Alan Schneider, Director of the B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem, shared his insights on our Jewish Rescuers Citation on a website dedicated to the new documentary, “Resistance: They Fought Back.”

Read on the “They Fought Back” website.

The Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust (“the Committee”) was established in Israel in 2000 at the initiative of the late Haim Roet (1932-2023), a Dutch Jew who survived the Holocaust as a child, hidden from the Nazis at great risk by both Christians and Jews. Founding committee members included rescuers, survivors, researchers, and myself. The Committee’s aim is to raise public awareness in Israel and around the world to the fact that many Jews endangered themselves to rescue fellow Jews during the Holocaust. The Committee presents these courageous acts as a source of Jewish national pride and as an example of the highest humanist conduct.

Holocaust historiography has tended to present Jews only as victims. This trend began to change some two decades ago when studies began to examine the daily lives of Jews during the Holocaust and the measures they took to survive in the fast deteriorating reality they faced.

From its early days the State of Israel showed appreciation for Jews who engaged in active combat against the Nazis and extended the title of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ to members of other religions who endangered their lives to rescue Jews. Jews who risked their own lives to rescue others received little attention in academic research and no formal recognition.

In fact, while the Germans and their collaborators attempted to methodically annihilate European Jewry, many Jews resisted the grim fate that awaited them. Half a million fought in the Allied armies and in the ranks of the partisans, revolted in the ghettos and led uprisings in extermination camps.

Another form of active resistance by Jews was the rescue of fellow Jews while exposing themselves to great danger. Renowned Holocaust historians have noted: that Jewish self-rescue is “an additional aspect of the study of the Jewish response during the Holocaust which is not sufficiently well-known”, that “Jews played an active and significant role throughout occupied Europe in the rescue of other Jews” and that “Non-Jews were not the only ones who saved Jews; Jews also saved Jews, and non-Jews were sometimes saved by Jews.” The ability of Jews to act was much more restricted than that of non-Jews, who were not persecuted by the Nazis, and reflects the highest form of Jewish and human solidarity. These acts of rescue are a supreme expression of the ancient Jewish principles “Thou shalt not stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor” and “All Jews are responsible for one another.” These activities do not reflect a collection of coincidental events but, in many cases, a phenomenon of methodical, carefully planned rescue operations that took place across Europe and North Africa, carried out both by individuals and groups. Rescue operations were carried out from the rise of the Nazis to power until after the end of WWII.

Despite the difficult conditions which varied from place to place and evolved as the war progressed, many who could have fled chose to exhibit exemplary solidarity and remain behind to rescue others; some paid for it with their lives. With great heroism, Jews in Germany, and every country in occupied Europe exploited loopholes in Nazi bureaucracy and employed subterfuge, document replication, smuggling, concealment, and other methods to help Jews survive the Holocaust or assist them in escaping to safe haven. In doing so they foiled the Nazi goal of total annihilation of the Jews. Since many rescue operations were not documented, there is no clear estimate of the scope of this phenomenon, and it is likely that records of many cases have been lost forever. Many Jewish rescuers were awarded national decorations by foreign countries while the State of Israel and its institutions have made no similar gesture event to this day.

The Committee strives to close the gap of eighty years during which these heroes were left largely unknown and unrecognized by the Jewish people. To achieve this, it promotes public activities in Israel and abroad, cooperating where possible with governmental bodies, academia, educational institutions, Jewish communities and organizations for Holocaust commemoration. These include: an annual ceremony held by the B’nai B’rith World Center and the Jewish National Fund on Yom Hashoah v’Hagvura (Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day) at the B’nai B’rith Martyrs Forest dedicated since 2002 to the legacy of Jewish rescuers; the Jews Saving Jews Forum (established in 2018) at Bar-Ilan University’s Finkler Institute of Holocaust Research; and The Jewish Rescuers Citation (established in 2011 with the B’nai B’rith World Center) which has been presented to 624 Jewish rescuers–in person or posthumously–who operated across Europe and North Africa.

Since 2020, the Committee has been chaired by Aryeh Barnea, a second generation educator and Holocaust researcher, who initiated, among other things, the soon-to-open Jewish Rescuers Center, located at the Wilfrid Israel Museum in HaZore’a, Israel.

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Alan Schneider is the director of B’nai B’rith World Center in Jerusalem, which serves as the hub of B’nai B’rith International activities in Israel. The World Center is the key link between Israel and B’nai B’rith members and supporters around the world. To view some of his additional content, click here.