Who Were The Righteous Among The Nations? Quiz

Answer: to create a memorial so that victims' names would be remembered

The name "Yad Vashem" is taken from Isaiah 56:5 - "Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name (Hebrew: Yad Vashem) better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off". This name was selected to represent the Jewish victims of Holocaust who had no family members to carry on their name after death.

The Yad Vashem building complex contains the Holocaust History Museum and memorial sites such as the Children's Memorial, the Hall of Remembrance, and The Museum of Holocaust Art, among its many key points of interest.

Yad Vashem honors those non-Jews (Gentiles) who saved, assisted or rescued Jews during the Holocaust, in spite of grave danger to themselves. They are recognized by the Jewish people as being the "Righteous Among the Nations".

Answer: he marched with them to their deaths, keeping them calm

This Polish Jewish former military doctor operated an orphanage that housed between 192 and 196 children. When the Nazis showed up to remove the children to the trains that would later transport them to the extermination camp at Treblinka, Janusz Korczak accompanied them, maintaining a sense of calm for their sakes.

In an account written by author Wladyslaw Szpilman, "He told the orphans they were going out in to the country, so they ought to be cheerful. At last they would be able to exchange the horrible suffocating city walls for meadows of flowers, streams where they could bathe, woods full of berries and mushrooms. He told them to wear their best clothes, and so they came out into the yard, two by two, nicely dressed and in a happy mood. The little column was led by an SS man..."

Janusz Korczak had been given ample opportunities to escape from the Warsaw Ghetto to the "Aryan Side" of German-occupied Poland, but he refused all of those many offers in order to stay (and die) with the children who were in his care.

Answer: Belgian

In 1942, the Bonnewijns of Belgium operated a small boarding house or "pension" in which Raymond and his 14-year-old sister, Lydia stayed, after their parents made the effort to ensure their safety. Lydia returned home after some time, but Raymond stayed on until the liberation two years later. At one time, leading Nazis were staying at the pension, but were effectively misled into believing that Raymond was a distant family relative.

On May 26, 1999, Yad Vashem recognized Charles and Germaine Bonnewijn, along with their 30 year-old son, Georges, as being "Righteous Among the Nations".

Answer: Oskar Schindler

Oskar Schindler's efforts during the dark days of the Holocaust did not go unrecognized. Initially, he was a fairly unsuccessful businessman, filing bankruptcy on a number of occasions, but was an active Nazi Party member. After several of his businesses failed, he seemed to find his niche in the production of enamelware. It was here that Oskar was able to assist in saving the lives of many Jewish people. While he initially began his venture as an exploiter of cheap Jewish labor, he eventually allowed his sense of humanity to overwhelm the bigotry and hatreds that surrounded him in his culture as he protected his workers from the death camps and the gas chambers.

The Hebrew inscription on his grave reads: "Righteous Among the Nations", while the German inscription reads: "The Unforgettable Lifesaver of 1,200 Persecuted Jews".

Schindler was once quoted as saying, "I knew the people who worked for me ... When you know people, you have to behave towards them like human beings."

A movie co-produced by Steven Spielberg, "Schindler's List", which was based on the novel "Schindler's Ark", by Thomas Keneally, portrays the manner in which he claimed that many of his Jewish workers were productive and "necessary" for the German economy. He simply would not allow them to be taken away to certain death by composing a list of those who were "essential" personnel. Even the aged, the lame, along with some of the wives and children of his factory workers were thus protected by his proactive stance.

This activity seems to be the capstone of his life; for after the war, he once again became destitute and survived only as a result of government largesse and from the assistance of several Jews!

Kudos to you, Oskar! What better legacy than protecting others from cruel deaths and sufferings could anyone ever earn?

Hermann Göring was Hitler's designated successor for a time, and was commander of the Luftwaffe (German Air Force) as well as the founder of the Gestapo.
Martin Bormann held the title of "Head of the Party Chancellery" and was the private secretary to Adolf Hitler.
Karl Gebhardt was the personal physician of Heinrich Himmler and was one of the main people involved in surgical experiments performed on inmates of Ravensbrück and Auschwitz.

Answer: El Salvador

República de El Salvador literally is interpreted as "Republic of The Savior". How appropriate that a man who was instrumental in saving an estimated 40,000 Jews and others from destruction should come from a nation by that name!

José Arturo Castellanos Contreras was a Salvadoran army colonel and a diplomat who found himself in Geneva, Switzerland from 1941-1945, after serving a brief stint in Nazi Germany in 1938.

A Jewish businessman named György Mandl had asked him for assistance in obtaining forged documents in order to save his family from Auschwitz, and Contreras complied. Castellanos gave him the made-up position of "First Secretary to the Consul". In fact, he and Mandl became quite adept at forging documents to assist with the survival of many, many others, up until the end of WWII.

Through his efforts, thousands of so-called "Salvadorans" of Bulgarian, Czechoslovak, Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian descent were saved from Nazi atrocities.

At the war's end, Castellanos lived a quiet life, rarely speaking of his role in aiding those who had been in greatest need during the Holocaust, but writer Leon Uris tracked him down in 1972; otherwise his contributions went unrecognized. A number of years passed after his death in 1977, but in 2010 he was honored with the title of "Righteous Among the Nations" by Yad Vashem.

Answer: Political

Ludwig Wörl was originally sent to Dachau, the first permanent Nazi concentration camp. It opened on 22 March 1933, initially for political prisoners. His crime? For daring to distribute a pamphlet to others concerning the atrocities that were being committed at that camp!

In 1942, he was sent to Auschwitz to assist in treating an outbreak of typhus that threatend not only the inmates, but also the guard personnel. During his time there, he repeatedly ignored orders as set forth by the Nazis, daring to employ Jewish doctors, and thereby saving their lives. Futhermore, he managed to obtain at least a minimum amount of medicines, medical instruments and such like for the treatment of the sick. He also forged "selection lists" in order to save Jewish patients from death by gassing.

Later he was sent to the sub-camp in Günthergrube for his refusal to comply with Nazi orders. He found ways to protect over 600 Jewish prisoners there from maltreatment by sadistic German guards and saw to it that the prisoners received their share of food and clothing. Daring to buck the system cost him many months in dark and solitary confinement and being moved from camp to camp, but each time when he returned to the main body of the camps, he simply resumed his activities.

At the end of the war, he devoted his time to bringing the perpetrators of Nazi inhumanity to justice. In 1963, he was one of the key witnesses in the Auschwitz trial, and on March 19 of that same year he was awarded an honored status among the "Righteous Among The Nations" for his undying efforts on behalf of the Jews.

Answer: Kurt was sent to the Russian front, the others were sent to Auschwitz

Kurt (a native-born German from Düsseldorf) was an anti-Fascist and had been barred by the Nazi authorities from studying in German universities. His wife, Ella (a native of Austria) began helping Jewish students, and during the Night of Broken Glass ("Kristallnacht") she hid ten Jews in her room while local Jewish shops were broken into and ransacked.

The couple met and became friends with Baron Karl von Motesiczky in 1939. He invited the Lingens to live during the summer months in a large house which he owned in Vienna. He often hosted Jews and members of the anti-Nazi resistance at the house. The Lingenses once hid a young Jewish woman, Erika Felden, in their apartment in the house for several months in 1942-43.

The apartment eventually became a sort of way-station for the couple's Jewish friends. A number of people helped them in their endeavors, but one man, Rudolf Klinger, who volunteered to help was later revealed to be an informer for the Gestapo, and facilitated in the arrests of the Lingens and the Baron.

As their punishments, Kurt was assigned to a unit made up of soldiers who were sent to the Russian front, where he was seriously wounded.
Ella Lingens and the Baron von Motesiczky were sent to Auschwitz labor camp, where the Baron died of typhus in 1943.
Ella was put to work as a doctor of the inmates, and managed to save a number of Jews from death in the gas chambers. She was taken on a death march to Dachau, but somehow managed to survive until the end of the war.

(The Gestapo informant, Klinger, was eventually arrested and since he had outlived his usefuleness to the Gestapo he was sent to Auschwitz, where he died.)

In 1980, Yad Vashem honored both Kurt and Ella Lingens as belonging among the "Righteous Among the Nations".

Answer: Lorenzo Perrone

Lorenzo Perrone was honored as one of the "Righteous Among The Nations" for the small, but significant kindnesses that he showed to Primo Levi, while the latter was imprisoned at Auschwitz III (Buna).

The extra food, part of Perrone's own food ration, helped to save Levi's life, and that of others with whom he shared it. The last bowl of soup that Perrone was able to deliver to Levi was dirt-laden and had cost Perrone a bursted ear drum. Perrone was on his way to deliver the soup to Levi, when overhead a bombardment began that caused one of Perrone's eardrums to burst. Dirt and sand were blown into the bowl that he was carrying, but he merely apologized to Levi for the delay and for the dirty soup, but never mentioned how it had gotten fouled, until he was asked.

Answer: during a football game

René Dumonteil was a civil engineer who lived in Rochechouart, France. He was the vice president of the local youth football team. The brothers Gustave and David Szwec, who had been born in Slonim, Russia, moved to Paris in 1927, along with their parents and siblings. When Germany invaded France, the family scattered into different directions. Gustave moved to Limoges and became employed as a dental technician.
At one point, he began to play for the Limoges football team. Once during a game, René Dumonteil noticed his talent as a player and came out to introduce himself, thus forming a friendship between the two. Dumonteil even suggested that in the event that he should ever face a problem being a Jew that he should come to his house in Rochechouart.

In June 1942, the mother of David and Gustave was arrested in Paris, and was sent to Auschwitz, from which she never returned. Dumonteil, who was an active member of the French Resistance, offered to help the brothers. He got together some false ID papers for David and after initially hiding him with some farmers, later moved him to a partisan unit within the Resistance movement.

Gustave had been ordered to report to the Forced Labor Service. Instead, he remembered what René had advised and went immediately to his home. After a year of being sheltered by his friend, Gustave also joined the Resistance.

Until his death in 1995, René Dumonteil absolutely refused any recognition for his acts of heroism during the war. He would merely answer that it was the only way that a true Frenchman could possibly be expected to respond.

On May 9, 2007, Yad Vashem recognized Rene Dumonteil as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations".

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Answer: circus owners

The Adolf Althoff circus consisted of about 90 artists along with their families and toured all over Europe, traveling from one place to another.

In the summer of 1941, the circus was visited by Irene Danner, as it stopped near Darmstadt in Hesse, Germany. She was a descended (on her mother's side of the family) from a circus dynasty, the Lorch family. Her father was not Jewish and had been enlisted in the German army. Even though Irene was only half-Jewish, she and her sister were considered Jews according to Nazi Germany's race laws, and as a result they had suffered from severe discrimination.

While Adolf was aware of her Jewish descent and in spite of being under close scrutiny by the German Ministry of Culture, he nontheless agreed to hire Irene for his circus under an alias.

Later, in 1943, after the family's house was confiscated by the Nazi authorities, and her grandmother was sent to a concentration camp, Irene's mother, Alice, and her sister Gerda managed to also escape to the same circus. Adolf employed them also.

Eventually, they were also joined by Irene's father, Hans, who had been sent home from the war-front, (like many other German soldiers), to divorce his Jewish wife. He decided to forego going back to the army and joined his family in its secret existence.

The entire circus knew of their secret and while no one ever denounced the family, the Althoffs had to reckon with the constant possibility of betrayal by any of their workers.

After the war, Adolf explained, "I couldn't simply permit them to fall into the hands of the murderers. This would have made me a murderer."

On January 2, 1995, Yad Vashem recognized Adolf and Maria Althoff
as "Righteous Among The Nations".
Upon receiving the honor Adolf Althoff stated, "We circus people see no difference between races or religions."