Erwin Ratz was an Austrian musicologist and music theorist. He is known especially for his work as president of the Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft and for his book Einführung in die musikalische Formenlehre. During Nazi rule, he saved the lives of several Austrian Jews by sheltering them in his apartment for a number of years.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Jews and others escape the Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany.
Johan Benders was a Dutch teacher at the Amsterdams Lyceum, who encouraged his students to manufacture false identification papers and food ration cards for Jews in order to help them escape persecution by the occupying Nazi Germany. He and his wife, Gerritdina Letteboer, sheltered Jews in their home. In 1943, however, they were betrayed by a neighbor and Johan was arrested by the Gestapo. In prison, he was tortured. Johan Benders had tried to commit suicide but failed twice. On 6 April he jumped from the third floor of the prison in which he was held, to avoid giving information under torture. Johan and Gerritdina took in Rosalie and Katie Wijnberg, Lore Polak, another Jewish girl, and Jan Doedens.
Carl Lutz was a Swiss diplomat. He served as the Swiss Vice-Consul in Budapest, Hungary, from 1942 until the end of World War II. He is credited with saving over 62,000 Jews during the Second World War in a very large rescue operation.
Anton Schmid was an Austrian recruit in the Wehrmacht who saved Jews during the Holocaust in Lithuania. A devout but apolitical Roman Catholic and an electrician by profession, Schmid was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I and later into the Wehrmacht during World War II.
The Shoes on the Danube Bank is a memorial erected on 16 April 2005, in Budapest, Hungary. Conceived by film director Can Togay, he created it on the east bank of the Danube River with sculptor Gyula Pauer to honour the Jews who were massacred by fascist Hungarian militia belonging to the Arrow Cross Party in Budapest during the Second World War. They were ordered to take off their shoes, and were shot at the edge of the water so that their bodies fell into the river and were carried away. The memorial represents their shoes left behind on the bank.
Károly Szabó was an employee of the Swedish Embassy in Budapest from 1944 to 1945 when he rescued Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust. He was a supporter of Raoul Wallenberg and had a significant role in making contact with the representatives of the Hungarian police and other state officials. He was arrested without legal proceedings in 1953 in Budapest, in a secret trial.
Anton Dietz was an Austrian police officer and the Righteous Among the Nations.
Florian Tschögl was one of the Righteous among the Nations, awarded from Yad Vashem. In 1943, while serving in the Wehrmacht, Tschögl was ordered to guard captured Soviet soldiers in a prison camp in Moledeczno, Belarus. There he met the Jewish Arzichowski family, which had been denounced by Polish antisemites as plotting against German soldiers.
Maria Stocker was born in Innsbruck, Austria. In 1945, during World War II she saved the life of two Jewish girls, from Poland – Lorraine Justman-Wisnicki and Miriam Fuks. For the effort, she made at the risk of her life, she is now a Righteous Among the Nations.
Kurt Ludwig Josef Maria Lingens was a German anti-fascist militant and physician. He and his wife, Ella Lingens, were honoured by Yad Vashem, which named them Righteous Among the Nations.
Angelos Evert was a Greek police officer, most notable for serving as head of the Athens branch of the Cities Police during the Axis Occupation of Greece during World War II.
The Raoul Wallenberg Emlékpark in the rear courtyard of the Dohány Street Synagogue holds the Memorial of the Hungarian Jewish Martyrs — at least 400,000 Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazis. Made by Imre Varga, it resembles a weeping willow whose leaves bear inscriptions with the names of victims. There is also a memorial to Wallenberg and other Righteous Among the Nations, among them: Swiss Vice-consul Carl Lutz; Ángel Sanz Briz, the Spanish Ambassador in Hungary; Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian man who, with a strategic escamotage, declared himself the Spanish consul, releasing documents of protection and current passports to Jews in Budapest without distinction ; Mons. Angelo Rotta, an Italian Prelate Bishop and Apostolic Nuncio of the State of Vatican City in Budapest, which issued protective sheets, misrepresentations of baptism and Vatican passports to Jews, without distinction of any kind present in Budapest, who saved, with his secretary Mons. Gennaro Verolino tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II.
Mohammed Helmy was an Egyptian-German physician who saved several Jews from Nazi persecution in Berlin during the Holocaust. He has been recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem.
Elena Žalinkevičaitė-Petrauskienė was a Lithuanian actress and writer. She was also the Lithuanian tenor Kipras Petrauskas's wife. In 1942, her husband was asked to hide a Jewish baby girl, Dana Pomeranz, which she and he agreed to. To hide the girl better, Elena and her husband left the city, moving first to a Lithuanian village, and later to Austria and then Germany. In 1947 they came back to Lithuania, and they found Dana's parents and gave her back to them.
Peter Zürcher (1914-1975) was a Swiss businessman who worked in the Department of the Foreign Interests at the Swiss Embassy in Budapest. He was known for rescuing tens of thousands of Jews during the Holocaust.
