“Marked by our star and by our faith,
Thus our fate has been ennobled.
The One who saved the lives of thousands
is silent…

I shout in his place.”

When came to power in 1933, Adolph Hitler believed that pure German people were a master race and should rule the world. They believed that Slavic, African, Gypsies, and especially Jewish people interfered with the German’s plan. He called his plan “The Final Solution to the Jewish Question”.

Hitler began a campaign to rid all of Europe of Jews. In 1935 he rid German Jews of their German citizenship. By 1938 over 1000 synagogues were burned, Jewish businesses ruined, and 30,000 Jews arrested. Jews all over Europe were in danger of prosecution. Germans took Jews from their homes and moved them into poor sections of the city enclosed by walls that Jews were forced to build themselves, called ghettos. Living conditions in the ghettos were horrible, as there were too many people living in a small area with not enough food. All Jews in ghettos were forced to wear a yellow star to show that they were Jews.

Some people that were against Antisemitism started rescuing Jews that were not in a ghetto and helping others survive or escape from ghettos. By doing this they put themselves and their family in danger. If someone had found out they would be prosecuted immediately. These people are true heroes of the horrible times of the Holocaust. All people that rescued Jews had received the Righteous Among the Nations medal from Israel, and their names are listed on the wall of remembrance in Israel as well.

Denmark was a small, serene country. In 1940 there were about 8,000 Danish Jews living there. The Dutch laws protected Jews from discrimination of any kind. All this changed on April 9, 1940 when the Nazis attacked Denmark.

Denmark didn’t have too many weapons to fight back the Germans therefore it was conquered almost instantly. All Danish Jews were forced to wear the yellow star to show they were Jewish. The Dutch government protested against this vindictive rule. It was against the laws of Denmark to single out a person or group of people.

The king of Denmark commanded to ship all the Jews to safety out of the Nazi’s reach. Fishermen transported about 7,200 Jews in small boats across the sea to safety in Sweden. Denmark had the highest Jewish survival rate in all of Europe and Asia. It was also the only nation that came together as a union to protect its Jewish population.

Nuns saved Jews in the Holocaust as well. About 14,000 Latin-rite nuns attempted to rescue Jews. 55 religious communities led by nuns in Poland also helped Jews. Many nuns hid Jews in hospitals, schools, poorhouses, and other places. Although nuns saved 1,200 Jews in total, several dozen heroic nuns were killed for doing that. Some nuns helped Jews by obtaining false papers and baptismal certificates for Jewish children. After the Holocaust 16 nuns were awarded the Righteous Among the Nations medal from Israel for their heroic deeds.

Paul Gruninger was another hero in the Holocaust that saved many Jews. He was born in a Swiss family in 1891. He played an important role in Switzerland as the commander of police. Gruninger provided about 3,600 Jews with false papers that allowed them to escape from Austria and enter Switzerland. After the Holocaust, he received official honors in Israel. Paul Gruninger died in 1972.

Another hero was Raoul Gustav Wallenberg. He was born on August 4, 1912 in Kappsta, Sweden. He came to the U.S. in 1931 and received a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Michigan in 1935. He studied Russian before returning to Europe or Asia in search of a job. He found work at a bank in Haifa, Palestine. At his job, Wallenberg met and became friends with a Hungarian Jew who was one of the clients at the bank.

Wallenberg was assigned as first secretary to the Swedish legation in Budapest, Hungary, on July 9, 1944. He used his diplomatic status to save many Hungarian Jews during the later stages of World War II by issuing them Swedish “protective passports” (German: Schutz-Pass). Although not legally valid, these documents claimed that the bearers were Swedish subjects awaiting repatriation and were generally accepted by the German and Hungarian authorities, occasionally aided by bribery. He also rented houses for Jewish refugees with embassy funds and put up fake signs such as “The Swedish Library” and “The Swedish Research Institute” on their doors. He housed other refugees in the Swedish legation in Budapest.

He skillfully negotiated with Nazi officials that got them to cancel deportations to German concentration camps. He asked his fascist ally, Pál Szalay, to deliver a note to the Germans in which Wallenberg threatened to have them prosecuted for war crimes.

Wallenberg was later arrested by the Soviet Red Army on January 17, 1945 being accused of being a spy for the United States. As claimed by the Soviet Union, Wallenberg died on July 16, 1947.

Some other heroes were Polish sewer cleaners named Leopold Socha, Stanislaw Wroblewski, and Jerzy Kowalow. They brought food to 20 Jews in the sewers in the city of Lwow, in exchange for money and jewelry. Also they led the Jews to safer places in the sewers. Those cleaners were so generous that once the Jews ran out of money they would give the food for free.

One of the well-known heroes was German born Oskar Schindler. He was born on April 18, 1908. As a teen Schindler joined the Nazi party. He later became a businessman and opened a factory named “Deutsche Emalwarn-Fabrik”. Schindler employed 1,200 Jews to work at this factory. He witnessed many Jews being shipped from a ghetto to a concentration camp and started to take good care of his workers. He would make false requests to the Nazis for additional Jewish work force to save more Jewish workers, although he was paying his own money to produce false ammunition for the German soldiers.

When the advance of the Red Army threatened to liberate the concentration camps, almost all were destroyed and a majority of the inmates murdered by Nazis. Schindler however moved his worker Jews to a safer factory. During the move, some Jews were misrouted but Oskar Schindler managed to retrieve them for a big price.

Oskar Schindler died in Frankfurt, Germany, on 9 October 1974, at the age of 66. He was buried in a Jewish cemetery, despite the fact that he was a Christian German. In 1963, Oskar Schindler was named a Righteous Gentile (non-Jew). He was the third Christian to ever receive this honor.

No one really knows what Schindler’s motives were, including Schindler himself. He was quoted as saying “I knew the people who worked for me…When you know people, you have to behave toward them like human beings.”

Robert Clary was a Jew in the Holocaust. He was born on March 1, 1926 in France. He was one of 14 siblings in his family. Clary became a professional singer at age 12. His family was moved to a concentration camp in 1942. Clary was the only survivor of the 14 members of his immediate family. When he returned, Clary was informed that some of his siblings were not taken to the concentration camp, with whom he was reunited.

Later he returned to entertainment and wrote his own songs. His singing was popular in the U.S. as well as France. Robert Clary came to the U.S. in 1949 and married Natalie Cantor Metzge in 1965. Clary later acted in several WW II films before retiring in 2001. He published an autobiography entitled From the Holocaust to Hogan’s Heroes.

Another Jew of the Holocaust was Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski. He was born in 1877 as a Russian Jew. Rumkowski became an unsuccessful businessman and an orphanage director. Later he became the head of the Jewish Authorities in the Lodz ghetto and provided heat, work, food, housing, health, and welfare to the ghetto population. The Jews in the ghetto appreciated what Rumkowski did so much that their money was named after him as the “Rumkie” and his face was printed on the ghetto’s postage stamps. Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski died in Auschwitz in 1944.

Lisa Fittko was another Jew in the holocaust. She was born in a Jewish family in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1909. Fittko lived through the Nazi occupation of Europe. She worked in the Underground Resistance that helped refugees. Fittko led Jewish refugees to safety in Spain. At age 40, she received international recognition for two widely translated memoirs. Lisa Fittko died in Chicago, Illinois on March 12, 2005.

Anne Frank was a well-known Jew in the Holocaust. Anne’s full name was Annelies Marie Frank. She was a German Jew, born in June 1929. Her family moved to Amsterdam when her father, Otto Frank started a business. When the Germans started to take over Amsterdam, Anne Frank and her family hid in the secret annexe of the 3-story building on July 5, 1942 whose entrance was hidden by a bookcase on a hinge. Otto Frank’s brave employees were helping them.

Ann Frank wrote in her diary (which was an autograph book that she received for her 13th birthday) about how her family lived in hiding. On August 4, 1949 German troops stormed the hideout and take Frank and her family for interrogation in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. Her family had been betrayed. Anne Frank died of typhus on March of 1945 a few weeks before British troops freed the Jews in the concentration camp.

Her father was the only survivor of the family. He returned to their hideaway and found Anne Frank’s diary. Later it was published in different languages in many of the countries in the world.