Aurora Israel spotlighted recipients of B’nai B’rith International’s 2025 Jewish Rescuer Citations—extraordinary men and women who risked their own lives to save fellow Jews from Nazi persecution during the Holocaust. Read more in Aurora Israel in Spanish.

Dedicated to the freed hostages, their families, and the Israeli army fighters—all of them models of courage and admiration.

From this column, I have pointed out on more than one occasion that for years B’nai B’rith International has promoted a commendable undertaking by which all those Jews who, during the Second World War, risked their lives and those of their families to save their Jewish brothers are recognized and rewarded, earning them the Order of Jewish Heroism and filling an important gap.

Here, in brief, is the story of some of this year’s award winners, in a ceremony that was held in due course at the Martyrs’ Forest in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

Maurycy Herlong-Grudzinski – Poland (1903-1966)

A lawyer by profession, taking advantage of his Polish physiognomy, Maurycy Herlong-Grudzinski managed to rescue Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto, hiding them under accumulated piles of animal skins. From the autumn of 1942, his home became a refuge for the Jews he managed to rescue from that hell.

What was initially the result of his initiative and courage became a deployment supervised by Żegota, a Polish underground Jewish aid organization. Maurycy also promoted a financial network aimed at helping refugees—Jews hidden in Aryan space. After the war, he was an outstanding jurist and member of the Supreme Court of Justice of Poland.

Helena Merenholc – Poland (1907-1997)

A psychologist by profession, Helena offered her help to Jewish children and orphans of the Warsaw Ghetto. In March 1943, she managed to escape from this space with her mother and sister. Using a false identity and within the framework of the organization Żegota, she helped Jews by providing them with false documentation and hiding places. After the war, she was active in Jewish frameworks as well as in the struggle for human rights in Poland.

Lore Durlacher (Ora Goren) – Germany-Israel (1920-1992)

Lore Durlacher worked at the Apeldoorn Hospital for the Mentally Ill in Holland. After all the patients at the hospital were deported, she managed to escape thanks to the help of the underground movement Westerweel. With a false identity, she moved to Amsterdam, joining the underground organization there.

Lore issued food stamps and false documents to Jews in hiding. She helped Jews escape from the Westerborkconcentration camp, avoiding deportation to the extermination camps. After the war, she married Aaron Greenbaum-Goren, a fighter of the Jewish Brigade whom she met at the first convention of the Hechalutz Movement. The couple moved to Israel in 1946 and settled in the Hefer Valley.

Naomi Mayer – Hungary-Switzerland (1924-1945), Tragic Outcome

Naomi Mayer managed to rescue two brothers aged three and four and incorporate them into the Budapest Salvation Committee Railway. During the months she was in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, she hid and fed both children. After 180 days, Naomi was released with the children, and the three were taken to Switzerland along with 1,600 other Jews.

Naomi took her own life when she learned that her boyfriend had been murdered and that she could not adopt the children for whom she had fought and cared so much.

Rabbi Josef Gean – Libya-Israel (1882-1960)

Rabbi Josef Gean risked his life and founded an illegal reception center in Libya that welcomed hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing Europe, at a time when the anti-Semitic Italian government sent hundreds of Jews to extermination camps and even built six concentration camps in Libya itself.

He moved with his family to Israel, as did most of his community, in 1948–49.

Pinchas Ostrowski – Poland-Israel (1922-1983)

Another unique story. In 1945, after the World War, Pinchas Ostrowski served as Director General of the Soviet Ministry of Agriculture in Mecholenka, Poland. Ostrowski rescued a Jewish child—whose family had been completely exterminated—from a Gentile peasant who refused to hand him over. He was driven by the desire to ensure that the child remained a member of the Jewish people.

To this end, he unleashed his imagination. He issued an order confiscating the agricultural produce of the village where the peasant lived. Accompanied by a Soviet soldier, he made a long and dangerous journey through the hostile territory of Ukraine until he was able to reach the village and rescue the Jewish child.

Ostrowski also used his authority to facilitate the departure of 70 Jews from Soviet soil and their transfer to the Land of Israel. In 1948, along with other Jewish fighters, he moved to Israel, joined the Israeli army, and retired as a lieutenant colonel in 1968.

Madeleine Dreyfus – France (1909-1987)

Madeleine Dreyfus was active in the famous Réseau Garel, whose mission was to find hiding places for Jewish children among Christian families in the villages of southern France. On numerous occasions, she herself transported these children by train, accompanying them to their destination.

She was arrested and deported to the Bergen-Belsen extermination camp, remaining there for seven months. Released in May 1945, she continued to practice her profession as an Adlerian psychologist in France.