Members of the Rabbinical Assembly were called upon today to aid in a search for the unsung heroes of the Nazi era–the Christians “who saved Jews from death, defying danger and even the threat of death to themselves and their families to follow the call of conscience.
The appeal to the 400 members of the rabbinical body, assembled here for its 63rd annual convention, was made jointly by Rabbi Harold Schulweis, founder and director of the Institute for the Righteous Acts, and Dr. Perry London, professor of psychology at Stanford University, who will direct research for the institute, The Institute for the Righteous Acts, a documentation and study center on the rescuers of Jews in the Nazi era, was established last September in Oakland, Cal. It has a threefold purpose:
1. To discover and document episodes of heroic rescue behavior during the Nazi period; 2. To make a study of the motivation–economic, social, political and religious–which went into the making of the altruistic personalities revealed by these acts; 3. To utilize this information for the character education of young people today.
Nobody knows how many people were involved in this rescue behavior. Rabbi Schulweis explained, but “we do know that there was and always is an alternative to passive complicity with evil. ” The Institute is seeking case histories of human beings who “could find ample rationale to avert their eyes and plead innocence, but who could not live the life,” he said.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
