In the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust

Octavian Report founder Hurowitz debuts with an inspiring group portrait of Holocaust “rescuers” whose stories are “too little told and too little known.” They include diplomats Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese counsel general in Bordeaux, who stamped more than 15,000 passports for Jews seeking to escape from France, and Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese vice counsel in Kovno, Lithuania, who defied a direct order from his government and issued more than 5,000 visas to Jewish refugees. Other profile subjects include social worker Irena Sendler, who created a network to smuggle more than 2,000 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto with forged adoption papers, passports, and visas. Hurowitz also pays tribute to Denmark, writing that “an entire nation warned, sheltered, protected, and smuggled out their Jewish neighbors. Taxi drivers, doctors, teachers, students, farmers and clerks all took part.” As a result, 95% of the country’s Jewish citizens escaped to Sweden after Hitler ordered their arrest and deportation in 1943. Hurowitz’s deep research reveals the mechanics of these and other operations, as well as the rescuers’ wide range of motivations and backgrounds. This well-told history is a moving reminder that “we can all contribute to the project of improving the world.” (Jan.)