Learn more about the heroic women and men who helped save Jews during the Holocaust and the survivors they saved
Anna Stupnicka-Bando
Anna and her mother Janina, removed eleven–year-old Liliana Alter from the Warsaw ghetto. From then, until the end of the war, the Stupnickas kept the orphaned Jewish girl in their home and cared for her.
Andrzej Sitkowski
Andrzej Sitkowski and his mother Helena helped save two young girls, Hadassah and Marion Kozak who had been smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto.
Lidiya Savchuk
Lidiya Savchuk and her family of Ukraine hid and cared for Isaak Tartakovsky, who was Jewish and fled captivity by the Red Army
Sidney Zoltak – Survivor
Holocaust survivor Sidney Zoltak, left, stands with Zigmund Krynski during a reunion in Poland. Krynski’s family hid Zoltak and his parents in the family barn for 14 months, saving them from Nazi persecution.
Irene Gut Opdyke
Irene Gut heroically saved 12 Jewish friends by helping them escape deportation, hiding them in the basement of her employer – a Nazi officer – and caring for them until the end of the war.
Roman Haller – Survivor
Roman Haller’s family was saved by Irene Gut Opdyke, a brave young Polish Catholic woman who hid them and cared for them during the Holocaust.
The Mozūraitis Family
Jonas and Ona Mozūraitis, poor farmers with four children of their own, gave shelter to a Jewish woman, Lea Brik, and her eight-year-old son Aharon.
Aharon Barak – Survivor
Aharon Barak, former President of the Supreme Court of Israel, was smuggled out of the Kovno Ghetto and hidden by Zenonas Mozūraitis and his family.
Danuta Renk-Mikulski
Danuta Renk-Mikulska, assisted her parents, Jan and Melania, and her brother and sister, Jerzy and Jadwiga, in hiding and caring for five Jews for more than a year at great personal risk.
Janina Różecka
Along with her mother Leonia and her sister Wanda, Janina Różecka sheltered and rescued two Jews: a boy named Henryk Teicher and a woman, Irena Palenker.
Rabbi Israel Meir Lau – Survivor
Rabbi Lau, then known as “Lolek” and his brother were sent to Buchenwald as young children. There, a Russian prisoner named Feodor helped save his life.
Feodor Mikhailichenko
Despite the danger, Feodor did whatever he could to protect five-year-old Lolek (Rabbi Israel Meir Lau).
Stasė Sindikaitytė-Minelgienė
Along with her father Benediktas, 15-year-old Stasė helped rescue Jews when the German army occupied their town of Stakiai, Lithuania in June 1941.
Zejneba and Mustafa Hardaga
When Sarajevo was bombed by the Nazis, the home of the Jewish Kavilio family was destroyed. Their Muslims friends, Zejneba and Mustafa Hardaga, immediately offered them refuge.
Ida Kuron Szabó
Sixteen-year-old Ida Kuron helped hide the family of her Jewish friend Aranka Brief in a basement near their home in Hungary.
Victoria Benouzilio
Victoria and her sister Rina from Athens, Greece survived the Holocaust as young children because they were rescued by their neighbor Constantina Constanta.
Margita Lebdovicová
Ján Lebdovič, Žofia Lebdovičová, and their daughters, Margita, Emília, and Anna, courageously rescued ten Jews by hiding them in a cowshed. All of those hidden survived until liberation in January 1945.
Arthur and Paula Schmidt
For almost two years, the Schmidts cared for the seven children of the Jewish Weber family, sheltering and feeding them until the end of the war.
Johanna Stroomenbergh Halpern
The Stroomenbergh house was a center of Resistance activity and together they helped bravely free 12 Jews from police captivity and fed and sheltered many others.