The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

Author: Martin Gilbert

Drawing from 25 years of original research, Sir Martin Gilbert recreates the remarkable stories of non-Jews who risked their lives to help Jews during the Holocaust.

According to Jewish tradition, "Whoever saves one life, it is as if he saved the entire world." Non-Jews who helped save Jewish lives during World War II are designated “Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. In The Righteous, Gilbert, through extensive interviews, explores the courage of those who—throughout Germany and in every occupied country from Norway to Greece, from the Atlantic to the Baltic—took incredible risks to help Jews whose fate would have been sealed without them. Indeed, many lost their lives for their efforts.

Those who hid Jews included priests, nurses, teachers, neighbors and friends, employees and colleagues, soldiers and diplomats, and, above all, ordinary citizens. From Greek Orthodox Princess Alice of Greece, who hid Jews in her home in Athens, to the Ukrainian Uniate Archbishop of Lvov, who hid hundreds of Jews in his churches and monasteries, to Muslims in Bosnia and Albania, many risked and lost everything to help their fellow man.

Paperback

560 pages