Righteous Gentiles Trivia Quiz

Answer: Otto Frank was her employer

Miep Gies, an Austrian-born Christian woman, had been Otto Frank's secretary in Amsterdam. Miep Gies spoke at length about her experience in an on-line interview on the Scholastic web site in 1997. Gies explained in the interview that she immediately agreed to aid the Franks, and never considered betraying them.

When asked about the risks she took, Gies explained "Permanent remorse about failing to do your human duty, in my opinion, can be worse than losing your life". Miep Gies has received recognition for her bravery from the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem, from the German government, and from the Queen of the Netherlands. (Information from the Scholastic web site.)

Answer: They were his employees in a war-time factory

Oscar Schindler, in many ways, was an unlikely hero. A bon vivant and a womanizer, he stated that he was repelled by the cruelty and the sadism of the Nazis. During the war Schindler ran an enamel-ware plant. The employees of his factory were approximately 1,200 Jewish prisoners, whom he protected under the guise of providing vital equipment for the German war effort.

When his employees were deported to Auschwitz, Schindler composed his famous "list" and succeeded in achieving the near-impossible by bribing Nazi officials - all the people on the list were returned from the hell of Auschwitz. Schindler remained in contact with many of the people he assisted after the war, and was eventually buried in Jerusalem. Today the descendents of the people he saved number over seven thousand.

Information for this question partly from: http://www.shoah.dk/Courage/Schindler.htm

Answer: His fate remains a mystery to this day

Raoul Wallenberg, a career diplomat, was stationed in Budapest in 1944-45 for the express purpose of aiding the threatened Jewish community. He issued approximately 30,000 false diplomatic passports in order to allow the Jews to escape from Hungary to Sweden and other neutral countries.

In addition, he provided safe houses for Jews to hide in. Wallenberg's fate after the war remains a mystery. It is widely believed that he ended up in a Stalinist prison, and the Soviets claimed that he died of a heart attack in 1947. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russians were unable to verify the fate of the Swedish diplomat, since his file had disappeared.

In 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan declared Wallenberg to be an honorary U.S. citizen.

He has been honored by Yad Vashem, and there is a street named after him in Jerusalem. Information from: http://www.auschwitz.dk/wallenberg.htm

Answer: False

Chiune Sugihara was born in 1900. While assigned to the Japanese embassy in Kaunas, Lithuania (in 1939-40) he was affected by the desperate situation of Jews trying to escape the Nazis. Sugihara approached the Japanese Foreign Ministry several times, and asked for their permission to help the Jews in Kaunas. Each time he was met with a resounding "no". Nevertheless, Sugihara issued thousands of transit permits, spending ten to twelve hours a day writing permits by hand. Apparently, he continued to write permits on the train after he was told to leave Kaunas, and tossed the permits out the window in the hope that they would reach people who could benefit from them. On returning to Japan, Sugihara resigned from the Foreign Service. An Israeli diplomat in Japan who had been rescued by Sugihara as a teenager was finally able to locate him. Sugihara was honored by Yad Vashem in 1985, and sadly died the following year.

While no one can say for sure how many permits he issued and how many people he saved, descendents of those rescued by Sugihara number over forty thousand, including students of the renowned Mir Yeshiva. (Information for this question came from book review of Allison Leslie Gold's biography "A Special Fate", reviewed by Pamela Blevis.)

Answer: The Warsaw Ghetto

Irena Sendler was born in 1910 in a small town near Warsaw. Her father was a doctor who cared for poor Jews in Warsaw. A trained social worker, Sendler posed as a nurse in order to gain access to the Warsaw Ghetto. She employed great ingenuity in smuggling children out - in body bags, in potato sacks, and a helper even smuggled an infant out in a toolbox! Once she had removed the children from the Ghetto, Sendler placed them in a variety of places.

In an interview, she states that no one ever turned her down. Sendler was tortured by the Gestapo who had become aware of her activity, but even then refused to reveal the whereabouts of the children she had saved. Sendler recorded the real names of the children in code, and buried the coded papers in jars in a garden.

After the war, she attempted to reunite these children with their parents. Sendler has been given many awards for her courage, including the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest award. Irene Sendler died on May 12, 2008.

Answer: False

Three United States citizens have been cited as "Righteous Gentiles" by the Yad Vashem Memorial in Jerusalem. The first was Varian Fry, a Harvard-educated journalist. Fry, who was stationed in France, aided Jews to escape from Nazi-occupied France to neutral Portugal.

He offered assistance to many well-known artists, including Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz and also the political theorist Hannah Arendt. Fry passed away in 1967, and was only recognized after his death. The other Americans were Martha and Waitsill Sharp, a couple from Boston. Sharp, a Unitarian minister and his social worker wife, were sent by the Unitarian Church to assist Unitarians in occupied Czechoslovakia. Once in Prague, the Sharps began to help the Jewish community to escape to Portugal. Martha Sharp continued her efforts on behalf of the Jewish community after the war, traveling to Morocco and Iraq to assist Jewish children on their way to the young State of Israel.

The Sharps were recognized by Yad Vashem in 2008. (Information from Wikipedia and from the web page of Arutz 7)

Answer: Albania

The Bicaku family of Albania were honored in 2007 by the Anti-Defamation League with the "Courage to Care" award for their bravery during the Holocaust. Actually, the Bicaku family was not unusual. Albania is the only country in Europe in which there were more Jews after the Second World War than there were at the beginning, since Jews from outside of Albania found refuge there.

This is largely due to the Albanian code of honor, called "besa".The Albanians regarded the Jewish families they guarded as guests, not as a burden or as foreigners, and felt that their responsibility toward them was a sacred trust. (Information for this question came from the web page of the Anti-Defamation League)

Answer: Nuns

Although the official stance of the Catholic Church during the Holocaust is a subject of controversy, there is no doubt that Catholic convents throughout Europe opened their doors to Jewish children during the war. Jewish parents and other adults involved in rescue operations automatically approached the convents for assistance, and it appears that in a great many instances, the nuns took considerable risks to hide these children. Often they supplied them with false names, and trained the children to hide their true identities.

The convents of Poland and Belgium deserve a special mention for the scope of their aid.

Answer: The Jewish Brigade Group - Jewish soldiers from Palestine who fought with the British against the Nazis

The Jewish Brigade Group was a volunteer unit of young Jews from the Land of Israel who fought with the British against the Nazis during the Second World War. Aron Yerushalimi, Moshe Weinbaum and Asher Schwartz, who were fighting with the British in Greece, were captured by the Germans and sent by trains towards Germany.

They were able to escape from the train while it was still in Greece, and found refuge with the Panayotis family. The family learned that the Nazis were looking for the escaped Jewish soldiers, and moved them to the village church with the cooperation of the local priest. Sadly, Leonidis was shot to death by the Communists during the Greek Civil War.

The young men who he saved survived the war and returned to Israel, where they able to tell of the rescuer's bravery.

Answer: The local pastor

Andre Trocmé was a Huguenot minister and a pacifist. He settled in the village of Chambon-sur-Lignon in hope of finding a quiet place where he could live by his ideals without attracting undue attention. When the Jewish community of Paris was rounded up and deported, Trocme told his parishioners that Christians should "drop down on their knees . . . and beg pardon for their cowardice". Under Trocme's leadership, the villagers hid Jews who arrived in the village, and moved them to nearby forests when the Nazis came looking for them.

The village of Chambon-sur-Lignon saved five thousand souls, and have been honored with a garden in the Yad Vashem Memorial. (Information for this question from the Yad Vashem web page.) Thank you for playing this quiz. I hope you found these stories as inspiring as I did.