The B’nai B’rith World Center-Jerusalem and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL-JNF) will hold on Thursday, April 24, for the 23rd consecutive year, a joint Holocaust commemoration ceremony on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah). This is the only Yom HaShoah event dedicated annually to commemorating the heroism of Jews who endangered their own lives to rescue fellow Jews during the Holocaust. The ceremony will take place at the B’nai B’rith Martyr’s Forest “Scroll of Fire” Plaza at 10 a.m. Israel time and will be streamed live on the B’nai B’rith International Facebook page.

The B’nai B’rith Martyr’s Forest is the world’s largest Holocaust memorial and the most significant joint B’nai B’rith–KKL-JNF project, memorializing the victims of the Holocaust with six million trees planted in the picturesque Jerusalem mountains near Moshav Kesalon. At the pinnacle of the forest stands the “Scroll of Fire,” created by renowned sculptor Nathan Rapoport, which invokes the destruction of the Jewish people in the Holocaust and their redemption in the State of Israel. Prior to the event, at 9 a.m., small groups will meet with relatives of the rescuers to learn about their heroic acts in greater depth.

Speakers in the ceremony will include: H.E. Zoltán Szentgyörgyi, ambassador of Hungary to Israel; Sar-Shalom Jerbi, director, Education and Community Division, KKL-JNF: Dr. Haim Katz, chairman, B’nai B’rith World Center; Brigadier General Barak Mordechai, border police training base commander; and Luis Har, a rescued hostage. Holocaust historian Professor Patrick Henry (editor, Jewish Resistance Against the Nazis, Catholic University Press, 2014) will light the memorial flame.

During the ceremony, the “Jewish Rescuers Citation” will be conferred posthumously on 14 rescuers who operated in France, Hungary, Libya, Holland and Poland. The citation—a joint program of the B’nai B’rith World Center and the Committee to Recognize the Heroism of Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust—has recognized 658 heroes since its inception in 2011 in an effort to help correct the generally held misconception that Jews failed to come to the aid of fellow Jews during the Holocaust. Past rescuers have operated across numerous countries, including Germany, the Netherlands, France, Slovakia, Greece, Russia, Yugoslavia, Ukraine, Austria, Belarus, Italy, Poland, Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Hungary, Denmark, Czechia, Lithuania, and Belgium.

The phenomena of Jewish rescue and the inspiring stories of many hundreds of Jews who labored to save their endangered brethren throughout Europe from deportation and murder have yet to be fully researched and receive appropriate public attention. Many who could have tried to flee or hide themselves decided to stay and expose themselves to danger in an effort to rescue others; some paid for it with their lives. With great heroism, Jews in Germany and every country across Axis and occupied Europe employed subterfuge, forgery, smuggling, concealment, and other methods to ensure that Jews survived the Holocaust or assisted them in escaping to a safe haven. In doing so, they foiled the Nazi goal of total annihilation of the Jews.

Recipients of the citation this year are:

1. Helena Merenholc (1907-1997, Poland)–Provided false documents and found hiding places for Jews with the Polish Council to Aid Jews (Żegota).
2. Janina Rechtleben-Wojciechowska (1900, Poland-1980, England)–Her apartment served as a hiding place for fugitive Jews, weapons, and money, and as a meeting place for members of the Polish resistance movement.
3. Maurycy Herling-Grudziński (1903-1966, Poland)–Smuggled Jews out of the Warsaw Ghetto and hid them in his home. Established a program of financial assistance for Jewish refugees hiding on the Aryan side of Warsaw.
4. Madeleine Dreyfus (1909-1987, France)–As a member of the “Circuit Garel”, she found hiding places for Jewish children with Christian families in villages and led groups of Jewish children by train to the hiding places.
5. Lore Durlacher/ Ora Goren (1920, Germany-1992, Israel)–As a member of the Westerweel group in the Netherlands, she provided food stamps and forged papers to Jews in hiding and helped smuggle them out of the Westerbork detention camp.
6. Naomi Mayer (1924, Hungary-1945, Switzerland)–Smuggled two young Jewish brothers from Budapest onto the Rescue Committee train and cared for them during months of detention in Bergen-Belsen.
7. Peter Jablonski (1921, Poland-2011, Canada)–Rescued a wounded child and two other Jews in a bunker he had built himself in Warsaw.
8. Oscar Schoenfeld (1923, Hungary-2004, Israel)–Found safe houses and provided food, water and suitable clothing for Jewish refugees who escaped to Hungary from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
9. Witold Góra (1900-1994, Poland)–Stole documents from the Gestapo station located in the same building that housed a laundromat where he worked and used them to forge identity cards that saved dozens of Jews from death in the Treblinka extermination camp. He rented and financed safe houses for escapees from the Warsaw ghetto.
10. Pinchas Ostrowski (1922, Poland-1983, Israel)–Exploited his position as director general of a provincial Ministry of Agriculture in eastern Poland (during Soviet rule after the War) to initiate a dangerous diversionary measure in order to extricate a 10-year-old Jewish orphan held at the home of his Polish rescuer. He also issued travel documents that allowed 70 Polish Jewish refugees to leave for Israel.
11. Rabbi Josef Gean (1882, Libya-1960, Israel)–Established an illegal hospitality enterprise for hundreds of Jewish refugees who arrived to Libya from Europe during the anti-Semitic Italian regime.
12. Lolek Lehrer (1916-1943, Poland)–Under a false identity as a railway worker, he helped Jews escape from Poland to Slovakia.
13. Jean-Charle Leon Lachtchiver (1931, France-2019, Israel)–As a child, he was active in the underground arm of the “Hanoar Hatzioni” Zionist Youth movement. He hid forged documents and identity cards in his textbooks and passed on information about what was befalling the city’s Jews.
14. Zvi Henryk Zimmerman (1913, Poland-2006, Israel)–Zionist activist and member of the “Sneh” rescue underground in the Krakow ghetto, he infiltrated Hungary and approved the veracity of thousands of forged Polish Aryan papers for Jews as a diplomat appointed by the head of the Polish Delegation, Righteous Among the Nations Henryk Slawik, endangering his life. Along with Slawik, he established an orphanage, rescuing 100 Jewish children by placing them under Christian identity.

Click here to read more about recipients of this year’s Jewish Rescuers Citation.

Contact:

Alan Schneider, Director, B’nai B’rith World Center +972-52-5536441

Golan Yossifon, Spokesman +972-52-5625135