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A new memorial center in Berlin pays tribute to the thousands of German who risked everything to save Jews from Nazi persecution and documents the years these “Silent Heroes” kept their Jewish guests hidden from the authorities.

The permanent museum exhibition shows the persecution and the desperate situation of Jews facing the threat of deportation, how some of them decided to resist the threat to their lives by going underground, as well as the actions and motivations of the men and women who helped them. It documents not only successes in saving Jews, but also attempts that failed.
Some 5,000 Jews in Germany were able to survive the war in hiding thanks to an unknown number of people who were involved in helping them. Research suggests that for each person in hiding, around 10 people were involved in aiding them. They found the courage to help as far as they could, despite the risk involved. Else Ackermann, a retired teacher, and her brother Hans, a former municipal civil servant, were two of these.

In 1942, at the age of 53, Johanna Putzrath was compelled to work as a forced laborer in a firm in Tempelhof in Berlin. She knew that Else Ackermann and her brother Hans, who were devout Protestants and adherents of Rudolf Steiner’s spiritual philosophy, had offered help to another Jewish worker at the firm. When this woman was unexpectedly deported, Johanna Putzrath turned to the Ackermanns.  Without hesitating, Hans Ackermann took the unknown Jewish woman into his two-roomed apartment in Tempelhof. His sister Else, who lived in Steglitz, joined him in helping the refugee Johanna Putzrath.

At the end of January 1943 Hans Ackermann also gave shelter for over a month to a married couple, Ines and Max Krakauer, until they found other places to stay in southern Germany. Even when the Ackermanns’ apartments were destroyed by bombs in 1944, they moved, yet they continued hiding Johanna Putzrath. After almost two-and-a-half years, the three of them witnessed the end of the war together.

Johanna Putzrath emigrated to the USA and lived in New York until her death in 1975. Else Ackermann died in the 1940s in Berlin; her brother Hans died in 1959.

Visit the Memorial’s English website at www.gedenkstaette-stille-helden.de/english
Read more about the Memorial’s stories in the UK Guardian.

(photo: Johanna Putzrath (left) with Else Ackermann, who helped to save her, Berlin 1946)

I am humbled by such courage…

A 23-year-old Dutch military policeman who refused to obey the orders of his superiors to arrest Jews in a Dutch village during WWII and then deserted the police force to join the resistance was awarded the State of Israel’s highest honor for non-Jews on Monday at Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.

Henk Drogt was one of 12 Dutch military policemen who refused orders to round up the remaining local Jews in Grootegast, Holland on March 9, 1943, in a rare case of open police resistance to the arrest and murder of Jews of Europe during WWII.

The policemen were pressured and threatened by their commanders with incarceration at a concentration camp themselves, but steadfastly refused to carry out the orders.

The group was subsequently arrested and taken to the Vught concentration camp in the Southern Netherlands, but Drogt managed to evade arrest.

Following his escape, Drogt deserted the police force and joined one of the Dutch resistance groups, where he took part in the smuggling of downed Allied pilots to the Belgian border as well as helping to keep Jews out of the hands of the Nazis.

In August 1943, Drogt, along with others in the resistance group, were betrayed, and they were all arrested. He was taken to prison and sentenced to death.

Drogt was killed on April 14, 1944, eight months after his arrest, at the age of 24.

A day before his execution, he was allowed to write a letter to his family and his pregnant girlfriend, whom he had been planning to marry.

“Dear all, I have to tell you the worst - today I and my friends got the death sentence,” he wrote.

“It is terrible that we have to part from all those who are so dear to us in this way… I always had hope that I could be with you for one more time, but the Lord wanted differently.”

After the war, Drogt was posthumously decorated by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Dutch Government for his actions in the resistance movement.

His 11 colleagues had been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem two decades ago, although Drogt’s name had previously been missing from the list of honorees submitted to Yad Vashem in the 1980s due to his initial escape from arrest.

Drogt’s story was uncovered anew with the help of an El Al pilot, Mark Bergman, who heard it from Drogt’s son, Henk Brink, on a visit to South Africa, where Brink lives, and contacted Yad Vashem with the story.

“It is a long-time dream for me to set foot on Israeli soil, and something which has become a reality on my 65th birthday,” Henk Brink recounted at the ceremony in the Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, which coincided with his own birthday.

Brink, who was born a month after his father’s arrest by the Nazis and never got to meet him, broke down in tears as he spoke of a young man about to be married who paid “the highest price” for his values and courage to save people who were probably total strangers to him.

“Your decision to honor my father sends a strong signal to the world that Israel never forgets its friends,” he said.

More than 22,000 non-Jews have been recognized as Righteous Among the Nations, including nearly 5,000 from Holland.

“At a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise again it is all the more important to draw attention to those who refused to stand by and look the other away, and took concrete action to save Jewish life,” Dutch Ambassador to Israel Michiel den Hond said at the ceremony.

“It is an inspiration to us all for the future,” he said.

Drogt, who never lived to see his son, is buried in Holland.

The entry in the official death books at the infamous Dutch prison states dryly: “Policeman, refused to arrest Jews.”

Source: chabad.org

A lush green garden at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem commemorates the “Righteous Among the Nations,” non-Jews who risked their own lives during the Holocaust to save Jews. The foliage rustles in the soft, shady breeze, and the still movements of the trees’ leafy branches echo the quiet acts of kindness and humanity that this garden celebrates.

On a modest incline here stands a large, brown, hollow birch tree-trunk. Holocaust survivor Jakob Silberstein, 83, leans against it, solemn and pensive. A small printed sign beside the tree-trunk explains the tree-trunk’s presence in this Garden:

“This tree trunk stood in the backyard of Jana Sudova, a Czech Righteous Among the Nations, who in early 1945 hid four Jewish escapees of the death marches. Jakob Silberstein hid in the hollow trunk while the Germans searched the premises.”

Our sages tell us that if you save a life, you save a whole world. Had it not been for Jana Sudova, entire worlds would have been destroyed. Not just the Jewish survivors that she saved, but their children, and their grandchildren, and great grandchildren, ad olam - forever