The Book of the Just: The Silent Heroes Who Saved Jews from Hitler

Tribute is paid to the silent heroes who resisted the Holocaust in dramatic, moving stories recounted by survivors and rescuers in Israel-based freelance reporter Silver's book. Testimonials reveal how non-Jews from every part of Nazi-occupied Europe, including Germany, risked their own liberty and lives to save Jews--as in the case of the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux who paid with his career and fortune for enabling the flight of 10,000 Jews to neutral Spain. Rescues often involved underground networks, bribery, lying, forged papers and even the obscuring of Jewish escapees by the substitution of bodies purchased from corrupt camp guards. Regardless of backgrounds, faiths or political views, and whether they acted as individuals or in groups--or as a whole people, like the Danes, who in 1983 united to spirit away 6000 Jews from the Nazis--all felt the need to assert a common humanity and resist barbarism. Photos not seen by PW. (Sept.)