Why did some people rescue Jews during the Holocaust?

Question 1

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust:

Answer 1

• Wilhelm Hosenfeld
• Miep Gies
• Oskar Schindler
• Sir Nicholas Winton
• Derviš Korkut

Question 2

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Wilhelm Hosenfeld: What did Wilhelm (WIlm) Hosenfeld do?

Answer 2

• Hosenfeld worked in German army HQ’s - his job to find building for HG’s and discovered Wladyslaw Szpilman hiding in loft to help hide him
• Szpilman’s enter family had been deported to concentration camps
• Will have him food and his coat to help him keep warm and alive
• engaged in normal conversation with Szpilman and gives him hope - aka him what he’ll do when war is over
• treats him like a human and asks him what his name is - gives him back some of his human dignity
• gave Szpilman info abt war

Question 3

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Wilhelm Hosenfeld: Why did Wilhelm (WIlm) Hosenfeld help Szpilman?

Answer 3

• • religion - says this is a punishment from God for how humans have treated each other
  • feels guilty for standing by and not stopping the genocide of Jews - doesn’t want to be complicit in guilt
  • in his eyes murder is murder
  • ashamed as Germany of what Germany and Germans are doing to Jews

Question 4

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Miep Gies: What did Miep Goes do?

Answer 4

• hid Frank family
• risked trying to bribe Germans when Franks were arrested
• gave them food and shelter
• after Franks arrested - found Anne’s diary and gave it to Otto Frank

Question 5

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Miep Gies: Why did Miep Gies help the Frank family?

Answer 5

Miep worked for Otto Frank (1933) a German Jewish businessman who fled to Amsterdam after Nazis came to power - she became friend of Frank family

Question 6

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Oskar Schindler: What did Oskar Schindler do?

Answer 6

• a German from Sudetenland region from Czechoslovakia
• tried to go into business before war but his money making schemes failed
• although he was Czech citizen - worked as a spy for Germany
• joined Nazi party in 1939, a few months after Germany had occupied Sudetenland
• Oskar saw German invasion of Poland in 1939 as a chance to finally make money
• he took over a factory in Kraków which had been owned by Jews before war
• Nazis made Polish Jews undertake forced labour so Oskar used them as cheap workers
• used bribery and charm to get contracts from German army which helped him make large profits
• when Kraków ghetto liquidated I(Marcg 1943) he had his workers moved to his factory so they wouldn’t be sent to nearby Plaszòw labour camp
• 1949 - arranged to have 1200 workers moved too factory in Czechoslovakia saving them from deportation to Auschwitz - 6,000+ descendants alive today

Question 7

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Oskar Schindler: Why did Oskar Schindle help Jews family?

Answer 7

• when deportations from Kraków began in 1942, Oskar was worried - partly because he feared losing cheap labour
• started to protect his workforce regardless of what it cost him
• after war Oskar explained he felt moved to act by the cruelty of the Nazis

Question 8

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Sir Nicholas Winton: What did Sir Nicholas Winton do?

Answer 8

• saved lots of Jewish children
• gone to Prague and organised trains to London and foster parents for all 869 children
• died in 2016
• one of main organisers of Kindertransport

Question 9

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Derviš Korkut: What did Derviš Korkut do?

Answer 9

• after German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Nazis tried to take the Hagaddah
• Derviš smuggled it out to countryside and left it with a Muslim friend
• Haggadah survived war
• 1942 Derviš and his wife Servet hid a young Jewish woman called Mira
• Derviš and Servet had recently had a baby so they told people Mira was their nanny
• they dressed her in traditional Muslim clothes and pretended that she was Albanian
• Mira remained withe the Workouts for 5 months even though a German officer was living in the same house as them
• she was then able to escape to an Italian controlled area of Yugoslavia where she survived the rest of the war
• after the war, Derviš and Servet had a daughter called Lamja who married an Albanian from Kosovo
• during the war in Kosovo in the 1990s, Lamja and her family were given refuge in Israel as a sign of gratitude for the actions of her father

Question 10

Rescuers of Jews in Holocaust: Derviš Korkut: Why did Derviš Korkut help Jews?

Answer 10

• • an Ethnic Albanian Muslim who was the chief librarian at the National Museum in Sarajevo, Bosnia
  • he worked closely with the city’s Jewish community,, preserving and translating old documents
  • 1920s - he spoke out against anti-Jewish laws in Yugoslavia
  • most important exhibit was the Sarajevo Haggadah - an illustrated Jewish text created in Spain in 14th C