Rescue Networks

یان کارسکی (Jan Karski)

یان کوزیلوسکی (Kozielewski) در سال 1914 در لودز متولد شد (کارسکی لغب وی در گروه زیرزمینی بود و بعدها تصمیم گرفت که این لغب را به اسم خانودگی خود تبدیل کند). وی تحصیلات خود در رشته جغرافیا را در سال 1935 در دانشگاه لوو (Lwów) به پایان رساند و به عنوان کارمند وزارت امور خارجه لهستان آغاز به کار... Read More Here

يان كارسكي

ولد يان كارسكي عام 1914 في مدينة لوج البولندية لعائلة كوزيلوفسكي (وهو اسمه الحقيقي، علما بأن اسم "كارسكي" اسم حركي قرر فيما بعد تبنيه كاسمه الثاني). في سنة 1935 أنهى دراسته في قسم علم السكان بجامعة لفوف فتوظف في وزارة الخارجية البولندية. وبعد احتلال بولندا في سبتمر أيلول 1939 التحق... Read More Here

Henry Christen and Ellen Margrethe Thomsen

With Fishing Boats to Sweden   Henry Christian Thomsen and his wife Ellen Margrethe were innkeepers in the village of Snekkersten near Elsinore in north Zeeland. An estimated 1,000 people left for Sweden through this point. The Thomsens were active members in the resistance and their inn became the hub of the clandestine route to Sweden. It was the meeting point for the fishermen who transferred Jews in their boats and the fleeing Jews were sheltered in the inn or directed by the Thomsens to... Read More Here

Andree Geulen-Herscovici

Geulen's List   The first time Andrée Geulen, a 20-year-old teacher in a Brussels school, was confronted with the persecution of the Jews was when one day some of her students arrived at school with the compulsory yellow star on their clothes. Like many other Belgians, until that time Geulen hadn't paid attention to the anti-Jewish measures and the persecution of the Jews. But once she was faced with the discrimination of her students, she decided to act. She ordered all her students to wear... Read More Here

Johan Gerard et Wilhelmina Dora Westerweel

Johan (Joop) Westerweel fut l'un des leaders les plus entreprenants et les plus audacieux de la résistance néerlandaise jusqu’à son exécution par les nazis en août 1944. Sa formation d'enseignant et le non conformisme de ses parents, adeptes de la secte protestante non consensuelle des darbystes, contribuèrent sans doute à le préparer à cette entreprise de sauvetage exceptionnelle. Joop prêche la résistance non violente. Pacifiste convaincu, il est expulsé des Indes orientales... Read More Here

Jozef Marchwinski

The Partisan who Defied his Comrades  the summer of 1942, the Germans murdered the last Jews living in the towns of Nieswiez and Mir, in the district of Nowogrodek. The very few that managed to flee wandered throughout the countryside, trying to evade the police that stalked the fleeing Jews. The fugitives, who feared the antisemitism of the partisans active in the area, were surprised by their encounter with Jozef Marchwinski, a partisan company commander, who proposed that they enlist in... Read More Here

Johan Gerard and Wilhelmina Dora Westerweel

Johan (Joop) Westerweel was one of the most daring and successful of the Dutch Resistance leaders until his execution by the Nazis in August 1944. His background in education and his unconventional parents, who belonged to a non-consensual sect of Protestantism - the Derbists – may have prepared him for the unique rescue operation that he set into motion. Joop’s motto was one of non-violent resistance. As a convinced pacifist, he had been expelled from the Dutch East Indies for refusing to... Read More Here

Pastor Jean Séverin Lemaire

Pastor Jean Séverin Lemaire was pastor of the Evangelist congregation in Marseilles and a lecturer in Bible studies. As an intellectual and a pious Christian, he refused to acquiesce to the persecution of Jews. In late 1941, after delivering a lecture to an audience in Marseilles, Lemaire made the acquaintance of Joseph Bass, a Russian-born Jew who had gone underground and established a rescue organization called Service André. Lemaire agreed to support Bass’s organization which formalized... Read More Here

Marie-Rose Gineste

The Jewish underground organizations in occupied France, which saved the lives of multitudes of Jews, usually worked together with non-Jews, including several members of the clergy. In August 1942, Bishop Jules Gerard Saliège of Toulouse and Bishop Pierre Marie Théas of Montauban published letters against the policies of the Vichy government, condemning the arrest and deportation of French Jews. Underground activists circulated these letters throughout France, which influenced public opinion... Read More Here

Germaine Ribière

Germaine Ribière was a young student who lived with her parents in Limoges (Haute-Vienne). During the German occupation, she abandoned her studies, left home, and devoted herself to saving Jewish children. Ribière, a devout Catholic, joined the rescue networks in which clergymen such as Father Roger Braun, Father Pierre Chaillet and Bishop Jules Saliège were involved. Ribière made contact with Jewish families living in France and, after getting their permission, arranged hiding places for... Read More Here

Per Faye Hansen

Norway was occupied by Nazi Germany in April, 1940. In the light of the anti-Jewish decrees issued in October 1942, Gabriel Stiris, a medical student in Oslo, decided to go into hiding. He was helped by one of his lecturers, who had him hospitalized as an ulcer patient. Gabriel soon discovered that the doctor was a member of the local resistance movement. A few days later, Gabriel was picked up from the hospital by Per Faye Hansen, who took him to a temporary hiding place in a flower shop in... Read More Here

Jan Karski

The Envoy Jan Kozielewski (he later took on his non de guerre Karski) was born in Lodz. In 1935, he completed demography studies at Lwow University, and embarked on a career of a civil servant at the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This was cut short four years later by the war, and when Poland was occupied by Germany, Kozielewski joined the Polish underground – the Home Army (Armia Krajowa). His photographic memory made him ideal for the job of courier between the underground in Poland... Read More Here

Irena Sendler

Smuggling Children out of the Ghetto   When World War II broke out, Irena Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker, employed by the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality. After the German occupation, the department continued to take care of the great number of poor and dispossessed people in the city. Irena Sendler took advantage of her job in order to help the Jews, however this became practically impossible once the ghetto was sealed off in November 1940. Close to 400,000 people had... Read More Here

Gennady Safonov

The Partisan and the Old Woman   Gennady Safonov, born 1913, was a Soviet army lieutenant. He was taken prisoner in the early days of the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, but managed to escape from captivity and eventually became one of the leaders of the partisan unit Narodnyye Mstiteli (People's Avengers) that operated in the Rudniki forests (south of Vilna). Alongside his activity in the partisan movement, Safonov helped Jews escape from the ghettos in the area. Simcha... Read More Here

Dirk Kroon

Dirk Kroon, a young man of 33, was an electrical technician and fireman in the city of Soest in central Holland. From the early stages of the German occupation, Dirk participated in underground activities, and even took part in the raid on the municipal department for resident registration. When the deportations began in the summer of 1942, Kirk joined the Westerweel group, whose members hid and smuggled out Jews, particularly members of the Hachshara (Zionist training program), who had come... Read More Here

Henriette (Hetty) Voute and Gisela Wieberdink-Soehnlein

Infants in Milk Cans   When the deportations from Amsterdam began, a collection point for Jewish children was established in the so-called the Crèche – what had been a day care center for the children of mostly Jewish working mothers. Once caught, children were separated from their parents. The parents were brought to the Jewish Theatre – Amsterdam’s main assembly point for Jews – and all the captured children were put across the street, in the Crèche. From there they were taken to... Read More Here

Hein and Henk Sietsma

Jacob and Rosetta Nihom lived with their parents behind their store in Nijkerk, Gelderland. In 1941, they were contacted by Mr. Henk Sietsma who offered to be the children's guardian. At this point the strictures on Jews were not threatening enough for their parents to agree to this. In January 1942, a Jewish high school was established in Utrecht, and the two teenagers used to travel 45 kilometers every day to attend, but when Jacob received an order to report to a work camp in Holland, the... Read More Here

Pieter Adriaan Meerburg

The Courageous Student   Piet Adrian Meerburg was one of several Dutch students who, when faced with the deportation of the Jews, decided to act. In the summer of 1942, the leaders of the Utrecht Kindercomité (UKC; Utrecht Children’s Committee – a student group from Utrecht) contacted Piet Meerburg in Amsterdam in order to establish an Amsterdam-based group. The plan was that the Amsterdam students would find children that needed to be hidden, while the UKC would concentrate on finding... Read More Here