*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Open Letter to Professor Saul Friedlander from the Committee for Jews who Rescued Jews

The Jerusalem-based Committee for Jews who Rescued Jews during the Holocaust was first gathered together in the year 2000. Its founder, Mr. Haim Roet, himself a child survivor from the Netherlands, was rescued by a group of three resistance leaders, two non-Jewish ones (who received the Yad Vashem Righteous Gentiles award) and one Jewish one. The Jewish member of the group is still alive in Amsterdam today but he has never received any honorable mention by an Israeli institution, notably not from Yad Vashem. Throughout Europe there were hundreds and thousands of Jewish rescuers who risked their lives trying to rescue their brethren. Tens of thousands of Jews alive after the war owed their survival to other Jews. This feat of solidarity seemingly is one of the best-kept secrets in the historiography of the Shoa; due to its lack of exposure, there is widespread ignorance of the fact that there was indeed Jewish rescue, especially marked in France and Hungary. Our Open Letter to Professor Saul Friedlander expresses our disappointment in the fact that once again a remarkable moral act of rescue by the victims themselves has gone unrecognized and was even denied. To view the letter, please click here