The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

by Martin Gilbert
The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

by Martin Gilbert

Paperback(First Edition)

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Overview

With The Righteous, an eminent historian presents the unsung heroes of the Holocaust.

Drawing from twenty-five years of original research, Sir Martin Gilbert re-creates the remarkable stories of non-Jews who risked their lives to help Jews during the Holocaust.

According to Jewish tradition, "Whoever saves one life, it is as if he saved the entire world." Non-Jews who helped save Jewish lives during World War II are designated Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust archive in Jerusalem. In The Righteous, distinguished historian Sir Martin Gilbert, through extensive interviews, explores the courage of those who-throughout Germany and in every occupied country from Norway to Greece, from the Atlantic to the Baltic-took incredible risks to help Jews whose fate would have been sealed without them. Indeed, many lost their lives for their efforts.

Those who hid Jews included priests, nurses, teachers, neighbors and friends, employees and colleagues, soldiers and diplomats, and, above all, ordinary citizens. From Greek Orthodox Princess Alice of Greece, who hid Jews in her home in Athens, to the Ukrainian Uniate Archbishop of Lvov, who hid hundreds of Jews in his churches and monasteries, to Muslims in Bosnia and Albania, many risked, and lost, everything to help their fellow man.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780805062618
Publisher: Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 02/01/2004
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 592
Sales rank: 529,754
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.32(d)

About the Author

Martin Gilbert is the author of eight books on Holocaust themes, a subject on which he has been writing for forty years. In 1995 he was knighted "for services to British history and international relations."

Read an Excerpt

From The Righteous:

"What were the motives of those who tried to save Jews from deportation and death?" This question is raised with every account of rescue, as the reader, like the historian, wonders whether they would have behaved in such a courageous manner. First and foremost, the Righteous of this book chose to act; theirs was a deliberate decision to behave in a civilized, humane manner, rather than to do nothing, or to refuse to be involved, or to take the route of barbarism.

In the circumstances of a combination of Nazi rule, SS power and Gestapo terror, inaction motivated by fear cannot be belittled. Those who turned against the tide of terror were all the more remarkable. "We did what we had to do"; "Anyone would have done the same"-the words of many rescuers mask the courageousness of the course they chose, knowing it to be full of danger, often the danger of execution of their families as well as themselves. Yet these were not foolhardy, rash or intemperate people; most of them made their choice calmly, deliberately and with full realization of the risks, risks that they faced, and took, for months and even years.

Table of Contents

List of Mapsxiii
Prefacexv
Acknowledgementsxxiii
1.Rescue in the East1
2.Eastern Galicia34
3.Vilna75
4.Lithuania84
5.Poland: The General-Government101
6.Warsaw128
7.Western Galicia165
8.Germany and Austria181
9.Germans beyond Germany198
10.Central Europe and the Balkans230
11.Norway, Finland and Denmark250
12.France260
13.Belgium and Luxembourg294
14.Holland320
15.Italy and the Vatican356
16.Hungary381
17.In the Camps and on the Death Marches406
Afterword433
Maps of Places Mentioned in the Text445
Bibliography463
Illustration Credits479
Index481
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