AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Raoul Wallenburg- 

" I am a diplomat and businessman, I was appointed legation secretary of the Swedish diplomatic mission in Budapest in June 1944, an extremely difficult and stressful job as you can imagine. My job, if you were wondering, was to launch a rescue operation for Jews and I became head of a special department. By issuing protective Swedish passports and renting Buildings – ‘Swedish houses’ where Jews could seek shelter – I saved tens of thousands of lives. Surely you'd do the same thing if it meant saving innocent people? I don't feel like a hero, I am just a normal human being. "

NEW VOICE

"Raoul's fate remains unknown by the world but Russia claims he died in a Soviet prison on 17 July 1947. However, many witness reports suggest he may have been alive much later.

Few Swedes have received as much international acclaim and attention as Raoul has as he has gained many posthumous awards. In 1981, he became the second of a total of just seven people to be named honorary citizens of the United States.

Oskar Schindler- 

"In 1939 I obtained an enamelware factory in Krakow, Poland, which employed around 1,750 workers, many of them being Jewish prisoners. My close connections helped me to protect my Jewish workers from deportation and death in the Nazi concentration camps. Initially, I was interested in the money-making potential of the business. Later I began shielding my innocent workers without regard for the cost. As time went on, I had to give Nazi officials ever larger bribes and gifts of luxury items obtainable only on the black market to keep my workers safe. 

By the end of the war, I had spent my entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for my workers like food and clothing to keep them healthy and warm. Destitute and moved by my experience in Nazi Germany, I was sadly reduced to receiving aid from Jewish organizations, which made me feel bad as they needed the money for themselves to rebuild their own lives. What I did wasn't heroic though, it was human nature, you'd do the same, surely?

Irena Sendler- 

"I was a social worker before the war so obviously I had to do something to help these helpless Jewish children. So, I smuggled them out of their poverty- stricken ghettos in Poland and kept them in safe hands, some even got adopted by new families. The German occupiers eventually discovered my activities and I was arrested by the Gestapo and put behind bars, tortured and sentenced to death, but I somehow managed to evade execution and survive the war. In 1965, I was recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations. Later in life I was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest honour, for my wartime humanitarian efforts. I appeared on a silver 2008 Polish commemorative coin honouring some of the Polish Righteous among the Nations, something I am not happy about as it was an awful image of me.

My achievement went largely unnoticed for many years but I don't mind, I'm no hero. I am a social worker, I was just doing my job.

Chiune Sugihara- 

"In the dreary summer of 1940, Jewish refugees came to me with fake visas for Curacao in South America and other Dutch colonies in America. I decided to facilitate their escape from war-torn Europe by granting their access into other countries. I had no clear instructions from Tokyo on what to do so I granted 10-day visas for transit through Japan to hundreds of refugees who held Curacao destination visas. Before closing my consulate in the autumn of 1940, I also gave visas to refugees who lacked all travel papers, something I took a huge risk by doing as it put me in a lot of danger. By doing this, I helped several thousand Jews leave the country by issuing transit visas to Jewish refugees so that they could travel to Japan. Most of the Jews who escaped were refugees from German-occupied Poland and residents of Lithuania.

In 1985, Israel named me to the “Righteous Among the Nations” for my actions, the only Japanese to be so honoured. I died one year later on 31 July 1986 and in spite of the publicity given to me in Israel and other nations, I actually remained virtually unknown in my home country. Only when a large Jewish delegation from around the world, including the Israeli ambassador to Japan, turned up at my funeral, did my neighbours find out what I had done for the war effort. I'm glad I was fairly unnoticed- you wouldn't want to be known as a hero when many Jewish people showed more heroism and courage than you did."

Remembering the Heroes of the Holocaust: 70 Years On

At the beginning of World War II in 1935 Jewish people were taken away from their homes and sent to ghettos and concentration camps. After the Jews were sent to the camps some of them were taken to chambers and were killed with deadly gas. 

1945 saw the liberation of concentration camps all over Europe and Nazi dictatorship came to an end. The Holocaust was a time of overwhelming terror and enduring grief and the ultimate expression of man’s inhumanity with hardly a trace of human kindness. However, there were some deeds of compassion and courage during the Holocaust.

The following names are only some of the extraordinary heroes who risked their own lives to save another. All of these people have been honoured with the title “Righteous among the nations” by the Israeli Yad Vashem memorial which recognises non-Jews who helped save the lives of oppressed Jews.

Raoul Wallenberg- Swedish Diplomat (1912 – 1947)

In Jerusalem the Yad Vashem memorial is dedicated to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during World War II. A street named ‘Avenue of the Righteous’ runs through the area, bordered by 600 trees planted to honour the memory of non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazi executioners. One of these trees bears the name of Raoul Wallenberg. Take a walk with Raoul and his friends and discover the stories that shaped their lives...

                             
                              CLICK ON MY PICTURE TO HEAR MY STORY!

Oskar Schindler – German Industrialist (1908 – 1974)

Oskar Schindler was an ethnic German industrialist, spy, and member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunition's factories located in occupied Poland. He is the inspiration for the 1982 novel Schindler's Ark, which reflected his life as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary initiative, tenacity, and dedication in order to save the lives of his Jewish employees.

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Irena Sendler – Polish Social Worker (1910 – 2008)

An unfamiliar name to most people, but this remarkable woman defied the Nazis and saved 2,500 Jewish children by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto. As a health worker, she smuggled the children out of the ghetto between 1942 and 1943 to safe hiding places and found non-Jewish families to adopt them.

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Chiune Sugihara – Japanese Diplomat (1900 – 1986)

Sugihara was fluent in Russian so the Japanese sent him to the Lithuanian capital, Kovno, in November 1939. He had learned the language from Russian immigrants during 16 years in a country near Japan. He was ordered to provide Japan with intelligence on Russian and German troop movements in the Baltic region.

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The Holocaust specifically targeted the Jews in what the Nazi's termed as the 'Final Solution' but it must not be forgotten that towards the end of the war, many others were committed to concentration camps such as gypsies, homosexuals, disabled people, political activists and prisoners of war. The total number of deaths has been estimated to be 11,000,000 making World War II the most costliest in terms of human lives.