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Yad Vashem is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against their Nazi oppressors and Gentiles who selflessly aided Jews in need; and researching the phenomenon of the Holocaust in particular and genocide in general, with the aim of avoiding such events in the future. Yad Vashem's vision, as stated on its website, is: "To lead the documentation, research, education and commemoration of the Holocaust, and to convey the chronicles of this singular Jewish and human event to every person in Israel, to the Jewish people, and to every significant and relevant audience worldwide."
Righteous Among the Nations is an honorific used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis for altruistic reasons. The term originates with the concept of "righteous gentiles", a term used in rabbinic Judaism to refer to non-Jews, called ger toshav, who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah.
Yisrael Meir Lau served as the Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Israel, and chairman of Yad Vashem. He previously served as the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1993 to 2003.
Jānis Lipke was a Latvian rescuer of Jews in Riga in World War II from the Holocaust in Latvia.
The citizens of Poland have the highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Yad Vashem as the Polish Righteous Among the Nations, for saving Jews from extermination during the Holocaust in World War II. There are 7,177 Polish men and women conferred with the honor, over a quarter of the 27,921 recognized by Yad Vashem in total. The list of Righteous is not comprehensive and it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Poles concealed and aided tens of thousands of their Polish-Jewish neighbors. Many of these initiatives were carried out by individuals, but there also existed organized networks of Polish resistance which were dedicated to aiding Jews – most notably, the Żegota organization.
Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived, written by Herman Rosenblat, was a fictitious Holocaust memoir purporting to tell the true story of the author's reunion with, and marriage to, a girl who had passed him food through the barbed-wire fence when he was imprisoned at the Schlieben subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in World War II. The book was scheduled for publication by Berkley Books in February 2009, but its publication was canceled on December 27, 2008, when it was discovered that the book's central events were untrue.
Herman A. Rosenblat was a Polish-born American author, known for writing a fictitious Holocaust memoir titled Angel at the Fence, purporting to tell the true story of a girl who passed him food through the barbed-wire fence at the Schlieben sub-camp of the Buchenwald concentration camp in World War II. The book was planned to be published in 2009 by Berkley Books, but was cancelled after it turned out that many elements of his memoir were fabricated and some were contrary to verifiable historical facts. Rosenblat later admitted to lying on purpose with the intention of bringing joy.
Willhelm Hammann was a German educator and communist politician. A town councilor and a member of the provincial parliament of Hesse in the 1920s, he was imprisoned in Buchenwald concentration camp from 1938 to 1945. In April 1945, Hammann, who was the blockälteste of the children's barrack, sabotaged the planned movement of Jews on a death march to a certain extermination. Yad Vashem awarded Hammann the title of "Righteous among the Nations". Yisrael Meir Lau, current chairman of Yad Vashem Council, was one of the children saved by Hammann.
During the Holocaust in Greece, the entire, 275-person Jewish population of the island of Zakynthos was not deported after Mayor Loukas Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos (1890–1958) refused Nazi orders to turn in a list of the members of the town's Jewish community for deportation to the death camps. Instead they secretly hid the town's 275 Jews in various rural villages and turned in a list that included only their own two names. The entire Jewish population survived the war.
The Garden of the Righteous Among the Nations is part of the much larger Yad Vashem complex located on the Mount of Remembrance in Jerusalem. Along with some two dozen different structures within the Yad Vashem memorial – which is the second most-visited destination in the country after the Western Wall – the Garden of the Righteous is meant to honor those non-Jews who during the Holocaust risked their lives to save Jews from extermination by the Nazis.
DrMohammed Helmy was an Egyptian medical doctor who saved several Jews from Nazi persecution in Berlin during the Holocaust. He has been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the first Arab to be recognized as such.
Joseph Willem (Joop) Kolkman was a Dutch journalist and diplomat. During World War II he worked as vice-consul in Perpignan, France and helped save numerous Jewish refugees from persecution. In 2014 he was posthumously awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by Israel's institute of Holocaust remembrance Yad Vashem.
Antonin Kalina was a Czechoslovak citizen who was imprisoned during World War II in the Buchenwald concentration camp. There, he managed to save the lives of more than 900 children. He was awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations in 2012. The Czech president Miloš Zeman awarded him with Medal of Merit two years later.
Fedor Fedorovich Mikhailichenko was a Soviet Righteous Among the Nations. As a prisoner in the concentration camp of Buchenwald, he saved the life of a small Jewish boy Yurchik, who later became the Chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau.
Gerritdina Benders-Letteboer (1909–1980) was a member of the Dutch Resistance, who actively protected multiple Dutch Jewish citizens from Nazi persecution and deportation during World War II. Posthumously declared with her husband, Johan Benders (1907–1943), to be Righteous Among the Nations on 27 March 1997 by Yad Vashem, she and her husband were also honored by The International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, which placed their names on their “List of Dutch Saviors.”
Block 66, the Children's Block, or Kinderblock was part of Buchenwald concentration camp, in what was known as the "little camp", which was separated from the rest of the camp by barbed wire. Buchenwald was a labor camp, and as a result a child's chances of survival depended greatly on their age. The older they were, the better, because that meant that they were fit to do work. Oftentimes, children lied about their ages to make them older, so that rather than being sent to Auschwitz or Bergen-Belsen to be killed, they could work in the camp. Children were at high risk for being killed at Buchenwald, because if they were too weak or young, this meant that they were unfit for labor, and therefore had no use. The creation of the children's barrack, Block 66, served to protect these children from the Nazi agenda.
Shmuel Krakowski, Samuel Krakowski or Stefan Krakowski was an Israeli historian specializing in the Holocaust in Poland. After surviving the Holocaust, Krakowski worked for the intelligence and security services of the People's Republic of Poland. Later he became a Director of the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel.
References
- ↑ United Press International (November 7, 2005). MSU reinstates Israel study program.
- ↑ Associated Press (June 26, 2008). Academics make startling finds as they sweep through untapped Nazi records.
- ↑ Yad Vashem (2009). The Memory of Feodor’s Goodness: Feodor Mikhailichenko
- 1 2 Rich, Motoko; Joseph Berger (December 28, 2008). "False Memoir of Holocaust Is Canceled". New York Times. Retrieved December 29, 2008.
- ↑ Handelman, Jay (April 18, 2012). REVIEW: "Kinderblock 66" builds a gentle emotional power. Archived January 2, 2014, at the Wayback Machine Sarasota Herald-Tribune
- ↑ The Man Who Saved 900 Jewish Boys inside a Death Camp, The Times of Israel, April 9, 2013;
