Bøger af Mordecai Paldiel

Other than the celebrated story of Oskar Schindler, there were other Germans who helped Jews survive the Nazi-orchestrated Holocaust, and close to 600 of them have been honored as Righteous Among the Nations by the Jerusalem Yad Vashem Holocaust Institute. This book details the rescue deeds of a large select group of German rescuers, either inside Germany or in other countries under German occupation. The author was the director for 24 years of a special department at Yad Vashem that dealt with honoring non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.

A history and analysis of the program by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Institute, in Jerusalem, on behalf of the State of Israel, of honoring non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust

Up to 1939, when Poland came under German domination, it was the center of the European Jewish world, filled with a large Jewish population that had lived on Polish soil for over nine centuries, and developed a vibrant self-sustaining social and religious community culture. During the German occupation of World War II, close to 3 million Polish Jews were exterminated. Poland was where the Nazis established most of their ghettos and all death camps. It was where the railroad tracks converged, bringing hundreds of thousand Jews from the remotest corners of Europe to feed the Nazi death machine. Thousands of Poles risked their lives to save Jews by mostly sheltering them, while most others were passive onlookers, fearful for their lives to get involved, and too many others collaborated with the hated enemy in eliminating Jews. Mordecai Paldiel, a historian of the Holocaust, examines the important role Jews played in Poland in the years before Germans occupied the country. He also examines the antisemitism that existed in Poland before the Nazis arrived. Just as important, he highlights the various responses of Poles as witnesses of the German extermination of Jews, including the thousands who, in spite of the dangers to themselves, did their utmost to save Jews from the German-orchestrated Holocaust.

In this remarkable, historically significant book, Mordecai Paldiel recounts in vivid detail the many ways in which, at great risk to their own lives, Jews rescued other Jews during the Holocaust. In so doing he puts to rest the widely held belief that all Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe wore blinders and allowed themselves to be led like "lambs to the slaughter".