Why isn Yad Vashem honoring Jewish rescuers?
Jewish defiance and resistance during the Holocaust took many forms and Holocaust history is laden with stories of Jewish heroism, solidarity and self-help. Such acts may be: giving a fellow inmate a piece of bread, providing encouragement, smuggling food or false papers, assisting in escape attempts, passing letters and information, helping someone to evade forced labor or deportation, etc. Almost all survivor testimonies describe instances of help extended by one Jew to another. These awe-inspiring expressions of courage, self sacrifice and solidarity deserve to be documented, researched and imparted, and Yad Vashem is doing so in all its manifold activities. However it is practically impossible to define criteria which will enable to decide what act of help deserves special distinction. With non-Jews the basic criteria is the element of risk to the rescuer. i.e. a person who knowingly chose to put himself or herself in danger and chose to leave the safety of the bystander’s position
