In the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust [Paperback]

In the Garden of the Righteousbrilliantly describes how in the midst of the brutality of the Holocaust and the collaboration, acquiescence and passivity of millions, there were people who risked their lives to save others out of a sense of shared humanity. This book is more timely than ever. Stuart E. Eizenstat, author ofImperfect Justice: Looted Assets, Slave Labor, and the Unfinished Business of World War II

These powerfully illuminating and inspiring profiles pay tribute to the incredible deeds of the Righteous Among the Nations, little-known Holocaust heroes who saved countless lives during the Holocaust.

Less than a century ago, the Second World War took the lives of more than fifty million people; more than six million of them were systematically exterminated through crimes of such enormity that a new name to describe the horror was coined: the Holocaust. Yet amid such darkness, there were glimmers of light in this essential World War II historycourageous individuals who risked everything to save those hunted by the Nazis. Today, as bigotry and intolerance and the threats of fascism and authoritarianism are ascendent once again, these heroes little-known storiesamong the most remarkable in human historyresonate powerfully. Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, has recognized more than 27,000 individuals as Righteous Among the Nations non-Jewish people such as Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler who became Holocaust rescuers, risking their lives to save their persecuted neighbors.

In the Garden of the Righteouschronicles extraordinary acts at a time when the moral choices were stark, the threat immense, and the passive apathy of millions predominated. Deeply researched and astonishingly moving, this work of WWII nonfiction focuses on ten remarkable stories, including that of the circus ringmaster Adolf Althoff and his wife Maria, the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes, the Itl3Æ