Hero's of the Holocaust
By: Cameron Joubert
Feng-Shan Ho
Irena Sendler
Hugh O’Flaherty
Giorgio Perlasca
Giorgio Perlasca was an Italian who helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust by issuing them fake passports to travel to neutral countries. Despite fighting alongside Franco in the Spanish Civil War, Perlasca became disillusioned with Fascism and escaped from Italy to the Spanish embassy in Budapest in 1944, where he became a Spanish citizen on account of his war experience. While there he worked with Spanish diplomat Angel Sanz Briz in creating fake passports to smuggle Jews out of the country. When Sanz Briz was removed from his post, Perlasca pretended to be his substitute so that he could continue printing false passports. He also personally sheltered thousands of Hungarian Jews while they were waiting for their passports. It is estimated he saved over 5,000 Jews from the Holocaust. After the war, he returned to Italy where he lived in obscurity until he was contacted in 1987 by a group of Hungarian Jews he had rescued, and his remarkable story became public. He died in 1992.
Chiune Sugihara
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat, serving as Vice Consul for the Japanese Empire in Lithuania. Soon after the occupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, he helped an estimated 6,000 Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from Poland or residents of Lithuania. From July 31 to August 28 1940, Sugihara began to grant visas on his own initiative. Many times he ignored the requirements and arranged the Jews with a ten-day visa to transit through Japan, in direct violation of his orders. until September 4, when he had to leave his post before the consulate was closed. By that time he had granted thousands of visas to Jews, many of them heads of household who could take their families with them. According to witnesses, he was still writing visas while in transit in hotel and after boarding the train, throwing visas into the crowd of desperate refugees out the train’s window even as the train pulled out. Sugihara returned to Japan where he lived in obscurity until he was made ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ by Israel in 1985. He died the following year.
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz was a German member of the Nazi party who worked as a special envoy to Nazi occupied Denmark. Although Danish Jews were initially treated quite favourably by the Nazis, by 1943 it was planned that they would be rounded up and deported to concentration camps. Risking his career, Duckwitz made a secret visit to neutral Sweden where he convinced Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson to allow Danish Jewish refugees to escape to Sweden. He then went to Denmark and notified Danish politician Hans Hedtoft about the deportation. Hedtoft warned senior rabbis in the country, and in the following two months, over 6,000 Jews were ferried secretly to Sweden in boats. After his actions, Duckwitz returned to his duties as a Nazi official, refusing to reveal what he had done in case of losing his job or worse. After the war, he continued working as West Germany’s ambassador to Denmark. He died in 1973. Due to his actions, it is estimated that around 99% of Denmark’s Jews survived the Holocaust.
Frank Foley
Frank Foley was a British secret service agent estimated to have saved 10,000 Jews from the Holocaust. In his role as passport control officer he helped thousands of Jews escape from Nazi Germany. At the 1961 trial of former ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann, he was described as a “Scarlet Pimpernel” for the way he risked his own life to save Jews threatened with death by the Nazis. Despite having no diplomatic immunity and being liable to arrest at any time, Foley would bend the rules when stamping passports and issuing visas, to allow Jews to escape “legally” to Britain or Palestine, which was then controlled by the British. Sometimes he went further, going into internment camps to get Jews out, hiding them in his home, and helping them get forged passports. He died in 1958.
Aristides de Sousa Mendes
Aristides de Sousa Mendes was a Portuguese Diplomat who ignored and defied the orders of his own government for the safety of war refugees fleeing from invading German military forces in the early years of World War II. Between the June 16 and June 23 1940, he frantically issued Portuguese visas free of charge, to over 30,000 refugees seeking to escape the Nazi terror, 12,000 of whom were Jews.
Dimitar Peshev
Dimitar Peshev was the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bulgaria and Minister of Justice during World War II. He rebelled against the pro-Nazi cabinet and prevented the deportation of Bulgaria’s 48,000 Jews. Bulgaria was a strong supporter of the Holocaust, rounding up thousands of Jews in occupied Thrace and Macedonia to be deported to death camps. However, when it came to its own Jewish citizens, the government faced strong opposition from Peshev and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church. Although Peshev had been involved in various anti-Semitic legislation that had passed in Bulgaria during the early years of the War, the decision by the government to deport Bulgaria’s 48,000 Jews on March 8 1943 was too much for Peshev. It was not until 1973 when he was awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations. He died the same year.
Conclusion
11 Facts About the Holocaust
2. In Israel, the Knesset made Holocaust Remembrance Day (also known as Yom Hashoah) a national holiday in 1959
3. Yom Hashoah has been observed with speakers, poems prayer, songs, candlelight ceremonies and more tokens of remembrance.
4. The Holocaust began in 1933 when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. It ended in 1945 when Allied powers defeated the Nazis.
5.Jewish people were excluded from public life on September 15th, 1935 when the Nuremberg Laws were issued. These laws also stripped German Jews of their citizenship and their right to marry Germans.
6.Once World War II began, the Nazis ordered all Jews to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothing so they could be easily targeted.
7.Jews were forced to live in specific areas of the city called ghettos after the beginning of World War II. In the larger ghettos, up to 1,000 people a day were picked up and brought by train to concentration camps or death camps.
8. Kristallnacht occured on November 9th and 10th, 1938. Nazis pillaged, burned synagogues, broke windows of Jewish-owned businesses, and attacked Jewish people in Austria and Germany. 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
9.In prison camps, prisoners were forced to do hard physical labor. Torture and death within concentration cmaps were common and frequent.
10. 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust ( 1.1 million children). 6 million of those victims were Jewish. Other groups targeted by the Nazis were Jehovah's Witnesses , homosexuals, disabled people, and Roma.
11. Two-thirds of Jewish people living in Europe at the time of World War II were killed by Nazies
Sources
2. http://listverse.com/2008/11/06/10-people-who-saved-jews-during-world-war-two/
3. https://www.ushmm.org/research/research-in-collections/search-the-
collections/bibliography/rescuers
4. https://www.ushmm.org/research/research-in-collections/search-the-
collections/bibliography/rescuers