In a World Full of Darkness: Unlikely Heroes of the Holocaust

By Randy Pinsky

Yom HaShoah commemorates not only the senseless loss of six million of Europe’s Jews, but also highlights the ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ who refused to be bystanders in the devastation surrounding them. These heroic individuals routinely- and often ingeniously - defied orders in order to hide or smuggle Jews across borders, in spite of the risk posed to them and their families. 

In the recent polarizing climate in which the silence of millions echoes loudly in the ears of the Jewish community reeling from the attacks of October 7th, it is heartening to reflect on the courage of unlikely allies who stood up against intolerance. 

Taking Action Against Hate and Indifference

The Yad Vashem World Holocaust Center in Jerusalem defines Righteous Among the Nations as “non-Jews who took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust.” While the specifics of rescue took many different forms and from different walks of life, “what they had in common was that they protected their Jewish neighbors at a time when hostility and indifference prevailed.”

The concept of hasidei umot haolam or ‘righteous among the nations’ is an ancient one. At every Passover seder, families recall the heroic acts of Egyptian midwives Shifra and Puah who refused to comply with Pharaoh's decree to kill Jewish baby boys. Similarly, Pharaoh's daughter defied her father by saving Moses from the Nile. Though in the Bible she is nameless, Jewish sages in gratitude chose Batyah for her; fittingly translated as “daughter of G-d.” 

When asked to name rescuers during the Holocaust, those which most frequently come to mind are Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, known for forging thousands of passports for Jews before being captured by the Soviets, and Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who saved over 1,200 Jews by employing them in his factories. 

But there are numerous others who quietly lived their lives and acted in the face of intolerance, many stories of which have only recently surfaced. It is to these unsung heroes of courage that we dedicate this feature piece. 

Britain’s Schindler

Had Nicholas Winton’s wife not been cleaning the attic in 1988, no one would have known the heroic story of the man dubbed as ‘Britain’s Schindler.’ Indeed, it was only when she came across a scrapbook of photos and a list of names, that her husband revealed he had helped arrange a ‘Czech Kindertransport’ for close to 700 children. 

A stock broker from Britain, Winton, along with colleagues Martin Blake (associate of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia), Doreen Warriner and Trevor Chadwick, became concerned about the alarming speed in which the Germans were taking over Europe. Czech Jews had already been rounded up and languishing in refugee camps, with few governments taking action to save them. Together with refugee workers in Prague, the four arranged funding for transportation and corresponding foster families in Britain, often forging documents when the official papers were frustratingly delayed. Between March and August of 1939, Winton coordinated eight transports from Prague to London, saving 669 children.

Winton’s quiet heroism in the face of government inaction was captured in the 2023 film “One Life,” a title referencing the Talmudic verse of “Whoever saves a single is life is considered to have saved the whole world.”

But it was the 1988 BBC special on “That’s Life” which catapulted awareness of the bespeckled soft-spoken gentleman: unbeknownst to him, the audience was composed of adult survivors of the Kindertransport. 

In a chillingly powerful moment that has been viewed millions of times, when the host asked, “does anyone here tonight owe their life to Nicholas Winton?” almost the entire room stood up - truly a fitting tribute to a humble hero. 

The Rescuer of the Children of Warsaw

In 2007, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to former US Vice President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; an act many critiqued as being politically expedient but ‘rewarding a powerpoint presentation.’ Yet few recall the contending nominee; a small but determined Polish Catholic social worker who defied all odds to save 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazis in 1942-43. 

And no, 2,500 was not a typo as first assumed by a Kansas high school teacher reading an article from US News and World Report to his class in 1999- a sentence that started a journey for three enterprising students. Persistent research led to the development of the “Life in a Jar” play now performed across the world, the title of which references Sendler’s carefully coded lists of the children she saved which she buried in milk jars under an apple tree.

The 2009 The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler movie starring Anna Paquin showcased the ingenious ways Sendler used to subvert guards and smuggle out Jewish children from the overcrowded Warsaw Ghetto. Older children were taught Catholic prayers and given Polish names, whereas younger children often had to be carried out in sacks but in all cases, she always ensured they knew their true identities to one day be reunited with their families.

One tactic was posing as a nurse, taking advantage of the Nazi phobia of germs in order to enter the ghetto. Under the premise of assessing health conditions, she in fact arranged for the children’s escape. When asked to head the Children’s Department of the underground Zegota Council for Aid to Jews in Occupied Poland (using the code name ‘Jolanta’), “I lost no time in reflecting [on the danger] knowing that I and my heart had to be there, had to be a part of the rescue.” Sendler would be granted numerous awards, including the Order of the White Eagle - Poland’s highest honor - and be recognized as a national hero. 

Stamping Passports Day and Night

In times of crisis, sometimes you must disobey orders in order to do the right thing. The first Japanese diplomat to be posted in Lithuania, Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara became aware of the plight of the Jewish people desperately seeking to escape as the Germans were tightening their grip on Europe. Though he repeatedly requested permission from Tokyo to grant transit visas, his pleas went unheeded. 

He realized, “with Western Europe engulfed in war, the most likely avenue for escape for refugees in Lithuania was an eastern route through the Society Union to Japan” and eventually to the United States. In disregard of Tokyo’s regulations, Sugihara and his wife would spend all day and night from July 31 to August 28, 1940 processing transit visas. 

Over 1,800 passports were granted before the consulate in Lithuania was closed due to the escalating conflict. In spite of the situation, Sugihara kept writing visas even from the window of his train, distributing them as it was leaving the platform. For his heroic efforts in a time of crisis, the former Japanese consul was honored as a “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem in 1984.

Saved by…The Iranian Consul?

While some individuals protected Jews through secret rooms or diplomatic means, others did so using Nazi ideology- against itself. 

Hundreds of Central Asian Jews from Iran, Afghanistan and Bukhara (of modern day Uzbekistan, and former cultural center of the Persian Empire) fled the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and settled in Paris in the 1920s. Though well-assimilated and contributing members of the society, the stability was shattered with Germany’s takeover of France in 1940. Laws soon appeared demanding Jewish families identify themselves to the police and there were increasingly stringent regulations and restrictions.

Reading the writing on the wall, Iranian diplomat Abdol Hossein Sardari devised a brilliant plan. Using a twisted version of the Nazi racial beliefs, in 1940 he claimed that the Persian Jews or Jugutis were assimilated to non-Jewish Persians and thereby “should not be considered Jews under Vichy law.” Hundreds were spared from the anti-Jewish decrees through this ideological loophole. On letterhead reading The Imperial Consulate of Iran, he convincingly “fram[ed] his appeal on behalf of the Iranian Jews in Paris in the terminology on Nazi racial ideology that he calculated would be persuasive to German officials.” 

Sardari kept a low profile after the war and never sought recognition, though his story was recounted in "In the Lion's Shadow: The Iranian Schindler and His Homeland in the Second World War"  (2012). In an interview with Yad Vashem, he shared how as the Iranian Consul in Paris during the Holocaust, “it was my duty to save all Iranians, including Iranian Jews.”

In times of crisis, one can be a bystander, part of the problem- or stand up for what’s right. May the memories of the Righteous Among the Nations continue to inspire others to counter intolerance and hate, in whatever form it may take.