Clergy Among 'Righteous Gentiles' Honored by Israel

JERUSALEM — Outside Jerusalem's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, in the shadow of an old wooden Polish railroad car and tracks that once transported Jews to death camps, a series of marble walls bear testimony to the good that sometimes stands alongside evil.

The walls, which are bordered by large shade trees and rock fences constructed out of Jerusalem stone, are inscribed with the names of more than 18,000 individuals who helped save Jews during the Holocaust. Many of the rescuers, recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Gentiles or Righteous Among the Nations, are Catholics. A striking number were clergy.

Not long ago a small group of people, most of them elderly, stood before one of the walls and lovingly traced with their fingertips the latest names to be added.

Two of those assembled, Svetlana Shukaliuk, a Ukrainian Christian woman, and Yafim Sklarsky, a Ukrainian Jew who moved to Israel in the mid-1990s, were on hand to posthumously honor Svetlana's adoptive mother, Valentina Varavina, who saved Yafim when he was just a toddler. On her deathbed four years ago, Valentina pleaded with Svetlana to find Yafim, whom her mother had not seen since the end of the war.

In 1941 Valentina met Yafim, then 3 years old; his brother, Ilya, then 9; and their mother, Bluma Shtraim, on a train going east, away from the Nazis. The boys' father had been drafted into the Red Army a month earlier.

In central Ukraine the train was bombed and Bluma was killed. Intent on saving the children, Valentina grabbed them from the wreckage but became separated from Ilya. Valentina took in Yafim and introduced him as her nephew, hiding him in her home until the liberation by the Soviet army in 1943. Shortly after the liberation, Ilya found his way to Valentina's home, and in 1946, their father returned and reclaimed the two boys.

In July 2001, Svetlana appeared on a Russian TV program and asked if anyone had information about her mother's “other child.”

Yafim, who was by then living in Israel, saw the show. Soon afterward, he gave his testimony to Yad Vashem in the hopes of having Valentina honored as a Righteous Among the Nations.

Svetlana said her visit to Israel was bittersweet.

“I feel great joy but also great sadness,” she said. “My mother wanted to see Yafim and Ilya [who is now deceased] but it never happened.”

Few Survivors Left

Sadly, ceremonies like the one honoring Valentina Varavina are occurring less and less frequently and could all but disappear within a decade. The number of Holocaust survivors dwindles every year, and most of those still alive were either too young to recall who saved them or are now too old to recall the details with certainty.

Under Yad Vashem's stringent guidelines, only those cases that can be documented — almost always through a survivor's firsthand testimony — can be considered for the “righteous” designation.

The fact that so many — perhaps most — of the rescuers were Catholic should come as no surprise, experts said, because several of the countries where Jews lived and sought refuge were Catholic.

Catholic clergy saved the lives of thousands of Jews, especially young children, by shielding them in convents, orphanages and other Catholic institutions. Sometimes they arranged for local Catholic families to take in Jewish children and raise them until after the war, when it was hoped their parents would return.

Although Pope John Paul II has acknowledged that some individual Catholics did not do enough to save Jews — and in some cases actually caused their death — the Jewish community acknowledges its debt to the numerous Catholics who risked their own lives to assist their Jewish neighbors. Without their help many more would have perished.

Michael Paldiel, director of Yad Vashem's department of the Righteous Among the Nations, estimated there were several hundred thousand survivors at the end of World War II. Today no more than 100,000 are believed to be alive. Even fewer rescuers are alive today since they tended to be older than the people they saved.

“For every person who survived the concentration camps, at least two others survived in the open,” Paldiel said. “For a Jew to survive on his own was unusual. I'd say that for almost every survivor, there was at least one person who helped him survive.”

Paldiel said he believes only a tiny percentage of those who saved Jews have actually been recognized.

“Look at the statistics,” he said. “In Holland, 22,000 out of the Jewish population of 140,000 were hidden or helped, yet only 4,000 Dutch have been honored. In Italy, almost 300 have been honored, but we know that 30,000 Jews were saved.”

Catholic Heroes

Among the recorded acts of heroism are the actions of Msgr. Guiseppe Nicolini, Father Rufino Niccaci and Father Aldi Brunacci, who saved hundreds of Jews in Assisi by providing shelter and new identities.

Mother Marie Skobzova, a Russian revolutionary-turned-nun who resided in Paris, suffered martyrdom in the Ravensbruck concentration camp for directing a network of aid to Jews in the Paris region.

Anna Borkowska, a Polish nun in a convent outside Vilnius, Lithuania, hid resistance fighters in her convent.

According to Yad Vashem, a person cannot be considered righteous unless his actions “risked the rescuer's life and freedom”; any aid he rendered “was not conditioned by monetary or other tangible rewards”; and took place at a time when the fleeing Jew needed the help of a nonJew to avoid arrest by the Nazis or collaborators.

Father Michael McGarry, the rector of the Tantur Institute in Jerusalem and a Holocaust scholar, notes that religious faith played a role for some, though not all, Christian rescuers.

In most cases, Father McGarry said, the rescuers did not spend days or weeks contemplating whether or not to provide assistance. They simply did it.

“The vast majority responded to a knock at the door, a furtive whispering in a crowd, and people had to make an immediate decision,” he said. “It's not as if they pored over books and thought of their catechism. Rather, their decisions resulted from a long life filled with altruistic behavior.”

Michele Chabin writes from Jerusalem.