By
– September 1, 2011
Agnes Grunwald-Spier was born in Budapest in July 1944. She and her mother were sent to a ghetto there in November. She was saved from the horrors of Auschwitz by an unknown official in charge of deporting Hungarian Jews to that death camp. She has no way of knowing who that person was and what his motives were. In this book, in homage to the spirit of his act, she has collected the stories of thirty individuals who rescued Jews and thereby provides new insight into why these people were willing to risk so much to help the most vulnerable.
Scholars of the Shoah speak of three categories of people: perpetrators, victims and bystanders. There is a fourth category that seems statistically less impressive — the rescuers. Fortunately, it is not a category that can be measured only by numbers — its measure is metaphysical and spiritual and it belongs to the sublime because it can reclaim the very concept of the human during the darkest of times. This is the category of those courageous souls who refused to stand by as their neighbors were rounded to killing sites. They were willing to see, to judge, and to act. They did not avert their eyes, they set out to rescue. The thirty individuals examined in this book came from Poland, Germany, Italy, China, Austria, Holland, France, and Vichy, France. They are Catholic and Protestant, rural and urban, educated and uneducated, religious and secular. Typically, although whatever they did often endangered their lives, they deny any heroism. “It was only what a decent person would do,” they proclaim.
This book demonstrates that they are above decent. Their conduct exemplifies the exceptional. Those who undertook the risks, whose moral strengths urged them into heartstopping responsibilities, are the real heroes of a battered world. In the killing Europe of the 20th century, these principled individuals stood out as a beacon of hope and from their heroic actions we can learn the full resonance of the human spirit.
The Other Schindlers is an inspiring book that helps us piece together a portrait of the exemplars of moral courage during the Holocaust and their motivations.
Scholars of the Shoah speak of three categories of people: perpetrators, victims and bystanders. There is a fourth category that seems statistically less impressive — the rescuers. Fortunately, it is not a category that can be measured only by numbers — its measure is metaphysical and spiritual and it belongs to the sublime because it can reclaim the very concept of the human during the darkest of times. This is the category of those courageous souls who refused to stand by as their neighbors were rounded to killing sites. They were willing to see, to judge, and to act. They did not avert their eyes, they set out to rescue. The thirty individuals examined in this book came from Poland, Germany, Italy, China, Austria, Holland, France, and Vichy, France. They are Catholic and Protestant, rural and urban, educated and uneducated, religious and secular. Typically, although whatever they did often endangered their lives, they deny any heroism. “It was only what a decent person would do,” they proclaim.
This book demonstrates that they are above decent. Their conduct exemplifies the exceptional. Those who undertook the risks, whose moral strengths urged them into heartstopping responsibilities, are the real heroes of a battered world. In the killing Europe of the 20th century, these principled individuals stood out as a beacon of hope and from their heroic actions we can learn the full resonance of the human spirit.
The Other Schindlers is an inspiring book that helps us piece together a portrait of the exemplars of moral courage during the Holocaust and their motivations.
Michael N. Dobkowski is a professor of religious studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is co-editor of Genocide and the Modern Age and On the Edge of Scarcity (Syracuse University Press); author of The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism; and co-author of The Nuclear Predicament.
