In 1941, Yoshko Indig (Josef Itai), a young madrich (counsellor) in the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, set out with a group of orphaned Jewish children from Germany and Austria on a courageous and dangerous rescue journey. The passage took the group through Yugoslavia, where additional children from that country joined the group, nearly doubling their number, and Italy and into neutral Switzerland, until Indig and most of the children finally reached the shores of the Land of Israel at the end of the war. Several other Jewish rescuers were involved in this remarkable rescue story. Two of them, Aron Menczer and Goffredo Pacifici, were later murdered in Auschwitz. All of them risked their lives to save the children.
Indig, Menczer and Pacifici, along with Gisi Fleischmann, Anna Braude Heller, Luba Bielicka Blum and countless others, worked selflessly and tirelessly to aid their fellow Jews during the Holocaust. Each story is as remarkable as it is inspiring. As in the past, Yad Vashem continues to collect and publicize these personal accounts on its various platforms: through its museum exhibitions, historical narrative and numerous online exhibitions, as well as in conferences, lectures and educational activities at its Jerusalem campus and abroad. These numerous stories and testimonies detailing compelling examples of Jewish solidarity during the Shoah range from discrete acts of personal kindness to comprehensive organized attempts to safeguard the lives of Jewish men, women and children.
Over the years, Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research has published dozens of survivor memoirs, research books and articles detailing firsthand accounts of how Jews aided fellow Jews, and detailing histories of resistance in Jewish communities under Nazi rule. For example, in 1997, Yad Vashem Publications released the Hebrew version of Nechama Tec's book Mishpachat Anshei Haya'ar (The Family of the Forest People), based on the English version of her book, Defiance: The True Story of the Bielski Partisans (Oxford University Press, 1993). The book described the renowned Bielski brothers more than a decade before the acclaimed eponymous Hollywood feature film was released. In 2014, Yad Vashem published the Hebrew-language Aleh ‘Iti Begorali (Jews Rescuing Jews in the Holocaust), featuring a collection of stories regarding efforts by Jews to save other Jews during the Shoah.
Similarly, stories related to this topic are included in Yad Vashem's Holocaust History Museum permanent exhibition, such as the famous account of Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel and the semi-underground "Working Group" in Slovakia.
The topic has been regularly highlighted as part of the Holocaust Remembrance Day's State Opening Ceremonies, as well as at other commemorative activities and events at Yad Vashem throughout the year. In 2020, Yad Vashem's central theme of Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Day was Rescue by Jews during the Holocaust: Solidarity in a Disintegrating World. The six Holocaust survivors chosen as torchlighters for the opening ceremony shared a common theme: They recounted their personal stories in which Jews assisted one another during the Holocaust. Yad Vashem devoted the 2020 Remembrance Day symposia, online lectures and educational activities for security forces and other groups to the theme of Jewish solidarity. By emphasizing this important topic, Yad Vashem highlighted the fact that Jews were not just objects of persecution and rescue activities initiated by non-Jews, but were themselves active in confronting the Nazi scourge, thus revealing the resilience and steadfastness of Jewish individuals and groups.
Thus, the study of Jewish solidarity during the Holocaust has always been, and continues to be, a central dimension of Yad Vashem's mission and an integral component of its research, educational and commemorative activities.
Given this record of Yad Vashem's commitment, why doesn't the World Holocaust Center formally recognize these heroic figures by presenting them, or their families, with official medals, decorations and titles?
The answer is clear.
In Jewish tradition and throughout Jewish history, the imperative that Jews act on behalf of the welfare and security of other Jews in need has been ever-present. Precisely because of that, and due to the extreme nature of the persecution during the Holocaust, when the majority of the Jews faced a daily struggle for self-survival and therefore were in a situation where it was practically impossible for them to assist others, it would be both unfair and unwise to judge their actions particularly given the extraordinary circumstances into which they were forced.
Following lengthy and thorough consideration of this matter, there is a general agreement among Yad Vashem's experts, researchers and educators – as well as survivors – that the process of singling out Jews for such an official award would likely create an unhealthy and ultimately divisive atmosphere of competition within Jewish communities and among families of victims and survivors. Instead of promoting worthy efforts to learn and identify with the "choiceless choices" of the multitudes of Jews in the Shoah, as Yad Vashem indeed does, such an award program would engender superficial, and essentially unfair, categories of behavior, and risk disparaging the many Jewish victims who had no opportunity to act beyond their own desperate personal battles for survival. Through its long-term scholarly and educational activities, Yad Vashem has succeeded in largely erasing from much of public discourse the denigrating postwar notion that Jews seemingly behaved passively, as “sheep being led to the slaughter.”
Establishing an awards program of Jews rescuing Jews would likely work against that achievement, and lead to discriminating evaluations and biased judgments about the majority of the murdered and surviving Jews.
Conversely, the rescue of Jews by non-Jews in the Holocaust, when Jews had been almost universally expelled from the normative circle of social responsibility and aiding them was punishable by death, was as extraordinary as it was courageous, and certainly merits special recognition. This understanding surely motivated the founders of Yad Vashem, many of them Holocaust survivors, to mandate as part of its binding mission the goal of recognizing the Righteous Among the Nations.
Rather than confer titles, as seen above, Yad Vashem has consistently nurtured awareness and knowledge regarding the issue of Jewish solidarity during the Holocaust, including its crucial component of rescue by Jews. While grappling with the multiple dimensions of this subject, and ensuring that it is responsibly explored in its authentic historical context, Yad Vashem is deeply committed to perpetuating this fundamental dimension of its activity in order to enlighten, educate and inspire generations to come.
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine," volume 94.
