Saving One's Own

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Saving One's Own

Jewish Rescuers during the Holocaust

Mordecai Paldiel

636 pages
30 photographs, index

Hardcover

April 2017

978-0-8276-1261-7

$70.00 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

April 2017

978-0-8276-1295-2

$70.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

April 2017

978-0-8276-1297-6

$70.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

In this remarkable, historically significant book, Mordecai Paldiel recounts in vivid detail the many ways in which, at great risk to their own lives, Jews rescued other Jews during the Holocaust. In so doing he puts to rest the widely held belief that all Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe wore blinders and allowed themselves to be led like “lambs to the slaughter.” Paldiel documents how brave Jewish men and women saved thousands of their fellow Jews through efforts unprecedented in Jewish history.

Encyclopedic in scope and organized by country, Saving One’s Own tells the stories of hundreds of Jewish activists who created rescue networks, escape routes, safe havens, and partisan fighting groups to save beleaguered Jewish men, women, and children from the Nazis. The rescuers’ dramatic stories are often shared in their own words, and Paldiel provides extensive historical background and documentation.

The untold story of these Jewish heroes, who displayed inventiveness and courage in outwitting the enemy—and in saving literally thousands of Jews—is finally revealed.
 

Author Bio

Mordecai Paldiel is a professor of history at Yeshiva University–Stern College and Touro College and is a consultant to the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation. He is the former longtime director of the Righteous Among the Nations Department at Yad Vashem and was himself rescued from the Holocaust by a “Righteous Gentile.” Paldiel is the author of eight books, including Sheltering the Jews: Stories of Holocaust Rescuers and Saving the Jews: Amazing Stories of Men and Women Who Defied the “Final Solution.”
 

Praise

"Paldiel's book includes remarkable stories of remarkable people."—Tammy Mark, Jewish Link of New Jersey

“The first of its kind . . . Saving One’s Own is very important because it illustrates the resilience of people in Nazi-occupied Europe and dispels the myth of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust. Thoroughly researched, exciting, and engaging.”—Samuel P. Oliner, author of The Altruistic Personality and The Nature of Good and Evil
 

“Mordecai Paldiel has encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. . . . Country by country, virtually institution by institution, he looks at ways in which Jews rescued Jews. Strongly recommended.”—Michael Berenbaum, scholar, author, filmmaker, and former project director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 

Table of Contents

List of Photographs
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Germany and Austria: Outwitting the Nazis in Their Home Base
2. Poland: Rescue in the Deadliest Place in Europe
3. Lithuania and Belarus: Getting Out in Time, Refuge in Forest Lairs
4. Slovakia: Negotiating to Stop Deportations
5. Hungary: Zionist Diaspora Youth at Its Best, Some Debatable Rescue Undertakings
6. Croatia and Italy: Children on the Run
7. France: The Many Who Helped Save Most of the Country’s Jews
8. Belgium: Organized Self-Help, Stopping a Deportation Train
9. The Netherlands: Pulling the Wool over the SS’s Eyes, Hiding and a Run across Borders
10. Toward Palestine, the Land of Israel: Boat People on the Danube with the Connivance of the Nazis
11. Switzerland: Outstretched Hands from Nearby
12. Concentration Camps: Flight and Rescue from Hell on Earth and Challenging Himmler
13. England: A Rabbi and the Religious Obligation to Serve
14. United States: Organizational Assistance amid Conflicting Agendas
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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