Amidst rising anti-Semitism, it is always heart-warming to hear afresh how Gentile believers have risked their lives for Jews.

In this new book, ‘Defying the Holocaust’, published by SPCK, London-based historian Tim Dowley has penned ten separate stories of courageous Christians who selflessly sacrificed their safety to rescue God’s chosen people.
That they were highly motivated by their faith in Jesus should come as no surprise, but what does that say about the rest of Christendom who remained largely mute and inactive during those dark days?

Little-known heroes

Although the book includes one or two better-known personalities, such as Dutch Christian, Corrie ten Boom and Scotland’s Jane Haining, most of the others are new to me. Nevertheless, their stories are definitely worth telling. In virtually every case these brave individuals have been recognised by Israel as ‘Righteous Among the Nations’, an term of honour used to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination.

An interesting aside is that one aristocratic woman, who was not the main character of the particular story in which she is featured, and who had rescued many Jews from likely deportation to a concentration camp, actually refused Israel’s nomination of ‘Righteous Among the Nations’ when it was offered to her some years later - on the grounds of her perception that Israel was bombing the Palestinians.

‘We should all wear the star’

This hard-to-put-down, well-written and expertly documented account of those terrible times is truly inspiring and highly recommended, both as a reminder of the brutality meted out to God’s chosen people and of our Christian duty to help them. This is in fact, “a crucial reminder,” as Lord Richard Harries’ endorsement of the book put it, “that the Holocaust was not inevitable”.

If we were true Christians, we would all wear the star.

Mother Maria of Paris underlined this point. Referring to the yellow star that Jews were ordered to wear, and to the Church’s overall indifference to their suffering, this highly unconventional Russian Orthodox nun said: “If we were true Christians, we would all wear the star.” She even challenged a pastor of the compromising German Evangelical Church by demanding: “How can you be a Christian and a Nazi?”

Norfolk evangelist, Irish priest and Polish midwife

The stories in ‘Defying the Holocaust’ represent believers from various denominational backgrounds who swam against the tide because of an obvious love for the King of the Jews. The work of evangelistic missions to the Jews was certainly a factor that opened the way of escape for many victims, as in the example of Norfolk’s Elsie Tilney of the Mildmay Mission to the Jews (now Messianic Testimony).

There are stories of clergymen who hid Jews and provided false baptism certificates in a bid to hide their religious identity. One Irish priest attached to the Vatican was actively involved in saving Jews from deportation even while the Pope did little or nothing to intervene on their behalf.

There is a particularly moving account of a Polish midwife sent to Auschwitz for aiding Jews. Stanislawa Leszczynska worked around the clock as she delivered over 3,000 babies in filthy conditions while disobeying Nazi orders to slaughter them at birth. “Her work lived on in the memories of survivors whose babies she had attempted to give a dignified birth, and in the lives of the tiny minority of children who survived and left the camp alive,” Dowley wrote.

What a legacy! And thank you, Tim, for your must-read offering in memory of these precious, truly remarkable, heroes and heroines.

‘Defying the Holocaust’ (264 pages) is published by SPCK and is available from Amazon