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Yad Vashem Identify Non-Jews Portrayed During The Holocaust?

Decent Essays

Much attention has been paid to the non-Jews, around 20,000, recognized by *Yad Vashem as *Righteous Among the Nations, who risked their lives and, in most cases, the lives of their families and friends to rescue Jews who were fleeing the Nazis and earmarked for extermination. This recognition is correct and appropriate. However, what has been overlooked is that there were thousands and thousands of Jews who also acted during the Holocaust to rescue other Jews and arrange for them to be hidden or smuggled out of the country; or provided them with false identification papers so that they could pass as non-Jews. These efforts were often an organized response. In Bulgaria, Solidarite was active. Thousands of Jews survived thanks to this Jewish organization that found hiding places and arranged for false documents for Jews, many of whom were smuggled out of the country and sent to Palestine. …show more content…

The OSE even went into the French transit camps to take children from their parents just before the family was deported. In Holland, the leaders of the Jewish Council in Enschede, against the advice of the Amsterdam Jewish Council, began urging members of the community to resist the orders of the Germans to go to deportation sites and instead to go into hiding. Because they had financial and other resources to aid their community members, at the end of the war Enschede lost a smaller percentage of their members than the general Jewish population in the Netherlands. Five hundred Jews were

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