When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland

When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland
ISBN-10
0195036433
ISBN-13
9780195036435
Category
Social Science / Folklore & Mythology
Pages
262
Language
English
Published
1986
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Author
Nechama Tec

Description

Everyone knows the name of Anne Frank but few people remember anything about the people who sheltered her. Who were the rescuers and what motivated them to risk their lives for persecuted Jews? Clearly such people deserve to be remembered and honored. And clearly an understanding of their
motivations may help us cultivate such behavior in our own day.
This book focuses on such righteous Christians. Tec, herself a Holocaust survivor helped by Christians, vividly recreates through hundreds of cases what it was like to pass and hide among Christians and what it was like to rescue Jews. Limiting her compass to Poland, where anti-Semitism was
particularly extreme, the author interviewed dozens of people now living in many lands and also examined a vast array of published accounts and unpublished testimonies yielding case histories of over 500 Polish helpers. As the book preserves for posterity the heroism of such people as Celka, the
impoverished governess, and her paralyzed father, who took into their one-room apartment a Jewish child, refused to baptize her without her family's permission, and even fed her before they themselves ate, or Dr. Felix Kabus, who developed and frequently performed an operation that camouflaged
circumcision, or the famous anti-Semitic author who wrote publicly about what was happening to the Jews, the book fills a significant gap in our knowledge of the Holocaust.
Considering the influence of such factors as class, education, religion, political persuasion, and friendship between the victims and rescuers, Tec finds only two common characteristics among this incredibly diverse group: an overpowering need to help others under any circumstances and an
intense individualism. The rescuers were individuals who did not rely on the opinions of others. Tec writes.
About the Author:
Nechama Tec, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Connectucut, is also the author of Dry Tears

Other editions

Similar books