Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg was a Swedish architect, businessman, diplomat, and humanitarian. He saved thousands of Jews in German-occupied Hungary during the Holocaust from German Nazis and Hungarian fascists during the later stages of World War II. While serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944, Wallenberg issued protective passports and sheltered Jews in buildings which he declared as Swedish territory.
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who served as vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania. During the Second World War, Sugihara helped thousands of Jews flee Europe by issuing transit visas to them so that they could travel through Japanese territory, risking his career and the lives of his family. The fleeing Jews were refugees from German-occupied Western Poland and Soviet-occupied Eastern Poland, as well as residents of Lithuania.
During World War II, some individuals and groups helped Jews and others escape the Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany.
This is a selected bibliography and other resources for The Holocaust, including prominent primary sources, historical studies, notable survivor accounts and autobiographies, as well as other documentation and further hypotheses.
Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian businessman and former Fascist who, with the collaboration of official diplomats, posed as the Spanish consul-general to Hungary in the winter of 1944, and saved 5,218 Jews from deportation to Nazi extermination camps in eastern Europe. In 1989, Perlasca was designated by Israel as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Major Francis Edward Foley CMG was a British Secret Intelligence Service officer. As a passport control officer for the British Embassy in Berlin, Foley "bent the rules" and helped thousands of Jewish families escape from Nazi Germany after Kristallnacht and before the outbreak of the Second World War. He is officially recognised as a British Hero of the Holocaust and as a Righteous Among the Nations.
Jan Zwartendijk was a Dutch businessman and diplomat. As director of the Philips factories in Lithuania and part-time acting consul of the Dutch government-in-exile, he supervised the writing of 2,345 visas for Curaçao to save Jews from the Holocaust during World War II. In 1997, Yad Vashem recognised him as Righteous Among the Nations.
The March of the Living is an annual educational program which brings students from around the world to Poland, where they explore the remnants of the Holocaust. On Holocaust Memorial Day observed in the Jewish calendar, thousands of participants march silently from Auschwitz to Birkenau.
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.
William D. Rubinstein was an American-British historian and author. His best-known work, Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain Since the Industrial Revolution, charts the rise of the 'super rich', a class he saw as expanding exponentially.
The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941–1945 is a 1984 nonfiction book by David S. Wyman, former Josiah DuBois professor of history at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wyman was the chairman of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. The Abandonment of the Jews has been well received by most historians, and has won numerous prizes and widespread recognition, including a National Jewish Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Award, the Present Tense Literary Award, the Stuart Bernath Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Theodore Saloutos Award of the Immigration History Society, and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award."
Polish Jews were the primary victims of the Nazi Germany-organized Holocaust in Poland. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, Jews were rescued from the Holocaust by Polish people, at risk to their lives and the lives of their families. According to Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons identified as rescuing Jews during the Holocaust. By January 2022, 7,232 people in Poland have been recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations.
José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was a Salvadoran Army colonel and diplomat who, while working as El Salvador's Consul General for Geneva during World War II, and in conjunction with Jewish-Romanian businessman György Mandl, helped save up to 40,000 Central European Jews, most of them from Hungary, from Nazi persecution by providing them with fake Salvadoran citizenship certificates.
Turkish Passport is a 2011 Turkish film directed by Burak Arliel that purports to tell the story of rescue of Jews during the Holocaust by Turkish diplomats. It was promoted as "the only Holocaust film with a happy ending".
Pierre Sauvage is a French-American documentary filmmaker and lecturer, who was a child survivor of the Holocaust. Described by Tablet Magazine as "a filmmaker of rare moral perception."
Sławomir Grünberg is a Polish-born naturalized American documentary producer, director and cameraman.
My Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes is a 2014 documentary film, directed and written by Oren Jacoby, that tells the story of the rescue of thousands of Italian Jews during World War II by ordinary and prominent Italians, including the champion cyclist Gino Bartali. The film had its U.S. premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October 2014, and opened at theaters in Los Angeles and New York in March 2015.
Word of the Righteous is a 2017 documentary series directed and produced by journalists Svitlana Levitas and Margarita Yakovleva, co-authors of a Ukrainian-Israeli-US project dedicated to the Righteous Among the Nations.
The Rescuers is a 2011 documentary film directed and produced by Michael W. King.
