HONORING THE RIGHTEOUS

For 45 years now the Yad Vashem Institute has been performing a great deed by researching and verifying petitions to honor the Righteous Among the Nations. Despite this, the dramatic history of Poland and of the world (resettlement, destroyed documents, lack of cooperation between Poland and Israel during a dozen of crucial years, etc.) have created a vast disproportion between those cases which have been proven thanks to indisputable evidence, and the likely much higher number of people who were involved in saving Jews.

Approximately 30-40 thousand Jews, either in hiding or on „Aryan papers,” survived on Polish territory. From hundreds of diaries and other sources we know that to save just one person over the course of many years required the help of many, sometimes even more than a dozen supporters. We also know that various forms of help must also have been given to those who later died. Additionally, many of those who survived in camps or who returned from the Soviet Union after the war must also have earlier encountered various forms of aid. There were of course also situations in which Jews survived only owing to their own resourcefulness, or – which was more frequent – they received help, but it did not come from noble hearts (for example, they were exploited by their hosts, or had to pay them). However, taking into account all these circumstances, there can be no doubt that the number of 6 200 Poles honored with the title of Righteous Among the Nations is much smaller than the number of those who helped Jews during the war.

The fact that initially titles were granted only to those who were still living does not come without consequence. In most cases, those who were met with death under German repression for helping Jews, or those who did not survive the occupation or died shortly after liberation, were not granted the title of Righteous Among the Nations.

Currently, the title can be granted posthumously, however, the most important, and at times the most difficult – often impossible to overcome – criteria of the Yad Vashem Institute is the one which states that the basis to begin an investigation to grant the Medal is the testimony by the person who was saved. Other records and documents are not enough. Such caution is indeed necessary to ensure that Medals end up only in the hand of those who truly deserve them, but as a consequence those who hid Jews who died during the war or thereafter, or who hid Jews who passed away in the following decades, cannot be found among the Righteous.

There are also those who have not been decorated despite the fact that the Jewish witnesses of their actions survived the occupation. Contact between those who were saved and their caretakers was often completely disrupted after the war: people moved, resettled, migrated and emigrated. The postwar isolation of communist Poland following the war, as well as the cutting of diplomatic ties with Israel by the communists in June of 1967 and the anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, practically made it impossible to petition for medals for the Righteous, and later it was often simply too late.

The possibility to honor those who saved Jewish lives only became widely known close to twenty years after the end of the war, when many of those saved were leading very different lives: in a different country, in a different language, in a different culture. For many of them, to return to those memories of war awakened painful trauma, and for some it was simply impossible.

There is one other reason why not all Poles who helped Jews during the war have been honored with the title of Righteous Among the Nations. Some of them actually tried to dissuade those they saved from beginning the process of petitions for the Medal, fearing disdain and other negative reactions from their surroundings because of anti-Semitism. For many years following the war public opinion was not prepared to understand the significance of that which the Righteous did. To this day, particularly in small towns and villages, sometimes their actions are not sources of pride, but rather something which is better left unmentioned.

We sincerely hope that our project, like the decision of the President of the Republic of Poland to honor those who helped Jews with the highest national honors, as well as other local commemorative initiatives of recent years for those who saved lives, will contribute to a change in attitudes and will help those whose names are still unknown to the public, and their descendants, to speak about their heroic deeds openly and with pride.