Holocaust Rescues
The Holocaust was a tragic event that caused the death of many individuals. Most Jews in the Holocaust couldn’t survive by themselves without being captured and that’s where rescuers come in. Rescuers during the Holocaust took in Jews, giving them a hiding place, food, and shelter, kept someone being a Jew a secret, or just hid someone’s star of David to save them from the authority. Even though rescuing a Jew in the Holocaust risked the Jew’s life, the rescuer’s life, and the rescuer’s family’s life, many continued to save lives of the Jews. It took courage to risk your own life for the life of another, but some felt it was the right thing to do even with the punishments. Rescuers could be anyone with any job or any social
…show more content…
People who helped others often helped people they knew before the Holocaust. Some helped for financial gain while others helped from pure kindness. Reasons for helping were friendship, political opposition to the Nazis, financial or personal gain, knowing the horrors of the camps, oe they knew it was the ethical thing to do. “Rescuers came from every religious background: Protestant and Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Muslim” (Holocaust Encyclopedia). No matter how people were brought up or what their views were, kind people were kind people. Someone’s religion was unimportant to the Jews when they were being human and helping. Even with religious problems in the Holocaust, many put those differences aside to help the Jews. “Rescuers were peasants, nannies, aristocrats, clergy, bakers, doctors, social workers, store keepers, school children, police officers, grandmothers, anyone, any country” (Rescue and Liberation). “Sometimes the least likely person would say yes. Peasants, housekeepers, teachers, and farmers who had been known to speak negatively about Jews agreed to take them in; intellectuals who detested Hitler's policy toward the Jews declined out of fear” (Rosenberg