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U.S. Army Garrison Rheinland-Pfalz joins our nation and the rest of the world in honoring the 6 million Jews murdered in cold blood during the Holocaust, 1 million of whom were children, with a Days of Remembrance ceremony scheduled for Apr. 18. We also take a pause to honor and remember the millions of non-Jewish victims persecuted and killed by the German Nazis during World War II.
At some point in life, we all must make difficult choices. Choosing to do what’s right is what some heroes opted to do during this dark time in history, without hesitation, and the world will be forever grateful for them.
As millions of bystanders watched the crimes of the Holocaust unfold in city squares, schools, stores, workplaces and homes, a courageous few decided to risk it all to help those in need.
Irena Sendler was one of those courageous heroes. She helped smuggle more than 2,500 children to safety, despite knowing what the consequences could be if the Nazis found out. She was later arrested, imprisoned and tortured for her actions.
Sendler was a 29-year-old Polish social worker when World War II broke out. Her employment with the Welfare Department of the Warsaw municipality helped her gain access to the Warsaw ghetto where it was her job to inspect sanitary conditions. She saw this as an opportunity to help as many children as she could, escape.
She managed their escape and helped them hide in convents, schools, private homes and hospitals. She provided them with new identities while recording, in code, their original names and locations, with the hope that one day this information could be used to reunite the displaced children with their families. Trying to keep this information safe, she hid it in jars that she buried in a friend’s garden.
Unfortunately, Sendler’s actions were discovered by the German secret state police in 1943. She was arrested, tortured and sentenced to death for refusing to cooperate. Luckily, she was rescued by the Zegota, an organized underground council set up to help Jews, before she could be executed.
Officially, she was on the bulletin of those who were to be executed, so she assumed a false identity and continued her mission to rescue as many children as she could until the end of the war.
Just a year before Sendler’s arrest, a man named Charles “Carl” Lutz was appointed as the Swiss vice-consul in Budapest, Hungary.
Following the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944 in which Jews started to be sent to concentration camps, Lutz negotiated an agreement with the Nazis to allow 8,000 Jews to leave the country. However, Lutz intentionally misinterpreted the agreement, and allowed not 8,000 people, but 8,000 families, to be issued protective letters to be able to move [to safety].
He had already used his power and status to help 10,000 children emigrate to Palestine the year before. He also established 76 safe houses — defined as Swiss annexes — in the Budapest area.
It did not stop there. Lutz and his wife Gertrude helped free many Jews from death marches and deportation centers.
They are credited with saving more than 62,000 Hungarian Jews from certain death.
Another hero worth honoring is Anna Christensen, who helped bring 40 Jewish children to safety from Germany to Denmark, and later to Sweden.
Following the terrifying events of Chrystal Night on Nov. 9, 1938, where more than 1,000 synagogues and 7,500 Jewish business were damaged or burned, a few women’s Danish groups joined the efforts of the Youth Aliyah Child Rescue, a Jewish organization that rescued thousands of Jewish children from the Nazis during the Third Reich.
As a result of the Crystal Night events, children were often sent alone to the child rescue group by their parents, hoping to give them a chance of survival. Over 300 children arrived in Nyborg, Denmark, where the International Women’s League for Peace and Freedom, led by Christensen, welcomed them with open arms and helped relocate them within local Danish families.
Initially, children were integrated into local schools. However, when the Nazis eventually occupied Denmark, once again endangering the children, Christensen converted the cellar of her own house into a classroom to host and hide 40 of those children.
In 1943, she managed to keep the children hidden during a German raid. A few days later, with the help of the Danish resistance, she brought them to the coast and was able to have them escorted safely to Sweden.
Yad Vashem, the national Authority for the Remembrance of the Martyrs and Heroes of the Holocaust, recognized Lutz and his wife in 1964, Sendler in 1965, and Christensen in 1966 with the Righteous Among the Nations Medal.
According to the Yad Vashem website, the Righteous Among the Nations medal is awarded to non-Jewish people who “took great risks to save Jews during the Holocaust. Rescue took many forms and the Righteous came from different nations, religions and walks of life.”
Several other groups besides the Jewish community also suffered the wrath of the Nazi Party. Political dissidents, social democrats, trade unionists, male homosexuals, Black people and Jehovah’s Witnesses became victims – some for what they believed in, some for who they were, and some for what they refused to do.
Intellectually and physically disabled Germans, defined as “life unworthy of life,” were euthanized just because their existence violated the Nazi ideal of “Aryan supremacy.”
Racial “pollution” was the Nazi’s justification for indiscriminately killing between 250,000 and 500,000 Roma and Sinti people, derogatively referred to as Gypsies. Besides the Jews, they were the only other ethnic group that Nazis systematically killed in gas chambers.
Lutz, Sendler and Christensen made a choice. They could have looked the other way like many others did. Instead, they chose to intervene even if that meant putting themselves and their own families in danger.
They chose to put the lives of helpless people before their own, hoping they would one day see a world free from persecution.
This year, the Days of Remembrance Week was observed from April 16-23 with April 18 being Holocaust Remembrance Day.
