The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

Media:	Hardcover
Author:	Martin Gilbert
Publisher:	Henry Holt and Co.
Release date:	04 February, 2003
List price:	~~$35.00~~
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The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

Average rating: Stars

Even in Hell There are Angels

I can't say this is a 'Happy' book. The period in which it is set is too terrible and many of the misdeeds described are too terrible to speak of.

But the Joy in this work, the proverbial Silver Lining is there were good people during this period. Many of whom happily risked their lives for strangers. Opening thier pockests and their homes to the hunted with no expectation of rewards of any kind. Some of these heroes were actually anti-semites who drew a line within thier own souls to do good for those they did not like. Just as many of the villeins were mercenaries who did what they did for just money, not caring who thier victims were. And the Author admits he can not tell the stories of all these heroes but just the few mentioned here.

Besides the noble deeds of the great humanitarian scoundrel Oskar Schindler, who so reminds me of the hero of the Film The Music Man, and the simple Dutch farmsers the Bogaards who turned their farm into a sanctuary hiding Jews from the Dutch police, We hear of an SS man who hides a Jewish inmate from one of his superiors in Dachau. A gypsy family who hides a Jewish Girl. Nuns and priests who hid Jewish children. So many risked their lives and liberty for strangers. And many paid for those lives with thier own. So many heroes, just not enough to do any real effective damage to the beast at work.

It is good to know some good people did exist during these evil times, and that is the joy of this book.

I must also say I do not like the Israili supreme court changing their designation from Righteous Gentiles to Righteous Persons.
It cheapens these heroes and prevents the casual observer knowing the full extent of their nature. There are Men. There are Women. And then there are 'persons'.

The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust - Martin Gilbert

Interesting topic, but a disjointed book lacking analysis

This book has gotten a lot of praise for its treatment of a subject that has been overlooked for too long. That being said, this book -- as a work of history -- has some serious flaws. It is a collection of anecdotes, lacking analysis.

Each chapter contains scores of tales and anecdotes of rescue. The author does little to link them up. He provides scant analysis contrasting his different anecdotes or establishing patterns of rescue (e.g. those who did it for money vs. those who acted out of religious belief or ideology, cities vs. villages, etc.). The chapters are arranged by country or geographical region of Europe, but there is hardly any discussion explaining why some countries had higher rates of rescue than others. It doesn't seem as if Gilbert has a working thesis that he wishes to defend through his evidence. Rather, it seems that he went to the Yad Vashem archive and collected as many interesting tales of rescue as he could find and then categorized them by country for his book.

Because it is filled with many, many interesting stories, this book will chiefly be of interest to "lay readers" or armchair historians with an interest in Holocaust studies. Professional historians and scholars of the Holocaust may use this book as a resource (esp. for teaching), but they will quickly stumble upon this book's limits.

Martin Gilbert - The Righteous: The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust

The historian who keeps alive the memory of noble deeds

One element of Martin Gilbert's writing has been the telling of individual stories which normally would have not had a part in most works of history. He has written of the Shoah( Holocaust) in a way which gives the name and story of many ' ordinary' individuals a place they would not ordinarily have.
His collecting the accounts of righteous Gentiles is the same kind of holy work.
There is another important point about the moral value of this work. Even among the most cruel and evil peoples involved in the Holocaust there were exceptions, human beings who give hope that there is a ' saving spark' in all peoples.

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