Results: Righteous Gentiles

He was responsible for bringing to the world a high-quality compact camera that changed the face of 35mm photography. But Nazi party member Ernest Leitz II had a secret greater claim to fame - saving Jews from Nazi persecution in prewar Germany. Days after Hitler's rise to power, Leitz, who manufactured the Leica camera, began taking on a string of young Jewish apprentices from the town of Wetzlar where his optics factory began producing Leicas in 1925. He purposely trained them so that he could transfer them to New York to work in the Leica showroom on Fifth Avenue or at distributors across the US and save them from the fate that was to befall many other Jews. He sent over 75 Jews and their families out of Germany, each with a Leica camera around their necks. This was a well kept secret, only coming to light in 2007, more than 60 years after the war ended, thanks to Frank Dabba Smith, 51, a London based rabbi and a Leica enthusiast, who pieced the connection together through interviews, letters and, of course, photographs. Have you ever heard this story of heroism?

Warsaw zoo director Jan Zabinski and his wife Antonina, risked their own lives to take a stand for something they believed in. After the Germans bombed their zoo and stole some of its precious animals in 1939 and 1940, the Zabinskis turned it into a pig farm. They used the task of collecting scraps for their pigs as pretext to go into the Warsaw ghetto, but they were also able to smuggle Jews out and into a truck filled with pig feed. They ended up hiding Jewish people in the underground pathways connecting the animal cages at the zoo they managed. The 2017 movie The Zookeeper's Wife — based on a 2007 book by Diane Ackerman — tells their story. Have you read the book, saw the movie, or heard about this story?

Leopold Socha, a non-Jewish sewage worker discovered 7-year-old Kristine Keren and her family living in a sewer underneath the Lwów ghetto. Her father, facing deportation, had broken ground through an apartment into the sewage system, where their family and some dozen other friends were hiding out. Socha fed and clothed the group, even bringing first-grade school books for the children, helping them remain hidden underground for 14 months. A green sweater that Keren's grandma knitted for her before the war is on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Have you ever visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.?

'Righteous Gentiles' is the phrase used for those non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. At Yad Vashem Museum in Jerusalem, over 11,000 'Righteous Gentiles' are honored; almost 5,000 are Polish. These three stories are only some of the many inspiring stories of people risking their own lives to save the lives of others. Do you know of any other stories you would care to share?