Rescuers of Holocaust Victims :: essays research papers

Individuals who risked their lives†¦ There were many individuals who risked their lives to rescue and hide the Jews during the Holocaust. Some of them got caught, while some of them made it until their village’s liberation day. An example of a rescuer that saved a Jew’s life is Jadwiga Suchodolski. This young girl was from a Catholic family. Her family lived in the village of Krzynowloga Wielski. At one evening of April in 1943 her family heard a knock on their door. When they opened it, they saw a Jewish man that fell down on his knees with his body all swollen up from hunger. The family talked about it and decided to let Michael in. They promised to keep him a secret. Two years later when liberation day came, the word spread that a Jew was being nursed back to life in their village. One day a group of partisans broke into Jadwiga’s house and demanded that Michael be turned over to them, but Jadwiga held them off long enough to let Michael escape. When the partisans realized that the Jew left, they gave a chase but did not catch up with him. In revenge, they ransacked Jadwiga’s house. Later Michael came back, but soon after he married Jadwiga and left to live in Israel in 19 57. Another example is Irena Sendler. Irena worked as a member of a Council for Aid to Jews. She had a permit allowing her to visit the ghetto area at all times. In the summer of 1942, under the code of â€Å"Jolanta†, she arranged some things for Jewish children to be smuggled out of the ghetto and found some non-Jewish families where the kids can stay. In the fall of 1943, Irena was arrested and was taken to a prison, and brutally tortured. The Gestapo people failed to get information from her, so she was supposed to be executed. However, her Jewish underground buddies had bribed one of the Gestapo agents, and on the day that Irena was supposed to be executed, she was released. She was forced to stay out of sight from the Germans, but she still conducted her activities from her hiding place.