Other articles

  • Frieda Adam, Germany

    In 1938 Berlin, Frieda Adam and Erna Puterman were working as seamstresses and enjoying a close friendship. But following the implementation of Nazi oppression the dynamic of their lives changed. Erna Puterman was forced to leave her job, because she was Jewish. Yet the girls remained friends, Frieda refused to let the anti-Jewish laws affect […]

  • Gabrielle Weidner, France

    Ms. Gabrielle Weidner, the heroine of World War II, was born August 17, 1914 to Dutch parents. She was raised in Collonges, France where her father served as minister at the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Paris. Her background was one of devout religious observance and high education. With the outbreak of World War II, Ms. […]

  • Helena Blaszczyk, Poland

    Helena Blaszczyk and her brother Stefan were members of the Polish underground. They were determined to fight the Germans every way they could. Their two-room home served as a repository for contraband, such as weapons and radios. Helena and Stefan made a hiding place where they hid four Jews behind a wall. The Jews lived […]

  • Louisa Steenstra, The Netherlands

    While living in Goningen, Holland, Louisa and her husband sheltered Jews from the Nazis by allowing two at a time to live in rooms that the couple had once rented out. A Dutch couple staying with the Steenstra’s told the Germans about their secret and Mr. Steenstra was murdered, but Louisa and her daughter were […]

  • Malka Csizmadia, Hungary

    Malka was seventeen when she began helping the Jews in Hungary. A few years earlier, the boundary of Malka’s backyard became the border between her home and a ghetto for Jewish men. One day, she climbed a tree and began speaking with a Jewish man inside the ghetto. Malka asked this man, Szarany, if there […]

  • Maria and Anna Pauerova, Czechoslovakia

    Martin Zapletal was separated from his pregnant wife in October 1944 in Czechoslovakia and was sent to the Sered concentration camp. He managed to escape from Sered and sought help from Maria Pauerova, who was living with her mother, Anna. Maria and Anna agreed to hide Martin in their one-room apartment until the end of […]

  • Sister Alfonsja (Eugenia Wasowska), Poland

    Sister Alfonsja became the director of an orphanage when she was 19, a year before war broke out in Poland. Once the war began, Sister Alfonsja took in Jewish children despite the fact that she had signed an affidavit with the Gestapo stating that she only housed Catholic children. While living in the Catholic orphanage, […]

  • Suzanne Spaak, Belgium

    In 1942, Suzanne Spaak volunteered to work with the underground National Movement Against Racism in France. Many did not expect her to be of help to this cause because she was a sophisticated housewife who was used to a high standard of living. When she joined she said, ”Tell me what to do so I’ll […]

  • Tamara and Maria Osipova, Belarus

    In Minsk, Belarus, Tamara, a student, joined a partisan group that worked to save Jews from the Germans and the Minsk ghetto. Tamara and her mother put their own lives at risk when they went into ghettos and rescued mothers and children. They often had to bribe officials to let the Jews go. After they […]

  • Veronika Perochi, Hungary

    Before the war, Veronika was the nanny of Yitzhak Grossman, a Jewish boy in Budapest. When Grossman was 14, the Germans took him to a work camp. He escaped but was unable to find his family. He quickly found comfort in Veronika. She hid him for more than a year in the hospital where she […]

  • Barbara Makuch, Poland

    Barbara was a young schoolteacher who lived with her elderly mother in Poland. One day in July of 1942, a woman, Sara Hyman, arrived at her doorstep with her daughter, Malka. Sara knew Barbara’s aunt and she was now pleading with Barbara to hide her daughter, Malka. Even though Barbara and her mother realized that […]

  • Anna Kopec, Poland

    In the spring of 1940, the Krueger family was ordered to move from their home in Sowina, Poland to the ghetto in Kolaczyce; instead they fled into the woods. Abraham Krueger realized that his family would not survive, and decided to split them up. He found caring neighbors who would take them in. Anna and […]

  • Anna Trafimova, Belarus

    When Germany invaded Minsk, Belarus, they forced many families, including the Davidson’s to relocate to a walled ghetto. Many Jews were murdered in random acts of violence called aktions. When each aktion occurred the Davidson’s sought help from their friends, Anna and her mother, Fatima. Anna and her mother had already been smuggling food to […]

  • Anna and Natalia Lapteva, Ukraine

    In November 1942, Anna Lapteva was living with her sister, Natalia, in Rovno, Ukraine. One year prior the Jews of Rovno had been forced to move into a ghetto from which one Jewish woman, Yevgenia Cherniavskya managed to escape after a difficult year. She made her way to Anna and Natalia’s home, whom she knew […]

  • Gertrud Wijsmuller, The Netherlands

    When hearing of the German threat to refuse permission for the refugee Children’s Transports to cross the border into Holland, Gertrude went to Vienna and confronted Adolf Eichmann, the head of the Central Bureau for Jewish Emigration. She convinced him to issue a collective exit visa for six hundred Austrian Jewish children so the children […]

  • Anna Trafimova, Belarus

    When Germany invaded Minsk, Belarus they forced many families, including the Davidson’s to relocate to a walled ghetto. Here many Jews were murdered in random acts of violence called, aktions. When each aktion occurred the Davidson’s sought help from their friends, Anna and her mother, Fatima. Anna and her mother had already been smuggling food […]

  • Gertrude Seele, Germany

    As a nurse and social worker born in Berlin, Gertrude served for a time in the Nazi Labour Corps. She was arrested in 1944 for helping Jews to escape Nazi persecution. She also made ”defeatist statements that were designed to undermine the morale of the people.” She was tried before the People’s Court in Potsdam […]

  • Celina, Wanda and Bolesia Anishkewicz, Poland

    The Slewin family had managed to hide themselves while 888 other Jews were brutally murdered by the Germans in November 1942 in Poland. After three nights of hiding, the family fled into the woods and ended up at the home of the Anishkewicz family where Celina, Wanda and Bolesia received them. The family lived in […]

  • Johanna Kirchner, Germany

    Johanna Kirchner, a German opponent of the Nazi regime, came from a social-democratic family. When she was fourteen she joined the Socialist Worker Youth and when she turned eighteen she became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, Ms. Kirchner was forced to flee to Saarbrücken […]

  • Dorothea Neff, Austria

    Dorothea Neff was a famous Vienna stage actress in the 1930’s. When her good Jewish friend, Lilli Schiff, received a ”resettlement” order and had to leave Vienna, Ms. Neff decided to help. She demanded that Ms. Schiff hide in her apartment. In order to mislead the Gestapo, Ms. Neff went to Ms. Schiff’s apartment and […]