Doing The Right Thing

Lots of people have hobbies. I don't collect butterflies or old stamps. I write book reports or book reviews on non-fiction, often obscure books, and pretty consistently, on people that I see as heroes and heroines. This, is one of those books.

CONSCIENCE & COURAGE:

Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust

By

Eva Fogelman

Anchor Books – A division of Random House

1994

The story begins.

“At six in the morning on March 20, 1942, Simcha Fagelman was already hard at work in his village bakery of Illya, a Byelorussian town a hundred miles east of Vilna. On this snowy, freezing March morning, he counted himself lucky that he had a warm, indoor job baking bread. Even so, the twenty-six year old Jew could not shake a sense of dread. Like a low-lying fog, a sense of doom hovered in the streets, seeped into doorways, and crept into the back of his mind.”

A series of random events and kindness of Russian peasants saved the young man that day. In the village of Illya, he was the only Jew out of over 1000 who survived that horrible morning. Simcha never forgot the kindness of those who helped him and hid him as he made his way to freedom.

The author continues, “Neither did I. Simcha Fagelman is my father.”

She, like so many of children of Holocaust Survivors, was grateful for those who hid Jews, and saw her father and those like him as the heroes of their history. In her twenties, while studying to become a family therapist, she became interested in the dynamics of families of survivors, and with a friend, also a child of a survivor, started a therapy group; dealing with ‘survivor guilt’.

At some point, the discussions always turned to how so many good, otherwise decent people could have participated in something as horrendous as the partial extermination of an entire race.  Then one day, she began to wonder. If it was almost normal to allow evil to flourish, who were the people who said, “No.” Why had they risked their own lives, their family’s lives, to protect those who were considered lower than most animals? Who were the rescuers?

Books have been written about people like Oskar Schindler, who saved huge groups of Jews. There are stories of Christians who out of their love for God saved Jews, but what about all the others? There were those who said that the kindness of rescuers proved the existence of God, while others say that the holocaust proved that there is no God, and that we must help ourselves.

Ms. Fogleman explores people who just ‘did the right thing’. They didn’t see themselves as heroes or heroines. They seldom thought of themselves as brave or extraordinary. She began to ask survivors about their rescuers; hoping to interview them. That would turn out to be a journey of great difficulty. The last thing that most survivors heard from those who saved them was, “Promise me that you will never tell anyone my name. Don’t ever write to me. Good luck.”

Survivors were often reluctant, even angry at the idea of Ms. Fogelman looking for rescuers. Over two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe had been wiped out. Very few people had done anything to prevent it, let alone oppose it. Many survivors felt that the courage shown by so few was at best questionable, and they did not want to see the horror that murdered over 6 million people buffered by the kindness of a few.

Beyond acknowledging people like those who saved her father, she began to see a need to return Altruism back to its rightful place in our world. People who do good are seen as weaklings, as ‘do-gooders’, even relegated by some psychoanalysts as narcissists who needed these rescue fantasies to feel loved.

Ms. Fogelman believed that it was time to give rescuers their place in history. Just as history must never forget the inhumanity suffered by people in WWII Europe, so it must never forget the good people who stood up, defied authority, and at the risk of death and worse – yes, there is worse – said ‘No. I will not act as an animal. I will be a human being and behave like one.’

This book is the story of the families such as those who hid the Franks, of the people who hid Schindler’s workers, who through large and small acts of kindness, saved 1/3 of the Jewish population of an entire continent.

Not all of the rescuers were good people. Not all of them were Christian. They were just people who at a time and place in history, stood up – when most others didn’t. She talks about the creation of Yad Vashem, a museum dedicated to the memory of holocaust victims. The walkway to the museum is lined with carob trees, each dedicated to the memory of those who saved Jews. Those who are added or their families, receive a certificate and a medal with the Talmudic inscription "Whoever saves a single soul, it is as if he had saved the entire world."

She finishes this book in today’s world, in the story of an orthodox Jewish woman, mother of eight in Jerusalem, who heard a crowd of angry people and saw that they were holding an Arab extremist who had just stabbed a Jewish boy. He was pinned to the ground as the mob moved in and she threw her body on top of him, saving him from a mob of angry people until help arrived. The community turned against her. Her defense to her furious family and community was simply that as the child of holocaust survivors, she was raised to believe that every life was sacred. She never thought it was a matter for debate.

This is an important book that looks at an overlooked part of world history in a new way, and with fresh eyes.