Contact B'nai B'rith

1120 20th Street NW, Suite 300N Washington, D.C. 20036

info@bnaibrith.org

202-857-6600

​The B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jews who Rescued Fellow Jews During the Holocaust (JRJ) will induct more than 30 Jewish rescuers into the ranks of their joint Jewish Rescuers Citation.
 
The current list includes members of the French Jewish Resistance: Henri Pohoryles, Leo Cohn, Ernest Lambert, Abraham Polonsky, David Knout, March Levi, Robert Gamzon, Emmanuel Racine, Regine Ariane Knout, Fanny Ben-Ami, Mila Racine, Anne-Marie Lambert-Finkler, Betty Knout Lazaros and Marianne Cohn.
 
Additional rescuers include: Eduard Laufer from Slovakia; Chava Rose-Bornstein, a nurse in the Dutch underground;  Sig Menko, Gerard Sanders and Isidoor van Dam, heads of the Jewish Community in Enschede, Holland; Fabius Ornstein, head of the Judenrat in Kopaygorod, Ukraine; Oswald Rufeisen and Dov Reznick members of the Mir Ghetto underground; Mala Zimetbaum, an inmate at Auschwitz; Miriam and Menachem Pinkhof, heads of Chalutz group in Holland; Karl Demerer, camp elder at Blechhammer concentration camp; Ronia Rozental from the Kovno Ghetto; Polia and Moshe Musel from the Kovno Ghetto and Ricardo Cavaligon who assisted Jewish refugees in northern Italy.
 
The citation is conferred in honor of the devotion, courage and heroism exhibited by these individuals under inhumane conditions in order to save their brethren. All the citations except to Polia Musel and Fanny Ben-Ami will be presented posthumously to relatives of the rescuers.
 
The Jewish Rescuers Citation was established in 2011 by the B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem and JRJ to rectify the historical record regarding Jewish rescue. The phenomena of Jewish rescue and the instructive stories of thousands of Jews who labored to save their endangered brethren throughout Europe have yet to receive appropriate public recognition and resonance. Many who could have tried to flee chose to stay and rescue others; some paid for it with their lives. With great heroism, Jews in every country in occupied Europe employed subterfuge, forgery, smuggling, concealment and other methods to ensure that Jews survived the Holocaust, or assisted them in escaping to a safe place, and in doing so foiled the Nazi goal of total genocide against the Jews. To date more than 200 heroes have been honored with the citation for rescue activities in Germany, France, Hungary, Greece, Slovakia, Yugoslavia, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Italy and Holland.
 
Some of the citations will be presented at a joint B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem/ Keren Kayemet Le’ Israel — JNF Holocaust and Martyr’s Day ceremony commemorating Jewish rescuers during the Holocaust, to be held April 12 at the B’nai B’rith Martyr’s Forest, “Scroll of Fire” plaza. The ceremony will begin at 10 a.m. with the siren peal. Fanny Ben-Ami’s story is memorialized in the book “The Little Commander” by Galila Ron-Feder (Hebrew, 1986) and in the film “Fanny’s Journey” (2016).” Ben-Ami will address the ceremony on behalf of the Jewish rescuers.
 
For more information contact Alan Schneider, director, B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem, 972-2-6251743, 972-52-5536441 or aschneider@bnaibrith.org.