among the wartime German population. Seen as aberrations, rescuers are used to present a simplified generalization of the German majority’s wartime conduct by defining what it was not. This article argues that this view, as well as the common claim that rescue and rescuers of Jews were “forgotten” in the postwar Germanys, are based on a certain interpretative model concerning the relationship between exception and rule. I trace the different uses of this model and show that from 1945 to the present, many Jewish and non-Jewish Germans employed variously defined exceptions to trace and determine one's preferred image of the majority—as an object of desire or critique. The article presents the different conceptualizations and idealizations of rescue and their functions in imagining a collective self in commemorative and historiographical portrayals of past and current German societies.

Megemlékezés dr. Fónyad Dezsőről az SDG alapításának 100. évfordulója alkalmából

"Commemorating Dr Dezső Fónyad on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Foundation of SDG. Dr Dezső Fónyad (1906–1965) was a Reformed pastor in Monor, publicist, and one of the spiritual leaders of the Soli Deo Gloria Reformed student movement. Between the two world wars, the Soli Deo Gloria student movement (SDG for short) was a major force in the field of faith, church identity, and national education among Reformed university and then secondary school students. In the 1930s, the nationally known youth pastor’s popularity and recognition grew dynamically, but after World War II, amid the internal political turmoil in the country, he was prosecuted on false charges at the People’s Court. During World War II, he and his colleagues in the SDG rescued Jews, and these same colleagues testified for him at his trial by the People’s Court. Keywords: Dezső Fónyad, SDG, history of youth ministry, Hungarian resistance, rescue of Jews "

Bishops in France, Pope Pius XII, and the Rescue of Jews, 1940–1944

Bishops in France, Pope Pius XII, and the Rescue of Jews, 1940–1944

Gréckokatolícka cirkev a Židia v Slovenskej republike v rokoch 1939–1945

The study analyzes the attitude of the Greek Catholic Church towards the Jewish population in the Slovak Republic during 1939–1945. In the authoritarian political regime, this minority church was confronted with the nationalist and racial (anti-Semitic) policies of the state; a fundamentally oppositional attitude towards the regime was interpreted in the form of pastoral letters, or public appearances of its hierarch – Bishop Peter Pavel Gojdič. The study describes specific forms of help from the clergy of the Greek Catholic Church intending to rescue the Jewish population from the repressive measures and deportations of the regime. The most common form of help and rescue of Jews was baptism and the issuing of false letters on baptisms with antedated baptisms. Persecuted Jews also found help by getting presidential exemptions and issuing letters on baptisms, hiding valuables and movable property, saving their real estates from arization, and finally sheltering people from persecution and deportation.

Sara Kadosh, We Think of you as an Angel: Shaul Weingort and the Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust [Agnieszka Haska

Sara Kadosh, We Think of you as an Angel: Shaul Weingort and the Rescue of Jews During the Holocaust [Agnieszka Haska

Travelling Heroes—A Transcultural Re-evaluation of Kurt R. Grossmann’s Unbesungene Helden (1957), an Early Compilation of Rescue Stories

Abstract This article concentrates on the first German-language compilation of ‘rescue stories’, narratives of Jews who survived the Holocaust with the help of non-Jews. While Kurt R. Grossmann’s 1957 book Die unbesungene Helden: Menschen in Deutschlands dunklen Tagen (The Unsung Heroes: Humans in Germany’s Dark Days) has received some scholarly attention, its original sources have not yet been examined. Previous research on the remembrance of the ‘rescue of Jews’ in Germany has tended to read Grossmann’s anthology within a single national—that is, German—context. This article provides a short introduction to Grossmann’s biography and the development history of The Unsung Heroes. It then traces the editorial history of four chapters in the anthology dealing with German cases: ‘Mieze’, ‘The Block Warden and the Eastern-Jewish Tailor’, ‘The Yellow Badge—A Symbol of Protest’ and ‘The Case of Schindler’. The article proposes that in light of its collection of material, its various sources and its production context of formerly German Jews in the United States, the text serves as a superb example of ‘transcultural’ remembrance or ‘travelling memory’.

The rescue of Jews from the Nazi genocide by the inhabitants of Eastern Galicia

The rescue of Jews during the Second World War is one of the least studied issues in the historiography of the Holocaust. The Galicia Region, one of the areas where a total Nazi extermination of Jews occurred, became a region from where a large number of Righteous Among the Nations came – Ukrainians and Poles. The article includes an analysis of the motivations that became the basis for people’s decision to help Jews under the extreme conditions which threatened their lives and the lives of their close ones. It highlights the response of the occupation authorities to rescue actions taken by the non-Jewish population. Despite the unambiguity of the Nazi orders to punish severely those who helped Jews, the real implementation of such sanctions varied. Finally, the article analyses the main determinants (of social, economic, and religious nature) that played an important role in making the decision whether to join the rescue process. The article concludes that no political which could had saved Jews, did lead to any systematic rescue efforts directed at Western Ukrainian Jews, yet the survival of those Jews who were hunter was possible for the deeds of some Polish and Ukrainian people.

Pope Pius XII, the Bishops of France and the Rescue of Jews, 1940–1944

France is one of the countries of occupied Western Europe where the Jewish community best survived the Holocaust. The bishops, religious congregations and the priests there contributed to this situation in great measure. Many bishops remained silent about the roundups of Jews, but they helped to save many Jews in their dioceses. Most of them had been nominated to the episcopacy in the 1920s and 1930s when Eugenio Pacelli was nuncio and influential in the appointment of bishops. These bishops followed the policies of the Vatican which enabled the Church in France to fight Nazism and racism. During World War II, the Vatican sent enormous sums of money to rscue Jews and other fugitives in France. The encyclical of Pope Pius XI Mit brennender Sorge (1937), widely distributed in France, encouraged Catholics to assist Jews and other fugitives. This article offers insights into Vatican policy for the years 1940 through 1945.

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries During the HolocaustRobert Braun

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries During the HolocaustRobert Braun

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust. By Robert Braun. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xxi+278. $99.99 (cloth); $29.99 (paper).

<i>Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust</i>. By Robert Braun. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xxi+278. $99.99 (cloth); $29.99 (paper).

„Nasze” i „odziedziczone” muzea – PiS i Fidesz jako mnemoniczni wojownicy

PiS and Fidesz are mnemonic warriors who tried to enforce their memory politics already during their first government terms – as the analysis of their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum and the House of Terror in Budapest shows. The current illiberal governments treat museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors differently: While PiS changes content at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest ‘only’ lost their directors. Even mnemonic warriors must take international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’ into consideration. Kaczyński and Orbán favored opening new museums rather than changing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, even those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum, the House of Fates in Budapest and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and heroic uplifting messages.

Cardinal Pietro Boetto: A Life of Service to the Society of Jesus, the Catholic Church, and the People of Genoa

Cardinal Pietro Boetto, archbishop of Genoa from 1938 until his death in 1946, was an unusual Jesuit priest in several respects. First, although from humble origins, trained in seminaries other than the most prestigious Jesuit institutions, and not given to complex theological writings, he rose through the ranks of the Society’s administration to attract the notice of Pope Pius xi and be elevated to the cardinalate in 1935. The elevation was in itself highly unusual, given standard Jesuit policy and the expressed reluctance of the order’s Superior General Włodzimierz Ledóchowski at the time. Equally unexpected is the fact that the Jesuit Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi, the pope’s liaison with Mussolini, furnished intriguing background testimony about the elevation itself, which provides new insight into the pope’s policies and modes of operation. Finally, Cardinal Boetto was unusual for the clandestine assistance to Jews and anti-Fascists he provided as archbishop during the German occupation, for the broad range of rescue activities he allowed to his heroic secretary don Francesco Repetto and other priests, and for the wide-spread support networks that resulted throughout Northern and Central Italy. This article tells the story of a competent administrator with immense hidden skills and profound humanity. Sources include the memoirs of Boetto’s aide, Brother Giovanni Battista Weidinger; a biography by his associate Father Arnaldo Lanz; testimony by don Francesco Repetto; documents in the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu in Rome and the Archivio Diocesano di Genoa; and secondary studies by historians interested in the Second World War and the rescue of Jews in Genoa.

‘Our’ vs. ‘Inherited’ Museums. PiS and Fidesz as Mnemonic Warriors

AbstractThe Polish and the Hungarian governing party, PiS and Fidesz, are mnemonic warriors who had already tried to enforce their memory politics during their first government terms, as their flagship museums, the Warsaw Rising Museum, opened in 2004, and the House of Terror in Budapest, opened in 2002, show. In museums they ‘inherited’ from their predecessors, the current governments either change content, as PiS at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, or ‘only’ battle against the directors in office, as happened at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Budapest. Yet even mnemonic warriors cannot ignore international developments like the ‘universalization of the Holocaust’. As the author shows, the Polish and the Hungarian governments favored opening new museums over changing existing museums identified as ‘Jewish’, including those that explicitly deal with Polish and Hungarian complicity. New museums, like the Ulma Family Museum in southeastern Poland, the House of Fates in Budapest, and the Warsaw Ghetto Museum, focus on rescuers of Jews and uplifting messages of Polish and Hungarian heroism.

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries during the Holocaust

Protectors of Pluralism argues that local religious minorities are more likely to save persecuted groups from purification campaigns. Robert Braun utilizes a geo-referenced dataset of Jewish evasion in the Netherlands and Belgium during the Holocaust to assess the minority hypothesis. Spatial statistics and archival work reveal that Protestants were more likely to rescue Jews in Catholic regions of the Low Countries, while Catholics facilitated evasion in Protestant areas. Post-war testimonies and secondary literature demonstrate the importance of minority groups for rescue in other countries during the Holocaust as well as other episodes of mass violence, underlining how the local position of church communities produces networks of assistance, rather than something inherent to any religion itself. This book makes an important contribution to the literature on political violence, social movements, altruism and religion, applying a range of social science methodologies and theories that shed new light on the Holocaust.

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries During the Holocaust. By Robert Braun

Protectors of Pluralism: Religious Minorities and the Rescue of Jews in the Low Countries During the Holocaust. By Robert Braun

Jewish Women Medical Practitioners Who Rescued Fellow Jews during the Holocaust

Rescue of Jews by Jews has only lately begun to emerge as a topic of independent research. Yet Jews in every country in occupied Europe, themselves victims of the German occupation, used various daring means to help Jews survive the Holocaust. Among the Jewish rescuers who operated as individuals, and not as part of an underground rescue operation, the number of medical personnel stands out, and quite a few of them were female physicians, nurses and also women with no professional medical background, who pursued this work under extremely difficult conditions, despite the dearth of resources, the constant threat of exposure to infectious diseases and the lack of any protection. Some of them initiated perilous rescue operations that would have meant certain death had they been discovered. This article is dedicated to the Jewish women rescuers who were part of the medical system in Nazi-occupied Europe.

ПЕРЕЖИТИ ГОЛОКОСТ У СХІДНІЙ ГАЛИЧИНІ: АКЦІЇ ПОРЯТУНКУ ГРЕКО-КАТОЛИЦЬКОЇ ЦЕРКВИ У СВІДЧЕННЯХ РАБИНА ДАВИДА КАГАНЕ ТА КУРТА ЛЕВІНА

Східна Галичина, що входила до складу Другої Речі Посполитої в міжвоєнний період, була приєднана до Радянського Союзу у вересні 1939 р. Розпад Польської держави та подальша німецька окупація Галичини (1941–1944 рр.) спричинили напругу у відносинах між основними етнічними групами регіону – українцями, поляками та євреями.&#x0D; Більшість українців у Східній Галичині належали до Української греко-католицької церкви (УГКЦ), очолюваної митрополитом Андреєм Шептицьким. Намагаючись відвернути антиєврейське насильство, глава УГКЦ звертався до уряду недовговічної Української держави, нацистської влади, греко-католицького духовенства та пастви. Пастирські листи Шептицького «Про милосердя» (червень 1942 р.) та «Не вбий» (листопад 1942 р.) містять непрямі висловлювання проти Голокосту. До того ж щонайменше 200 єврейських чоловіків, жінок і дітей пережили Другу світову війну завдяки ініціативам порятунку митрополита Андрея Шептицького, його брата Климентія Шептицького – настоятеля Унівської лаври, та їхнього оточення. Серед врятованих були представники двох рабинських родин у Львові, а саме доктора Езекіїля Левіна – рабина прогресивної синагоги Львова, та рабина Давида Кагане. Якщо рабин Левін, його дружина та молодший син загинули під час Голокосту, то його два старших сини, Курт і Натан, а також рабин Давид Кагане разом із дружиною та дочкою були врятовані митрополитом Шептицьким та греко-католицькими монахами Студійського уставу.&#x0D; У цій статті розглянуто ініціативи порятунку євреїв з боку представників греко-католицької ієрархії та монахів-студитів крізь призму розповідей врятованих. Дослідження ґрунтується насамперед на «Щоденнику львівського гетто» Давида Кагане, а також на спогадах Курта Левіна, документах із колекції Відділу Праведників народів світу в Яд Вашем у Єрусалимі та інтерв’ю Левіна з Архіву візуальної історії Фонду Шоа Університету Південної Каліфорнії.&#x0D; Метою статті є дослідити ініціативи порятунку братів Шептицьких та монахів-студитів під час німецької окупації Галичини (1941–1944 рр.) через спогади і розповіді в его-документах тих, хто пережив Голокост.&#x0D; Ключові слова: Греко-Католицька Церква, Голокост, порятунок євреїв, митрополит Шептицький, студити, Східна Галичина.