Obit & Tears to Eyes - Andrée Geulen, Savior of Jewish Children in Wartime, Dies at 100 (women, Israel)

[jbgusa]

This obituary, Andrée Geulen, Savior of Jewish Children in Wartime, Dies at 100 (link), literally brought tears to my eyes, three or four times while reading. A few excerpts:

For that, she was honored in 1989 by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance and research center in Jerusalem, as a Righteous Among the Nations, a recognition given to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazi genocide. She was made an honorary citizen of Israel.....

Describing the separations in her testimony recounted in the Queens College exhibition, Ms. Geulen spoke of how hard it was “to tear a child away from his mother and not tell her where we were taking him, and to have her cry and cry, ‘Tell me at least, only tell me, where you’re going to take him?’”
“If I’d had children then, I don’t know that I could have done it,” she said.
Each child was given a new name: Sarah became Suzanne, Moses became Marcel. But young children often didn’t understand what was wrong with their real names, or why they couldn’t tell strangers that they were Jewish. One time, Ms. Geulen recalled, she was on a train with a girl she was smuggling to safety when another passenger asked the girl her name. The girl turned to Ms. Geulen and asked, “Should I tell her my new name or my real name?” Luckily, the passenger was not sympathetic to the Nazis....

When a German officer told her that she should be ashamed of teaching Jewish children, she responded, “Aren’t you ashamed to make war on Jewish children!”....

Sadly, the world suffers these events repeatedly. All too often, they focus on the Jews, who hold a minuscule place in the world, population-wise. The "civilized world" shrugged their collective shoulders, and finger-pointed, during the years that people could have been rescued. See, for example, The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the Holocaust,by Rafael Medoff. All I can say is "wow." Medoff's tour d' force is of a similar vein to While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy by Arthur D. Morse. About two years ago I read 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History by Jay Winik.

Where was the virtue, as opposed to virtue-signalling, back then? Were Andrée Geulen and those few like her the only ones who cared? The question answers itself.

[Mightyqueen801]

Originally Posted by jbgusa

This obituary, Andrée Geulen, Savior of Jewish Children in Wartime, Dies at 100 (link), literally brought tears to my eyes, three or four times while reading. A few excerpts:
Sadly, the world suffers these events repeatedly. All too often, they focus on the Jews, who hold a minuscule place in the world, population-wise. The "civilized world" shrugged their collective shoulders, and finger-pointed, during the years that people could have been rescued. See, for example, The Jews Should Keep Quiet: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and the Holocaust,by Rafael Medoff. All I can say is "wow." Medoff's tour d' force is of a similar vein to While Six Million Died: A Chronicle of American Apathy by Arthur D. Morse. About two years ago I read 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History by Jay Winik.

Where was the virtue, as opposed to virtue-signalling, back then? Were Andrée Geulen and those few like her the only ones who cared? The question answers itself.

Have you read In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen? The US Ambassador to Germany in the 1930s was telling the US government what he was seeing, but they were dismissive.

There were heroes like Corrie Ten Boom and Diet Eman, Dutch women and those they worked with to hide Jews, but their stories fascinate us because they were exceptions who lost their freedom, and sometimes their lives, to do the right thing. They were rare, sadly.

We would all like to think we would stand to protect those who were in danger, but the reality is that self-preservation usually gets in the way.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801

Have you read In The Garden of Beasts by Erik Larsen? The US Ambassador to Germany in the 1930s was telling the US government what he was seeing, but they were dismissive.

There were heroes like Corrie Ten Boom and Diet Eman, Dutch women and those they worked with to hide Jews, but their stories fascinate us because they were exceptions who lost their freedom, and sometimes their lives, to do the right thing. They were rare, sadly.

We would all like to think we would stand to protect those who were in danger, but the reality is that self-preservation usually gets in the way.

I have read Erik Larson's The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz. I just looked up In the Garden of Beasts on Goodreads. There's a strong chance that I will read it.

Thanks.

[Rachel NewYork]

I've just purchased In the Garden of Beasts for my Kindle and have started reading it. In the very first chapter it tells of how the Germans were arresting and beating American citizens as soon as Hitler became chancellor, and the story about the physician from Chicago who had been flayed alive by Hitler's sadistic thugs was utterly horrifying. And the U.S. State Department didn't see what was coming from all of this? If American citizens weren't being protected by our own government, one can see how very much more in danger were Germany's Jews.

Thanks for the book recommendations, MQ and jbgusa. Good posts.

[Mightyqueen801]

I would also like to read the Jay Winik book that jbgusa recommended. I read one of his other books and think he's a worthy author.

[jbgusa]

Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801

I would also like to read the Jay Winik book that jbgusa recommended. I read one of his other books and think he's a worthy author.

He usually focuses on narrow time periods. 1944: FDR and the Year That Changed History is about the late WW II years mostly. The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800 is my most recent read of a book by Jay Winik. Returning to the thread topic, I think there are books about the "Righteous Among Nations", i.e. non-Jews that played heroic roles in rescuing Jews from the Shoah.

[VA Yankee]

Thank you for posting this, it still moves me how many examples of individual courage in the face of such darkness continue to surface.

[VA Yankee]

Her story was just presented on the The Life Well Lived segment of the Today Show, they did a good job.