The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe.
Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist, humanitarian, and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. He is the subject of the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark and its 1993 film adaptation, Schindler's List, which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, courage, and dedication in saving his Jewish employees' lives.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Jews and others escape the Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany.
Righteous Among the Nations is an honourific used by the State of Israel to describe all of the non-Jews who, for purely altruistic reasons, risked their lives in order to save Jews from being exterminated by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. The term originates from the concept of ger toshav, a legal term used to refer to non-Jewish observers of the Seven Laws of Noah.
Wilhelm Adalbert Hosenfeld, originally a school teacher, was a German Army officer who by the end of the Second World War had risen to the rank of Hauptmann (captain). He helped to hide or rescue several Polish people, including Jews, in Nazi-German occupied Poland, and helped Jewish pianist and composer Władysław Szpilman to survive, hidden, in the ruins of Warsaw during the last months of 1944, an act which was portrayed in the 2002 film The Pianist. He was taken prisoner by the Red Army and died in Soviet captivity in 1952.
Karl Plagge was a German Army officer who rescued Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania by issuing work permits to non-essential workers. A partially disabled veteran of World War I, Plagge studied engineering and joined the Nazi Party in 1931 in hopes of helping Germany rebuild from the economic collapse following the war. After being dismissed from the position of lecturer for being unwilling to teach racism and his opposition to Nazi racial policies, he stopped participating in party activities in 1935 and left the party when the war broke out.
Henryk Woliński (1901–1986) was a member of the Polish resistance movement in World War II, specifically the Armia Krajowa (AK), where he reached the rank of colonel. He was the head of the "Jewish Department" in AK's Bureau of Information and Propaganda. His codename was "Wacław". He was recognized by Yad Vashem as one of the Righteous among the Nations. He himself harbored in his apartment over 25 Jews for a period going from a few days to several weeks.
Operation Reinhard in Kraków, often referred to by its original codename in German as Aktion Krakau, was a major 1942 German Nazi operation against the Jews of Kraków, Poland. It was headed by SS and Police Leader Julian Scherner from the Waffen-SS. The roundup was part of the countrywide Aktion Reinhard, the mass murder of Polish Jews in the so-called General Government under the command of SS und Polizeiführer Odilo Globočnik.
Maria Kotarba was a courier in the Polish resistance movement, smuggling clandestine messages and supplies among the local partisan groups. She was arrested, tortured and interrogated by the Gestapo as a political prisoner before being imprisoned in Tarnów and then deported to Auschwitz on 6 January 1943. Maria Kotarba was recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem on 18 September 2005 for risking her life to save the lives of Jewish prisoners in two Nazi concentration camps.
The family of Franciszek and Magdalena Banasiewicz and their children Jerzy, Tadeusz, Antoni, and Maria lived on a farm in Orzechowce near Przemyśl during the Nazi German occupation of Poland in World War II. In July 1991 they were bestowed the titles of Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem for rescuing fifteen Jews escaping the Holocaust from the ghetto in Przemyśl.
Jan and Anna Puchalski were a Polish husband and wife who lived in the village of Łosośna in north-eastern Poland on the outskirts of Grodno during the Nazi German occupation of Poland. Together, they rescued Polish Jews from the Holocaust, including escapees from the ghetto in Grodno before its brutal liquidation. The Puchalskis were posthumously bestowed the titles of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in June 1986. Their medals of honor were presented to their surviving children at a ceremony in Jerusalem on June 14, 1987, during which Irena Puchalska-Bagińska, Zdzisław, son of Sabina Puchalska-Kazimierczyk, Władysław Puchalski and Krystyna Puchalska-Maciejewska planted a tree in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem.
The Grodno Ghetto was a Nazi ghetto established in November 1941 by Nazi Germany in the city of Grodno for the purpose of persecution and exploitation of Jews in Western Belarus.
The Sosnowiec Ghetto was a World War II ghetto set up by Nazi German authorities for Polish Jews in the Środula district of Sosnowiec in the Province of Upper Silesia. During the Holocaust in occupied Poland, most inmates, estimated at over 35,000 Jewish men, women and children were deported to Auschwitz death camp aboard Holocaust trains following roundups lasting from June until August 1943. The ghetto was liquidated during an uprising, a final act of defiance of its Underground Jewish Combat Organization (ŻOB) made up of youth. Most of the Jewish fighters perished.
Max Liedtke was a German journalist and army officer. He was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations for his resistance against the "liquidation" of the entire Jewish population of the ghetto in Przemyśl in eastern Poland.
Oswald Bosko was an Austrian policeman from Vienna later stationed at the Jewish ghetto of Kraków from 1942 to 1944. He supported Julius Madritsch in rescuing Jews during World War II. Bosko was posthumously honored by the State of Israel as a Righteous Among the Nations, an award for a non-Jew who risked their life during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis.
Frumka Płotnicka was a Polish resistance fighter during World War II; activist of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB) and member of the Labour Zionist organization Dror. She was one of the organizers of self-defence in the Warsaw Ghetto, and participant in the military preparations for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Following the liquidation of the Ghetto, Płotnicka relocated to the Dąbrowa Basin in southern Poland. On the advice of Mordechai Anielewicz, Płotnicka organized a local chapter of ŻOB in Będzin with the active participation of Józef and Bolesław Kożuch as well as Cwi (Tzvi) Brandes, and soon thereafter witnessed the murderous liquidation of both Sosnowiec and Będzin Ghettos by the German authorities.
The Kielce Ghetto was a Jewish World War II ghetto created in 1941 by the Schutzstaffel (SS) in the Polish city of Kielce in the south-western region of the Second Polish Republic, occupied by German forces from 4 September 1939. Before the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, Kielce was the capital of the Kielce Voivodeship. The Germans incorporated the city into Distrikt Radom of the semi-colonial General Government territory. The liquidation of the ghetto took place in August 1942, with over 21,000 victims deported to their deaths at the Treblinka extermination camp, and several thousands more shot, face-to-face.
Durchgangsstrasse IV was a road constructed by Nazi Germany in occupied Ukraine during World War II. It was a strategic military road to supply the southern sector of the Eastern Front. The large scale constructions works started in early 1942 to support the German advance towards Stalingrad. It ran for over 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) from Lviv east to Stalino. Organisation Todt was responsible for the construction which was sub-contracted to several private construction firms. It was constructed by forced laborers – Soviet prisoners of war, local civilians, and Jews – who were procured by the SS and guarded by the Schutzmannschaft battalions. One of the largest forced labor projects undertaken by Nazi Germany that involved Jewish labor, it marked a transition between using Jews as forced laborers to the practice of "extermination through labour".
Ludwig Wörl, was a carpenter by profession. He was an opponent of Nazism, and as a result of his actions, was imprisoned in the Nazi concentration camps. He received the title of Righteous Among the Nations file #1 for rescuing Jews in concentration camps.
Nazi Germany 
