"Righteous Gentiles".

I read with interest the recent article in Catholic Insight dealing with Pope Pius XII and "Righteous Gentiles."

One person who might be considered for the title of Righteous Gentile is Albert Goering, the brother of Hermann Goering, who was to be the successor to Hitler in the Third Reich. While at first glance that might seem highly improbable, Albert Goering saved many from certain death by providing money and false passports and hiding Jewish people, and a host of other admirable activities. He freed people from concentration camps using pretexts. He was arrested in 1945 and imprisoned at Nuremberg in the same prison as his brother Hermann. He told his American captors of his helping Jewish people in the war years, but this fell upon deaf ears until he wrote out the names of thirty-five people he had helped.

He saved Sophie Lehar, the wife of composer Franz Lehar. Strangely, the music of the "Merry Widow" composed by Franz Lehar was Hitler's favourite. She was Jewish and it so happened that her nephew was an intelligence officer in the US Army at the prison where the Goerings were incarcerated. He checked with his aunt in Austria and Albert was released. Perhaps he saved as many people as Oskar Schindler. Albert Goering was married to a Czech lady who was a Catholic. Their daughter was brought up Catholic. Albert Goering, I believe, emigrated to South America where he passed away.

There was an article in the April 22nd edition of the Toronto Star dealing with "Righteous Gentiles." Ottawa, ON

Editor: The Yad Vashem holocaust museum in Jerusalem has made a point of searching out non-Jews who showed great courage in helping Jewish people during World War II. It honours them in a special section calling them "Righteous among the Nations."

A number of books and films have appeared under these or related titles as well, with the films usually shown only at special events such as the annual Toronto Jewish Film Festival. One recent commercial feature film which centres on a students' resistance group in Munich is Sophie Scholl. A previous one was Schindler's List.

Books continue to appear, most often written by grateful Jewish survivors. A recent one is Meir Wagner's The Righteous of Switzerland: Heroes of the Holocaust, highlighting the story of 37 Swiss men and women (2003).

A more general work covering all of Europe is by the well-known (Jewish) British historian Martin Gilbert, author of a number of Second World War histories including a biography of Churchill and eight different histories of the Holocaust. In his excellent The Righteous: The unsung heroes of the holocaust (Holt, New York and Key Porter, Toronto, 2003, pp. 529, photo illustrations), he notes that the original negative view among Jewish European expatriates that there were only a few "gentiles" who helped them has given way to the acknowledgement that they are to be counted in the thousands, representing every country of Europe. For example, one author writing about Lithuania in 1980 thought there were practically none; since then they have counted 400, plus some 2000 others revealed after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Gilbert takes the view that, in the face of the systematic and sustained frenzy of killing, every act of resistance is remarkable, yet those who did them looked upon them as no more than acts of ordinary decency.

Gilbert puts the boot to the ignorant opinion that Italy, as a military ally of Hitler was also a persecutor of Jews. The exact contrary was true. Wherever Italian troops were in control, Nazi rules and orders for the handing over of Jews were ignored and, as in the Italian occupation zone of Vichy, France, directly cancelled (360).

Italy refused to follow the German lead. In Gilbert's opinion, Catholic opposition to Nazi antisemitism played a prominent role in the larger Italian society as well as in other countries. Eyewitnesses confirm that Vatican City offered shelter to many Jews.

The process of honouring "righteous gentiles" continues. In the Polish town of Markowa residents are supporting the canonization of Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma who were killed in their back garden on March 24, 1944, for hiding eight Jews who had escaped from internment by the occupying power. Their children, four boys and two girls, were also killed. Wiktoria was pregnant when she died. The Archdiocese of Przemysl has started the process (Zenit, Jan. 14, 2004).