What Influenced the Rescue and Protection Efforts During the War?

The subject of rescue and protection is extremely complex.  There were a variety factors that influenced the success or failure of rescue and protection efforts.  Sometimes the factors are contradictory and paradoxical and raise more questions than are easily answered.  What is most incredible is that, despite the brutality and harshness of conditions under Nazi occupation, rescue and protection activities actually went on.  A study of the people who put their own lives at risk to help the victims of Nazi persecution is a source of great inspiration.  Knowing about them teaches us that people are able to transcend the hardships they endure each day and move beyond themselves to organize help for others.  There were many who were afraid to help.  But sometimes people failed to act not because they were selfish or self absorbed but because the did not have imagination, resourcefulness, enterprise, or common sense, or because they were unprepared and had no role models.  A study of rescuers and protectors can offer examples of the greatness of human potential and can make us think more critically about the choices we ourselves make.

The State of Israel has officially documented more than 17,000 cases of rescue and protection by non-Jews of Jews during the Holocaust.  The formalities of the documentation process require that the person rescued give testimony and that it be corroborated by witnesses to ensure its complete accuracy.  There are probably thousands more cases of rescue and protection that cannot be documented.

It is difficult to define or profile people who engaged in acts of rescue and protection.  Many scholars have researched this subject.  Among them is Professor Nechama Tec who, in When Light Pierced the Darkness:  Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland, outlines characteristics that bind rescuers and protectors together as a group and distinguish them from the majority of people.  Tec states that these characteristics include a tendency towards non-conformity, the proclivity towards thinking and making decisions independently of pressures from the surrounding society, and the courage to act quickly and decisively.   Characteristics such as religious faith, level of education, socioeconomic position, moral and ethical beliefs and gender did not make it more  likely that one would put his/her life at risk to help a victim of Nazi persecution.  People of all social, educational, economic, and religious backgrounds distinguished themselves by doing things to help the victims.  Country of origin was also not a mitigating factor.  Every country under Nazi occupation had its rescuers and protectors as well as its resistors.  But rescue and protection efforts succeeded more in some countries than they did in others.  A complex combination of factors affected the success or failure of rescue and protection efforts within a particular locale.

The Severity of the Nazi Occupation and Nazi Attitudes Towards the General Populace

The Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe was more brutal and harsh than Western Europe.  This was because the general populations of Nazi-occupied countries were treated according to their "racial rank" as defined by Nazi ideology.  Nazi propaganda considered Eastern Europeans to be "racially inferior" to "Aryan Germans" while the citizens of Western European countries were considered "racially equal".

Poles and other Slavic peoples were made to do work for the Third Reich that was thought to be "socially inferior" and beneath the members of the "superior Aryan race". The Nazis issued a directive stating that Poles were not to be educated beyond the fourth grade.  Thousands of Polish "intelligentsia", including Roman Catholic priests were mass murdered in the early weeks following the German invasion of Poland in order to eliminate or suppress resistance and prevent cells of resistance fighters from organizing themselves.  Poland was also the only Nazi-occupied country in which those caught hiding and protecting Jews would be punished by death.  The law of Nazi-occupied Poland mandated death not only for the person or people engaged in rescue and protection but for members of their families as well.  Concentration camps were established there for Poles as well as for Jews.  Poles and Jews were "ethnically cleansed" from some areas of Western Poland that had large ethnic German populations.  Germans were sent to these areas to live as part of a plan to annex these areas to Germany itself.

The occupation of Denmark, by comparison, was relatively benign.  No anti-Jewish laws were introduced there, no ghettos were created, no concentration camps were built.  And food was never as severely rationed there as it was in Poland and other Eastern European countries.

The ability of people in the general population to take risks and help protect and rescue Jews was strongly affected by the severity and nature of the occupation.  Most of Denmark's Jews were saved.  Most of Poland's Jews were annihilated.

The Proximity of Safe Havens

The closer a Nazi-occupied country was to a neutral nation or a nation that was not involved in the war, the easier it was for its victims to escape to safety.  But the neutral or unoccupied nation had to be willing to let refugees in.  The escape routes also had to be relatively free of obstacles and hazards that impeded flight.  Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal were all neutral countries during World War II.  

The Jews in Finland came through World War II virtually unscathed.  Many escaped by walking across the Swedish/Finnish border before or shortly after Germany occupied Finland in 1941.  The border is not mountainous and is easy to cross.  The Nazis also did not press the Finnish government very hard about turning in Jews because they needed the Finnish army to help fight the Soviets on the eastern front.  A total of 8 Finnish Jews were handed over by the Finnish government and extradited to Nazi-occupied Estonia.

Sweden played a key role in the rescue of Denmark's Jews.  All that was necessary to bring Danish Jews to safety was to cross a nine-mile channel of water that separated Denmark and Sweden.  The channel was heavily patrolled by German u-boats so the crossing was dangerous.  Nonetheless, Danish resistance fighters and many Danish fishermen took the risk, resulting in the rescue of most of Denmark's Jews.

Many Norwegian Jews also fled to Sweden after Norway was occupied.  However, the border is mountainous and presents a natural barrier that impeded escape.  More than half of Norway's Jews were unable to use this escape route and perished in the Holocaust.

Spain and Portugal were safe havens for many Jews.  The most difficult part of fleeing to safety was crossing the Pyrenees mountains and then getting to Lisbon, Portugal   Ships sailed from Lisbon across the Atlantic to both North and South America.  Many Jewish refugees remained in Lisbon once they got there until World War II ended.

Switzerland, though neutral, was hostile and inhospitable to Jewish refugees.  Very few Jews were able to find safety in Switzerland.  Many German and Austrian Jews tried to escape into Switzerland as tourists since no visa was required.  In 1938 the Swiss government complained about this to the Nazis.  As a result, all passports owned by German and Austrian Jews were marked with a bright red "J".  The “J” prevented Jews from entering Switzerland as tourists.

Jews living in Eastern European countries had no safe havens close to them that they could escape to.  Many fled across the Soviet border and survived.  But the Soviet Union posed its own threats to Jewish survival.  Many of the Jews who fled there from Nazi-occupied Poland and the Baltic States were sent to Siberia.

The Size of the Jewish Population

The greater the numbers of Jews that lived in a particular country, the more difficult it was to protect and rescue them.  The rescue of Denmark's Jews succeeded, in part, because they were relatively few in number—less than 9,000.  The Jewish population of Poland, by contrast, number over 3.4 million.  Neutral Sweden did not hesitate to take in a small number of Danish Jews, themselves Scandinavians.  But would Sweden have been willing to serve as a sanctuary for the much larger large Jewish population of Poland?

The Concentration of Jews in a Particular Locale

Some Jewish communities were decimated because most of them were concentrated in one particular locale.  For example, more than 60,000 of the 77,000 Jews of Greece lived in one city, Salonika.  The part of Greece that included Salonika fell under German occupation in 1943.  Despite the lack of collaboration by Greeks and the strong Greek resistance movement, in which many Greek Jews fought, the Jewish population of Salonika was decimated.  The far western part of Greece was occupied by Italian troops until 1944.  The majority of the Jews in this region survived, hidden by their neighbors.  However, at the end of the war, the total number of Greek Jews murdered in the Holocaust was between 60,000 and 67,000—a devastating loss in a country with little anti-Semitism.

The Presence and Influence or Absence of Pre-Occupation Leadership

The presence and influence of pre-Nazi era leadership in a country under occupation proved a decisive factor in the survival or non-survival of certain Jewish communities.  The Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark were all countries where prejudice against and hatred of Jews was not strong.  Jews living in these countries were well acculturated into the life of the country.  Many were even assimilated and intermarried.  Yet only the Jewish community in Denmark emerged from the Holocaust virtually unscathed.  It is believed that a primary factor that influenced this was that the King of Denmark never abdicated his throne and never left his country.  He was openly anti-Nazi and outspoken enough in his opposition to anti-Jewish legislation to prevent it from being instituted during most of the occupation.  When he was given an ultimatum by the Nazis in 1943, he mobilized Danish resistance fighters to assist the Jews in finding hiding places and then assisted with their escape to Sweden.  In Norway and in the Netherlands, pro-Nazi collaborators took control of the governments and, with power in their hands, oversaw the institution of anti-Jewish legislation, the creation of concentration camps, and the eventual deportation of Jews in both countries to Killing Centers.

The protection of the Jews of Bulgaria during the Holocaust was a direct result of the presence of the King and the strong stand he took against Nazi oppression of Jews.  Although Bulgaria was never formally occupied, it joined the Axis and became an ally of Nazi Germany.  Bulgaria participated with Germany in the invasion of Yugoslavia and  received in exchange the territories of Thrace an Macedonia that were on its border.  A total of 53,000 Jews lived in Bulgaria and approximately 11,000 more lived in Thrace and Macedonia.  A collaborator government then took power in Bulgaria, and some anti-Jewish laws were introduced there.  These laws took away the right to vote from Jews, restricted their economic activity, and forbade their cultural organizations from meeting.  Most of the Jews in Thrace and Macedonia were also deported to Killing Centers and murdered, as were some Jews in towns that bordered Yugoslavia.  However, the 53,000 Jews of Bulgaria itself were saved.  This number is more than in any other European country.  The reasons why this happened have never been made clear but it is believed that the presence of the King and the public stand he took, together with the leaders of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, were influential enough to assure that the Jews of Bulgaria were not deported.

The Degree of Jewish Acculturation and Assimilation

It was easier for Jews to hide among Gentiles if they dressed, spoke, and acted like them.  In Western and Southern Europe there was a high degree of acculturation and assimilation among Jews.  This was also true in some parts of Central Europe like Germany, Austria, and Bohemia and Moravia (Western Czechoslovakia).  In the less economically developed  European countries, including Poland, the Baltic States, Slovakia, Hungary east of Budapest, and Romania Jews were more visible because many were more religiously observant and spoke Yiddish as their first language.  Those who survived in hiding often had to be taught how to behave as Gentiles rather than as Jews.

Anti-Semitism

The presence and acceptability of prejudice against Jews had a strong effect on the success or failure of rescue and protection efforts.  While no country in Europe was free of anti-Semitism, it was stronger and more widespread among the general populace in some countries than in others.  In countries where government leaders collaborated with the Nazis, anti-Semites received aid and support and their beliefs had a strong influence over others.  Incentives, in the form of food or clothing rations or other types of personal incentives were also used in countries under Nazi occupation to induce people to collaborate. Oppression and terror against those who resisted or refused to collaborate with the Nazis often silenced would be rescuers and protectors. These factors exacerbated the strength and influence of anti-Semitism as a factor.

The largest numbers of people who have been honored by the State of Israel for documented acts of rescue and protection of Jews during the Holocaust come from Poland, a country in which anti-Semitism existed in large scale before the Nazi occupation. It is also known that many people in Poland were offered and refused to accept the honor bestowed upon them by Israel because of fear of anti-Semitic reprisal. Poland also had the largest Jewish population in the world before 1939, so the greatest opportunity existed there for individuals to help and protect Jews.

The second largest numbers of individuals honored by the State of Israel come from the Netherlands, a country historically known for tolerance of religious minorities, for extending a welcome to refugees fleeing persecution in other countries, and for its absence of anti-Semitism.  And yet, because a collaborator government was established there, its Jewish community was devastated.

Proportionally the numbers of Dutch ordinary citizens who put their lives at risk to protect Jews was greater than the number of Poles who did this.  However, the severity and harshness of the occupation of Poland as compared with that of the Netherlands must also be taken into account.

The result in both countries, in the end, was very much the same—the complete destruction and annihilation of the indigenous Jewish communities.