In the Garden of the Righteous

November 7, 2022
Octavian Report founder Hurowitz debuts with an inspiring group portrait of Holocaust “rescuers” whose stories are “too little told and too little known.” They include diplomats Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Portuguese counsel general in Bordeaux, who stamped more than 15,000 passports for Jews seeking to escape from France, and Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese vice counsel in Kovno, Lithuania, who defied a direct order from his government and issued more than 5,000 visas to Jewish refugees. Other profile subjects include social worker Irena Sendler, who created a network to smuggle more than 2,000 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto with forged adoption papers, passports, and visas. Hurowitz also pays tribute to Denmark, writing that “an entire nation warned, sheltered, protected, and smuggled out their Jewish neighbors. Taxi drivers, doctors, teachers, students, farmers and clerks all took part.” As a result, 95% of the country’s Jewish citizens escaped to Sweden after Hitler ordered their arrest and deportation in 1943. Hurowitz’s deep research reveals the mechanics of these and other operations, as well as the rescuers’ wide range of motivations and backgrounds. This well-told history is a moving reminder that “we can all contribute to the project of improving the world.”

Starred review from November 1, 2022
A deep dive into the lives of 10 heroic individuals who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. This book, which derives its title from the Yad Vashem complex on Jerusalem's Mount of Remembrance, enters an already crowded field of Holocaust titles, so it is noteworthy that Hurowitz begins with a humble disclosure: "The Holocaust always seemed something distant to me." Refreshingly, the author makes no pretense of inheriting the stories he tells; most of his ancestors arrived on American soil well before Hitler's rise. This transparency will grip readers from the start. Although the author's subjects repeatedly risked their lives--and those of their family members--by defying orders to round up Jews, none of them were Jewish, thus making their acts of kindness that much more inspiring. "I made the decision not to include any Jewish rescuers, although several make cameo appearances," writes Hurowitz. "They deserve their own volume." Each story takes place under unique circumstances, and the author is patient in his unfolding of the impressive exploits of his subjects: among others, Portuguese Consul General Sousa Mendes, who, upon finding himself stationed in France at a perilous moment, joined forces with a young Polish rabbi; Gino Bartali, a Tour de France superstar who smuggled lifesaving documents inside his bicycle; and Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who never stopped providing visas for Lithuanian Jews, even as the doors of his career slammed shut behind him. The history lessons here are both distressing and awe-inspiring, and Hurowitz reminds us that none of these rescuers sought recognition or celebration; they were simply moved to do the right thing in a moment of immense peril. In a time when our humanity is challenged by new heights of instability and new waves of antisemitism and ethnic hatred, it is an understatement to say this book is timely. A fresh, engrossing contribution to the literature on the Holocaust, focusing on heroics rather than despair.

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December 1, 2022
Hurowitz first became intrigued by the stories of rescuers during the Holocaust when he visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C. In researching their stories, he found them almost universally modest and affected by a deep moral internal compass. He highlights 10 individuals who rescued hundreds of Jews; they were not afraid to do what they felt was right, regardless of the personal consequences. Irena Schultz smuggled orphans out of the Warsaw ghetto; Princess Alice of Greece sheltered the Cohen family in Athens; Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a consul in Portugal, stamped hundreds of Jewish visas; celebrated Italian athlete Gino Bartali served as an underground courier; and Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, who worked for the Nazi Foreign Ministry in Copenhagen, was instrumental in a Danish rescue operation that transported 7,000 Jews to safety in Sweden. To a person, the rescuers lamented those they couldn't save. This account joins recent titles such as Rebecca Donner's All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days (2021) and Norman Ohler's The Bohemians (2020) in highlighting the active resistance and altruism that, while incredibly inspiring, was also stark in its scarcity.

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January 1, 2023

Six years ago, Hurowitz began publishing in The Octavian Report, the digital quarterly magazine he founded, articles about individuals who rescued Jewish people during World War II. Some of those stories of "righteous Gentiles," including an Italian bicycle champion, Portuguese and Japanese diplomats, and people from Denmark, are expanded in this collection of short biographies focused on the heroic actions of a small number of people during the Holocaust. Hurowitz reports on the lives of his subjects before and after their actions in Europe and consults the existing research on common traits among those who consistently do the right thing to help others. His intent for this book was to determine what society might do to make such behavior more commonplace. Like the sociologists and psychologists who have studied those who risked their lives, families, and careers to save those threatened by mass murder, Hurowitz finds and reveals common threads, such as many of the subjects had tolerant parents who disciplined them in consistently loving and rational ways. The author hopes presenting these stories as models might inspire many more to do something about the genocides that continue today. VERDICT Of profound interest to those seeking to improve the world.--Joel Neuberg

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