Poles honored for bravery during Holocaust
A group of Polish Christians who risked their own lives to help Jews during the Holocaust were brought together Sunday to be honored by a Jewish organization based in New York City that provides financial aid to these rescuers — an attempt to give back something to people who gave the gift of life to thousands of Jews in Europe’s darkest days.
“Words are truly inadequate to express the gratitude of the Jewish people to each and every one of you,” Stanlee Stahl, executive vice president of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, said to 35 rescuers.
The foundation’s main role is to supplement state pensions and provide rescuers with medication, hearing aids or other medical support that they might not otherwise have in a nation where state pensions and medical services remain meager.
Most of the surviving rescuers were teenagers or young adults at the time who collaborated with their parents to hide and feed Jews being hunted by the Germans in their occupied homeland.