Four Heroes of the Holocaust

1. Nicholas Winton - Nicholas Winton was a British stockbroker who spent time in Prague before the start of World War II. He arranged for 669 endangered children to be rescued in 1939 from Nazioccupied Czechoslovakia on “Kindertransports.” His success in saving the lives of these children remained a virtual secret for the next half-century. He never told anyone, including his wife and family, about his rescue efforts. Those he rescued did not learn the identity of the man who saved them until a remarkable discovery took place in 1988. There are now over 6000 people alive today because of his efforts.
2. Irena Sendler - Irena Sendler was a Polish nurse and social worker who served in the Polish Underground in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II and was head of the children's section of Zegota, the Polish Council to Aid Jews which was active from 1942 to 1945. Sendler and her associates smuggled approximately 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto and then provided them with false identity documents and shelter outside the Ghetto, thus saving those children from the Holocaust. The German occupiers eventually discovered her activities. She was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured and sentenced to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive the war. The story of her heroism did not become well known until the 1990s.
3. Oskar Schindler - Oskar Schindler was a Nazi Party member who rejected the Nazi’s racial theories and extermination plans. His story is the saga of a man who began by being concerned only with his own success and pleasures, yet he became the savior of over a thousand Jews. He was able to use his position as a businessman working with the Nazis to save the lives of Jews the Nazis had intended to murder. This talk will compare the historical record with Steven Spielberg’s brilliant film “Schindler’s List.”
4. Raoul Wallenberg - Raoul Wallenberg succeeded in rescuing as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews from almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis and Hungarian fascists. Against staggering odds and in constant risk of his own life, Wallenberg eventually fell captive to the advancing Russians and disappeared into the Soviet prison system. This presentation will explore why he was named an honorary citizen of the United States. It will also explore the mystery of what really might have been his fate at the hands of the Soviets.

Richard the Lionheart