By taking part in the 1995 ceremony to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the President of the ICRC, Cornelio Sommaruga, sought to show that the organization was fully aware of the gravity of The Holocaust and the need to keep the memory of it alive, so as to prevent any repetition of it. He paid tribute to all those who had suffered or lost their lives during the war and publicly regretted the past mistakes and shortcomings of the Red Cross with regard to the victims of the concentration camps. In 2002, an ICRC official outlined some of the lessons the organization has learned from the failure: In an official statement made on 27 January 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the ICRC stated: Auschwitz also represents the greatest failure in the history of the ICRC, aggravated by its lack of decisiveness in taking steps to aid the victims of Nazi persecution.
The Holocaust
International Committee of the Red Cross
International Committee of the Red Cross | The Holocaust
By taking part in the 1995 ceremony to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the President of the ICRC, Cornelio Sommaruga, paid tribute to all those who had suffered or lost their lives during the war and publicly regretted the past mistakes and shortcomings of the Red Cross with regard to the victims of the concentration camps. By taking part in the 1995 ceremony to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the President of the ICRC, Cornelio Sommaruga, sought to show that the organization was fully aware of the gravity of The Holocaust and the need to keep the memory of it alive, so as to prevent any repetition of it. In an official statement made on 27 January 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the ICRC stated: Auschwitz also represents the greatest failure in the history of the ICRC, aggravated by its lack of decisiveness in taking steps to aid the victims of Nazi persecution. This failure will remain part of the ICRC's memory, as will the courageous acts of individual ICRC delegates at the time. Its president paid tribute to all those who had suffered or lost their lives during the war and publicly regretted the past mistakes and shortcomings of the Red Cross with regard to the victims of the concentration camps
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By 24 January 2010, at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater had been recorded. An estimated three million people were affected by the quake.
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catastrophic magnitude 7.0 M on the Moment magnitude scale
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International Committee of the Red Cross
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a humanitarian organization based in Geneva, Switzerland
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The International Committee of the Red Cross did relatively little to save Jews during the Holocaust and discounted reports of the organized Nazi genocide, such as of the murder of Polish Jewish prisoners that took place at Lublin. At the time, the Red Cross justified its inaction by suggesting that aiding Jewish prisoners would harm its ability to help other Allied POWs. In addition, the Red Cross claimed that if it would take a major stance to improve the situation of those European Jews, the neutrality of Switzerland, where the International Red Cross was based, would be jeopardized. Today, the Red Cross acknowledges its passivity during the Holocaust and has apologized for this.
International response to the Holocaust | International Committee of the Red Cross
This failure will remain part of the ICRC's memory, as will the courageous acts of individual ICRC delegates at the time.
International Committee of the Red Cross | The Holocaust
By taking part in the 1995 ceremony to commemorate the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, the President of the ICRC, Cornelio Sommaruga, sought to show that the organization was fully aware of the gravity of The Holocaust and the need to keep the memory of it alive, so as to prevent any repetition of it. He paid tribute to all those who had suffered or lost their lives during the war and publicly regretted the past mistakes and shortcomings of the Red Cross with regard to the victims of the concentration camps. In 2002, an ICRC official outlined some of the lessons the organization has learned from the failure: In an official statement made on 27 January 2005, the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the ICRC stated: Auschwitz also represents the greatest failure in the history of the ICRC, aggravated by its lack of decisiveness in taking steps to aid the victims of Nazi persecution.
International Committee of the Red Cross | The Holocaust
The Red Cross' response to the Holocaust has been the subject of significant controversy and criticism. As early as May 1944, the ICRC was criticized for its indifference to Jewish suffering and death—criticism that intensified after the end of the war, when the full extent of the Holocaust became undeniable. One defense to these allegations is that the Red Cross was trying to preserve its reputation as a neutral and impartial organization by not interfering with what was viewed as a German internal matter. The Red Cross also considered its primary focus to be prisoners of war whose countries had signed the Geneva Convention.
International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement | World War II
Ottilien camp, where they formed and named the organization ""Sh'erit ha-Pletah"" to act on their behalf with the Allied authorities. After most survivors in the DP camps had immigrated to other countries or resettled, the Central Committee of "She'arit Hapleta" disbanded in December 1950 and the organization dissolved itself in the British Zone of Germany in August 1951.
Holocaust survivors | Sh'erit ha-Pletah
Quakers The Religious Society of Friends, known as Quakers, from 1933 played a major role in assisting and saving Jews through their international network of centres (Berlin, Paris, Vienna) and organizations. In 1947, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Friends Service Council and to the American Friends Service Committee. Also individual Friends did rescue work.
Rescue of Jews during the Holocaust | Others
French officials at the Paris branch of the British Barclays Bank volunteered the names of their Jewish employees to Nazi authorities, and many of them ended up in the death camps. An insightful perspective is provided by Konnilyn G. Feig, who wrote: Additional scholars also point out that a wide range of German soldiers, officials, and civilians were in some way involved in the Holocaust, from clerks and officials in the government to units of the army, police, and the SS. Many ministries, including those of armaments, interior, justice, railroads, and foreign affairs, had substantial roles in orchestrating the Holocaust; similarly, German physicians participated in medical experiments and the T-4 euthanasia program as did civil servants; German physicians also made the selections as to who was fit to work and who would die at the concentration camps.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Implementation
This led to attempts by Jewish organizations to put President Roosevelt under pressure to act on behalf of the European Jews, many of whom had tried in vain to enter either Britain or the U.S.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Allied knowledge of the atrocities
The various camp committees convened a General Jewish Survivors’ Conference a conference for the entire "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" at the St. Ottilien camp attended by delegates representing Holocaust survivors from forty-six Displaced Persons camps in both the American and the British Zones of Occupied Germany and Austria. The delegates passed a fourteen-point program that established a broad mandate, including the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine with UN recognition, compensation to victims, participation in the trials against Nazi war criminals, archival of historical records, and full autonomy for the committees. However, the survivor organizations in the American and British Zones remain separate after the conference and the American and British sectors developed independent organization structures.
Sh'erit ha-Pletah | From representation to autonomy
Besides making donations, members fostered children, served on their local refugee committees, and helped at local hostels. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1947 jointly to American and British Quakers for their role in assisting Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
Jews escaping from German-occupied Europe to the United Kingdom | Resources
During the Holocaust, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was based in neutral Switzerland. Its policy was to maintain strict neutrality and avoid interfering with Nazi racial persecution, which was viewed as a German internal matter. As early as 1933, the ICRC had received pleas to intervene in favor of concentration camp prisoners, but it was hesitant to accept German invitations to visit concentration camps. Carl Jacob Burckhardt, an ICRC official who made most of the key decisions regarding Nazi Germany, stated in a September 1935 meeting that it was "dangerous to occupy oneself" with the concentration camps; he was certain that such visits would be exploited by the Nazis for propaganda purposes.
Theresienstadt Ghetto and the Red Cross | Red Cross
Participants in the Conference were Bolivia, Brazil, United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Norway, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Sweden, Switzerland, the United States, Uruguay, and Venezuela. However, the United States did not increase the amount of refugees they let into the country, "citing continued economic hardship resulting from the worldwide depression" as the reason why no refugees could be taken in. The lack of decisive action by world leaders led to many Jews attempting to escape Nazi persecution having no place to turn to for safety.
International response to the Holocaust | United States
In reaction, the WJC published a comment which said: "The truth is that what stands in the way of aid to the Jews in Europe by the United Nations is not that such a program is dangerous, but simple lack of will to go to any trouble on their behalf." Only in January 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the setting up of the War Refugee Board, whose purpose was to "rescue victims of enemy oppression who are in imminent danger of death". The World Jewish Congress also tried – mostly in vain – to convince the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to assert its authority more forcefully vis-à-vis the Germans, and urged it to secure the status of civilian prisoners of war under the Third Geneva Convention on prisoners of war for those Jews that were confined to ghettos and Nazi concentration camps, which would have entitled the ICRC to provide care to them.
World Jewish Congress | Rescue efforts
According to "IRNA", the conference participants agreed to start a world foundation for Holocaust studies with Mohammad-Ali Ramin as its Secretary General. The stated purpose of the foundation was to "find out the truth about holocaust." More immediate tasks included preparing for the next Holocaust conference and composing the foundation's letter of association. The main office would initially be located in Tehran, though Ramin said it will eventually move to Berlin, "once proper grounds are prepared".
International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust | Conclusions
The primary responsibility for the Holocaust rests on Hitler and the Nazi Party leadership, but operations to persecute Jews, Gypsies, and others were also perpetrated by the "Schutzstaffel" (SS), the Wehrmacht, and ordinary German citizens as well as by collaborationist members of various European governments, including their soldiers and civilians. A host of factors contributed to the environment in which atrocities were committed across the continent, ranging from general racism (including antisemitism), religious hatred, blind obedience, apathy, political opportunism, coercion, profiteering, and xenophobia.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Introduction
Though there was no single department in charge of the Holocaust, the SS and Waffen-SS under Himmler had a leading role and operated with military efficiency in killing enemies of the Nazi state. From the SS came the "SS-Totenkopfverbände" concentration camp guard units, the "Einsatzgruppen" killing squads, and the main administrative offices behind the Holocaust, including the RSHA and WVHA. The regular army participated in the atrocities along with the SS on some occasions by taking part in the massacre of Jews in the Soviet Union, Serbia, Poland, and Greece. The German Army also logistically supported the "Einsatzgruppen", helped form the ghettos, ran prison camps, occasionally provided concentration camp guards, transported prisoners to camps, had medical experiments performed on prisoners, and substantially used slave labor.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Implementation
They were wounded, having been shot by members of the S.S. and men of Szalasi's "Arrow Cross" fascist party. They all died and were buried in the Jewish cemetery.
Csorna | The Holocaust period
As soon as the war ended, survivors began looking for family members, and for most, this was their main goal once their basic needs of finding food, clothing and shelter had been met. Local Jewish committees in Europe tried to register the living and account for the dead. Parents sought the children they had hidden in convents, orphanages or with foster families. Other survivors returned to their original homes to look for relatives or gather news and information about them, hoping for a reunion or at least the certainty of knowing if a loved one had perished. The International Red Cross and Jewish relief organizations set up tracing services to support these searches, but inquiries often took a long time because of the difficulties in communications, and the displacement of millions of people by the conflict, the Nazi's policies of deportation and destruction, and the mass relocations of populations in central and eastern Europe.
Holocaust survivors | Searching for survivors
Over the next two years, the influx of refugees from all over Central and Eastern Europe would more than triple the number of Jews in the DP camps. Their number included Polish Jews who had returned from their wartime refuge in the Soviet Union only to flee once again (westward, this time) from renewed anti-Semitism and pogroms.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee | Post World War II Rescue of Holocaust Survivors
The Humanitarian Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust is overseen by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (ICHEIC), which was established in 1998. The organization and the fund were established as per settlement agreements with insurance companies and the German Foundation "Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future". The Fund finances humanitarian projects related to the Holocaust in two areas: paying out "humanitarian" claims, and funding social welfare and education programs.
Humanitarian Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust | The Fund
Typically, victims would undress and give up their valuables before lining up beside a ditch to be shot, or they would be forced to climb into the ditch, lie on a lower layer of corpses, and wait to be killed. The latter was known as "Sardinenpackung" ("packing sardines"), a method reportedly started by SS officer Friedrich Jeckeln. At first the Einsatzgruppen targeted the male Jewish intelligentsia, defined as male Jews aged 15–60 who had worked for the state and in certain professions (the commandos would describe them as "Bolshevist functionaries" and similar), but from August 1941 they began to murder women and children too.
The Holocaust | Toward the Holocaust
programme of outreach and mobilization of society for Holocaust remembrance and education. Resolution 60/7 and the International Holocaust Day was an initiative of the State of Israel. Minister of Foreign Affairs of the State of Israel Silvan Shalom, was the head of the delegation of Israel to the United Nations. The essence of the text lies in its twofold approach: one that deals with the memory and remembrance of those who were massacred during the Holocaust, and the other with educating future generations of its horrors. The International Day in memory of the victims of the Holocaust is thus a day on which we must reassert our commitment to human rights.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day | The General Assembly Resolution 60/7
Allied victory offered no guarantee that the tens of thousands of newly liberated Jews (Sh'erit ha-Pletah) would survive to enjoy the fruits of freedom. To stave off mass starvation, JDC marshaled its resources, instituting an ambitious purchasing and shipping program to provide urgent necessities for Holocaust survivors facing critical local shortages. More than 227 million pounds of food, medicine, clothing, and other supplies were shipped to Europe from U.S. ports. By late 1945, 75,000 Jewish survivors of the Nazi horrors had crowded into hastily set up displaced person camps throughout Germany, Austria, and Italy. Conditions were abominable. Earl Harrison, dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, asked Joseph Schwartz, JDC's European director, to accompany him on his official tour of the camps.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee | Post World War II Rescue of Holocaust Survivors
Jewish survivors who could not or did not want to go back to their old homes, particularly those whose entire families had been murdered, whose homes, or neighborhoods or entire communities had been destroyed, or who faced renewed anti-Semitic violence, became known by the term ""Sh'erit ha-Pletah"" (). Most of the survivors comprising the group known as "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" originated in central and eastern European countries, while most of those from western European countries returned to them and rehabilitated their lives there. Most of these refugees gathered in Displaced Persons (DP) camps in the British, French and particularly American occupation zones of Germany, and in Austria and in Italy.
Holocaust survivors | Sh'erit ha-Pletah
The Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial was created to address the upsurge in antisemitism and Holocaust denial and trivialization. Two of the Committee's key achievements are the "Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion" (adopted at the October Plenary Session 2013) and the "Working Definition of Antisemitism".
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance | Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
AJC "worked to contain nativist sentiment in America rather than work to open America’s doors to refugees" during the Holocaust. They were criticized for their lack of reaction and silence during the Holocaust; historian and AJC National Director of Jewish Communal Affairs Steven Bayme said AJC leaders never understood the uniqueness of Nazism and its "war against the Jews."
American Jewish Committee | AJC response during Holocaust
The conditions in these camps were harsh and primitive at first, but once basic survival needs were being met, the refugees organized representatives on a camp-by-camp basis, and then a coordinating organization for the various camps, to present their needs and requests to the authorities, supervise cultural and educational activities in the camps, and advocate that they be allowed to leave Europe and immigrate to the British Mandate for Palestine or other countries. The first meeting of representatives of survivors in the DP camps took place a few weeks after the end of the war, on 27 May 1945, at the St.
Holocaust survivors | Sh'erit ha-Pletah
The international community has formally entrusted the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) with the role of guardian of international humanitarian law. That includes a watchdog function by which it takes direct action to encourage parties to armed conflict to comply with international humanitarian law. The head of the International Red Cross delegation to Israel and the Occupied Territories stated that the establishment of Israeli settlements in the occupied territories is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions that constitute war crime.
Israeli-occupied territories | International views
The logistics of the Reichsbahn were also an important factor during the Holocaust. Jews were transported like cattle to the concentration and extermination camps by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in trains of covered goods wagons, so-called Holocaust trains. These movements using cattle wagons, for example, from the goods station of the great Frankfurt Market Hall thus played a significant role in the genocide within the extermination machinery of the Holocaust. In 1997, the market erected a memorial plaque in recognition of this dark period of history. The following is an excerpt from the testimony of Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg: The was ready to ship in principle any cargo in return for payment.
Deutsche Reichsbahn | Holocaust
Heydrich ensured the safety of certain athletes, such as Paul Sommer, a Jewish German champion fencer he knew from his pre-SS days, and the Polish Olympic fencing team that competed at the 1936 Summer Olympics.
Reinhard Heydrich | Role in the Holocaust
Nobel Prize laureate Elie Wiesel served as the Forum's honorary Chairman and Professor Yehuda Bauer was the senior Academic Advisor to the forum. The IHRA carries out internal projects, seeks to influence public-policy making on Holocaust-related issues and develops research focusing on lesser known aspects of the Holocaust.
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance | Introduction
Others have said that the limited intelligence available to the Allies—who, as late as October 1944, did not know the locations of many of the Nazi death camps or the purposes of the various buildings within those camps they had identified—made precision bombing impossible. In three cases, entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population during the Holocaust. In other countries, notable individuals or communities created resistance during the Holocaust.
International response to the Holocaust | Introduction
Sh'erit ha-Pletah is the name of an organization formed by Jewish Holocaust survivors living in Displaced Persons (DP) camps, assigned with acting on their behalf with the Allied authorities. The organization was active between 27 May 1945 and 1950-51, when it dissolved itself. "Sh'erit ha-Pletah" () is Hebrew for surviving remnant, and is a term from the Book of Ezra and 1 Chronicles (; ). A total of more than 250,000 Jewish survivors spent several years following their liberation in DP camps or communities in Germany, Austria, and Italy, since they could not, or would not, be repatriated to their countries of origin.
Sh'erit ha-Pletah | Introduction
Towards the end and immediately after the war, the JAC became involved in documenting the Holocaust. This ran contrary to the official Soviet policy to present it as atrocities against all Soviet citizens, not acknowledging the specific genocide of the Jews. Committee members had international contacts especially in the US at the outset of the Cold War and this may have contributed to them later being accused of treason and espionage. The contacts with American Jewish organizations resulted in the plan to publish "The Black Book of Soviet Jewry" simultaneously in the US and the Soviet Union, documenting the Holocaust and participation of Jews in the resistance movement.
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee | Persecution
Of 928 returning passengers, 288 were accepted by Britain, 366 survived the war on the continent, and 254 died during the Holocaust. In 1944, the War Refugee Board (WRB) was established to assist tens of thousands of refugees, in coordination with the World Jewish Congress and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, and an emergency shelter was established at Fort Ontario in New York, which housed almost 1,000 refugees.
Emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe | United States
Holocaust survivors are people who survived the persecution and attempted annihilation of the Jews by Nazi Germany and its allies in Europe and North Africa during the Holocaust both before and during World War II, from the rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany in 1933 until the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945. More broadly speaking, the term includes anyone who was discriminated against, displaced or persecuted as a result of the policies and actions of the Nazis and their allies and, in addition to Jews who were uniquely targeted for complete annihilation, it includes those who were persecuted as a result of the Nazis' racial theories, such as the Romani people and Slavs, along with others who were seen as "undesirables" such as homosexuals, or for political reasons, such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Communists.
Holocaust survivors | Introduction
During the 1990s and 2000s, at the behest of the World Jewish Congress a total of 17 European countries established special committees to look into their role during World War II. Many set up funds to compensate Jewish and other victims of the war. In 1997, French Prime Minister Alain Juppé created a commission to investigate the seizures of Jewish property by the occupying Nazi forces and the French collaborators during the war. In 2000/2001, the World Jewish Congress helped to negotiate a compensation agreement with the German government and industry under which a €5 billion fund was set up to compensate World War II slave and forced laborers, mainly living Central and Eastern Europe, who had hitherto not received any compensation payments for the suffering under Nazi rule.
World Jewish Congress | Agreements with other European countries on Holocaust-era property restitution and compensation
Significant numbers of Wehrmacht soldiers accompanied the SS in their macabre tasks or provided other forms of support for killing operations. The killings by the "Einsatzgruppen" required cooperation between the "Einsatzgruppen" chief and Wehrmacht unit commander so they could coordinate and control access to and from the execution grounds.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Implementation
"Judenräte" were responsible for the ghetto's day-to-day operations, including distributing food, water, heat, medical care, and shelter. The Germans also required them to confiscate property, organize forced labor, and, finally, facilitate deportations to extermination camps. The Jewish councils' basic strategy was one of trying to minimize losses by cooperating with German authorities, bribing officials, and petitioning for better conditions.
The Holocaust | Ghettos, Jewish councils
Its mandate was to investigate the creation and maintenance of a memorial to victims of the Holocaust and an appropriate annual commemoration in their memory.
Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust | Background
A large number of refugees were in critical condition as a result of malnutrition, abuse, and disease. Many died, but medical material was requisitioned from military stores and German civilian facilities. Military doctors as well as physicians among the survivors themselves used available resources to help a large number recover their physical health. The first proper funerals of Holocaust victims took place during this period with the assistance of Allied forces and military clergy.
Sh'erit ha-Pletah | Formation of the DP camps
Organizations were established to assist refugees, like the World Jewish Congress, the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. There were few non-Jews that helped the Jews escape, but there were some that risked their lives for the cause. "See also: Righteous Among the Nations".
Emigration of Jews from Nazi Germany and German-occupied Europe | Organizations and individuals that offered relief
Beginning in 1943, al-Husseini was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims into several divisions. The largest of which was the 13th "Handschar" division.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Palestine
In an article for Israeli newspaper "The Jerusalem Post", Yehuda Bauer defended the Norwegian chairmanship. Bauer emphasized Norway's commitment to Holocaust education, while also acknowledging the continuing presence of antisemitism in Norway and elsewhere:
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance | The Norwegian chairmanship and Knut Hamsun
Henri Dunand of the Red Cross provided funding for a clandestine group led by Arnold Lazar, which provided money, food, and clothing to Jews in hiding in Bratislava.
The Holocaust in Slovakia | Roundups
The International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors held its first international conference in New York City in 1984, attended by more than 1,700 children of survivors of the Holocaust with the stated purpose of creating greater understanding of the Holocaust and its impact on the contemporary world and establishing contacts among the children of survivors in the United States and Canada.
Holocaust survivors | Child survivors
Our role in the world is to preserve that precious, precious thing that we consider to be a free democracy. Today we will remember those who gave their lives for freedom."
Liberation (Holocaust memorial) | Meaning beyond the Holocaust
The International Auschwitz Committee was formed by survivors of the Auschwitz death camp in 1952 for the support of the survivors and to fight racism and anti-Semitism. The Committee's mission was to maintain contact with survivors on both sides of the Iron Curtain and serve as an outreach program to young adults in the community. Its secretary is now based in Berlin (German: Koordinationsbüro des IAK).
International Auschwitz Committee | Introduction
A wide range of organizations have been established to address the needs and issues of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Immediately following the war, "Sh'erit ha-Pletah"" was established to meet the immediate physical and rehabilitation needs in the Displaced Persons camps and to advocate for rights to immigrate. Once these aims had largely been met by the early 1950s, the organization was disbanded. In the following decades, survivors established both local, national and eventually international organizations to address longer term physical, emotional and social needs, and organizations for specific groups such as child survivors and descendants, especially children, of survivors were also set up.
Holocaust survivors | Organizations and conferences
In 1979, the President's Commission on the Holocaust provided the following definition to help guide the Council and its observances: The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic annihilation of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators as a central act of state during the Second World War; as night descended, millions of other peoples were swept into this net of death. It was a crime unique in the annals of human history, different not only in the quantity of violence—the sheer numbers killed—but in its manner and purpose as a mass criminal enterprise organized by the state against defenseless civilian populations.
Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust | Defining the Holocaust
While significant numbers of Germans and other Europeans collectively participated in the Holocaust, it was Hitler and his Nazi paladins who share the greatest responsibility for incentivizing, coercing, and/or overseeing the extermination of millions of people. Among those most responsible for the Final Solution were Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Odilo Globocnik, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Adolf Eichmann, Heinrich Müller, Friedrich Jeckeln, Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, Rudolf Höss and Oswald Pohl. Key roles were also played by Fritz Sauckel, Hans Frank, Wilhelm Frick and Robert Ley. Other top Nazi leaders such as Goebbels, Hermann Göring, and Martin Bormann contributed in various ways, whether administratively supporting killing efforts or providing ideological fodder to encourage the Holocaust.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Other Nazi leaders
Alfred Wiener, a German Jew who worked for the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith), a Jewish civil rights group, spent years documenting the rise of antisemitism. He collected books, photographs, letters, magazines and other materials, including school primers and children's games, recording the spread of Nazi propaganda and its racist doctrines. In 1933, Wiener fled Germany for Amsterdam, where he operated the Jewish Central Information Office (JCIO). Dr. David Cohen became its president. Cohen was a prominent Dutch Jew who founded the Committee for Jewish Refugees at the same time; the Committee used the work of the JCIO for its publications, and provided some financial support to the JCIO.
Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide | History
In his history of the heroes of the Holocaust, the Jewish historian Martin Gilbert notes that in every country under German occupation, priests played a major part in rescuing Jews, and that the Jesuits were one of the Catholic Orders that hid Jewish children in monasteries and schools to protect them from the Nazis. Fourteen Jesuit priests have been formally recognized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Jerusalem, for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust of World War II: Roger Braun (1910–1981) of France; Pierre Chaillet (1900–1972) of France; Jean-Baptist De Coster (1896–1968) of Belgium; Jean Fleury (1905–1982) of France; Emile Gessler (1891–1958) of Belgium; Jean-Baptiste Janssens (1889–1964) of Belgium; Alphonse Lambrette (1884–1970) of Belgium; Emile Planckaert (1906–2006) of France; Jacob Raile (1894–1949) of Hungary; Henri Revol (1904–1992) of France; Adam Sztark (1907–1942) of Poland; Henri Van Oostayen (1906–1945) of Belgium; Ioannes Marangas (1901–1989) of Greece; and Raffaele de Chantuz Cubbe (1904–1983) of Italy.
Society of Jesus | Rescue efforts during the Holocaust
On 21 September 1939, Heydrich sent out a teleprinter message on the "Jewish question in the occupied territory" to the chiefs of all "Einsatzgruppen" with instructions to round up Jewish people for placement into ghettos, called for the formation of Judenräte (Jewish councils), ordered a census, and promoted Aryanization plans for Jewish-owned businesses and farms, among other measures. The "Einsatzgruppen" units followed the army into Poland to implement the plans. Later, in the Soviet Union, they were charged with rounding up and killing Jews via firing squad and gas vans. Historian Raul Hilberg estimates that between 1941 and 1945 the "Einsatzgruppen" and related auxiliary troops killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews.
Reinhard Heydrich | Role in the Holocaust
In response, Germany set up the "Remembrance, Responsibility and Future" Foundation in 2000, which paid €4.45 billion to former slave laborers (up to €7,670 each). In 2013 Germany agreed to provide €772 million to fund nursing care, social services, and medication for 56,000 Holocaust survivors around the world. The French state-owned railway company, the SNCF, agreed in 2014 to pay $60 million to Jewish-American survivors, around $100,000 each, for its role in the transport of 76,000 Jews from France to extermination camps between 1942 and 1944.
The Holocaust | Reparations
Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, in "The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust" (2000), favor a definition that focuses on the Jews, Roma and handicapped: "the systematic, state-sponsored murder of entire groups determined by heredity". The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum distinguishes between the Holocaust (the murder of six million Jews) and "the era of the Holocaust", which began when Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Victims of the era of the Holocaust include those the Nazis viewed as inherently inferior (chiefly Slavs, the Roma and the handicapped), and those targeted because of their beliefs or behavior (such as Jehovah's Witnesses, communists and homosexuals).
The Holocaust | Definition
Finland officially refused to participate in the Holocaust and only 7 out of 300 Jewish alien refugees were turned over to the Germans. The Hungarian regime of Miklós Horthy also refused to cooperate until the German invasion of Hungary in 1944, after which its 750,000 Jews were no longer safe. Between May through July 1944, upwards of 437,000 Jews were deported from Hungary to Auschwitz. The Romanian regime of Ion Antonescu actively persecuted Jews, and while they were inefficient, 120,000 or more Jews were killed. The German puppet regime in Croatia actively persecuted Jews on its own initiative. The Nazis enlisted support for their programs in all the countries they occupied, although their recruitment methods differed in various countries according to Nazi racial theories.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Other states
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) played a major role in working with POW's on all sides in World War II. It was in a cash-starved position when the war began in 1939, but quickly mobilized its national offices set up a Central Prisoner of War Agency. For example, it provided food, mail and assistance to 365,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians held captive. Suspicions, especially by London, of ICRC as too tolerant or even complicit with Nazi Germany led to its side-lining in favour of the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) as the primary humanitarian agency after 1945.
Philanthropy | Switzerland
The Holocaust was a genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, aided by its collaborators, systematically murdered approximately 6 million European Jews. Holocaust may also refer to:
Holocaust (disambiguation) | Introduction
The people on this list are or were survivors of Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate the Jews in Europe before and during World War II. A state-enforced persecution of Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe lasted from the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 to Hitler's defeat in 1945. Although there were many victims of the Holocaust, the "International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims" (ICHEIC) defines a Holocaust survivor as, "Any Jew who lived for any period of time in a country that was ruled by the Nazis or their allies." The United States Holocaust Museum (USHMM) gives a broader definition: "The Museum honors as a survivor any person who was displaced, persecuted, and/or discriminated against by the racial, religious, ethnic, social, and/or political policies of the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945.
List of Holocaust survivors | Introduction
Abraham Joshua Heschel summarized this dilemma when he attempted to understand Auschwitz: "To try to answer is to commit a supreme blasphemy. Israel enables us to bear the agony of Auschwitz without radical despair, to sense a ray [of] God's radiance in the jungles of history."
American Jews | The Holocaust
In September 1986 in the left-leaning "Die Zeit", Eberhard Jäckel responded that "never before had a state, with the authority of its leader, decided and announced that a specific group of humans, including the elderly, women, children and infants, would be killed as quickly as possible, then carried out this resolution using every possible means of state power."
The Holocaust | "Historikerstreit", uniqueness question
At the height of the war, dying Hungarian Jews managed to smuggle a letter to that Allies. It read, "And you, our brothers in all free countries: and you, governments of all free lands, where are you? What are you doing to hinder the carnage that is now going on?" Through archival footage and soundbites, the documentary simultaneously reconstructs and criticizes America's isolationist attitude during the war. Full of righteous anger, the film scrutinizes Jewish-Americans inactivity and the government's apathetic response to the European Jews' cry for help. Full of biting anger, Peter Bergson of the Emergency Committee to Save the Jewish People of Europe believes that American Jews silenced their outcries against the Holocaust because they were afraid they wouldn't get into their local Country Clubs.
Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die | Summary
Survivors of the Holocaust include those persecuted civilians who were still alive when the concentration camps were liberated at the end of the war, or those who had either survived as partisans or been hidden with the assistance of non-Jews, or had escaped to territories beyond the control of the Nazis before the Final Solution was implemented. At the end of the war, the immediate issues which faced Holocaust survivors were physical and emotional recovery from the starvation, abuse and suffering which they had experienced; the need to search for their relatives and reunite with them if any of them were still alive; rebuild their lives by returning to their former homes, or more often, by immigrating to new and safer locations because their homes and communities had been destroyed or because they were endangered by renewed acts of antisemitic violence.
Holocaust survivors | Introduction
Their experiences, memories and understanding of the terrible events they had suffered as child victims of the Nazis and their accomplices was given little consideration. In the 1970s and 80s, small groups of these survivors, now adults, began to form in a number of communities worldwide to deal with their painful pasts in safe and understanding environments. The First International Conference on Children of Holocaust Survivors took place in 1979 under the auspices of Zachor, the Holocaust Resource Center. The conference and was attended by some 500 survivors, survivors’ children and mental health professionals and established a network for children of survivors of the Holocaust in the United States and Canada.
Holocaust survivors | Child survivors
In three cases, entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population during the Holocaust. In other countries, notable individuals or communities created resistance during the Holocaust which helped the Jews escape some concentration camps. Since 1963, a commission organized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel, and headed by an Israeli Supreme Court justice, has been charged with the duty of awarding people who rescued Jews from the Holocaust the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations. As of January 2007, 21,758 people have received the honor.
Resistance during the Holocaust | Introduction
This conflation of members of the resistance, Jews and Gypsies effectively reproduces the perpetrators’ view that the Third Reich needed to defend itself against an alleged threat.
The Holocaust in textbooks | Points of view
When the Second World War ended, the Jews who had survived the Nazi concentration camps, extermination camps, death marches as well as the Jews who had survived by hiding in forests or hiding with rescuers were almost all suffering from starvation, exhaustion and the abuse which they had endured, and tens of thousands of survivors continued to die from weakness, eating more than their emaciated bodies could handle, epidemic diseases, exhaustion and the shock of liberation. Some survivors returned to their countries of origin while others sought to leave Europe by immigrating to Palestine or other countries.
Holocaust survivors | Immediate aftermath
Vaad Hatzalah (the Rescue Committee or Committee for Rescuing) was an organization to rescue Jews in Europe from the Holocaust, which was founded in November 1939 by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada ("Agudath Harabbanim"). The organization was originally named Emergency Committee for War-Torn Yeshivas and it is often referred to as "the Rescue Committee" also formally named: Vaad ha-Hatzala in Hebrew.
Vaad Hatzalah | Introduction
The American Gathering is on the Board of Directors of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, an organization that seeks restitution from the governments of Germany and Austria. The current negotiating committee is composed solely of survivors and chaired by the American Gathering's chairman Roman Kent, the restitution provides health care and assistance to survivors in desperate need.
American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants | Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
Unsatisfied with the findings, Dr. Michael Marrus, one of the three Jewish members of the Commission, said the commission "ran up against a brick wall. ... It would have been really helpful to have had support from the Holy See on this issue."
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust | International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission
The Aid and Rescue Committee, or "Va'adat Ha-Ezrah ve-ha-Hatzalah be-Budapesht" ("Vaada" for short; name in ) was a small committee of Zionists in Budapest, Hungary, in 1944–1945, who helped Hungarian Jews escape the Holocaust during the German occupation of that country. The Committee was also known as the Rescue and Relief Committee, and the Budapest Rescue Committee. The main personalities of the "Vaada" were Ottó Komoly, president; Rudolf Kasztner, executive vice-president; Samuel Springmann, treasurer; and Joel Brand, who was in charge of "tijul" or the underground rescue of Jews. Other members were Hansi Brand (Joel Brand's wife); Erno Szilagyi from the left-wing "Hashomer Hatzair".
Aid and Rescue Committee | Introduction
Yad Vashem, the State of Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, defines Holocaust survivors as Jews who lived under Nazi control, whether it was direct or indirect, for any amount of time, and survived it. This definition includes Jews who spent the entire war living under Nazi collaborationist regimes, including France, Bulgaria and Romania, but were not deported, as well as Jews who fled or were forced to leave Germany in the 1930s. Additionally, other Jewish refugees are considered Holocaust survivors, including those who fled their home countries in Eastern Europe in order to evade the invading German army and spent years living in the Soviet Union.
Holocaust survivors | Definition
It was agreed to include all 47 individual questions by the six members, and use them as Preliminary Report. In addition to the 47 questions, the commission issued no findings of its own. It stated that it was not their task to sit in judgement of the Pope and his advisers but to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the papacy during the Holocaust. The 47 questions by the six scholars were grouped into three parts: The disagreement between members over additional documents locked up under the Holy See's 70 year rule resulted in a discontinuation of the Commission in 2001 on friendly terms.
Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust | International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission
Holocaust victims were people who were targeted by the government of Nazi Germany for various discriminatory practices due to their ethnicity, religion, political beliefs, or sexual orientation. These institutionalized practices came to be called The Holocaust, and they began with legalized social discrimination against specific groups, and involuntary hospitalization, euthanasia, and forced sterilization of those considered physically or mentally unfit for society. These practices escalated during World War II to include non-judicial incarceration, confiscation of property, forced labor, sexual slavery, medical experimentation, and death through overwork, undernourishment, and execution through a variety of methods, with the genocide of different groups as the primary goal.
Holocaust victims | Introduction
Besides blocking emigration, the RSHA, working with Eichmann's Reich Association of Jews in Germany, deliberately deceived Jews still living in Germany and those of other countries by promising them good living quarters, medical care, and food in Theresienstadt (a concentration camp which was a way station to extermination facilities like Auschwitz) if they turned over their assets to the RSHA through a 'phony' home-purchase plan. The RSHA oversaw the "Einsatzgruppen", death squads that were formed under the direction of Heydrich and operated by the SS. Originally part of the SiPo, in September 1939 the operational control of the "Einsatzgruppen" was taken over by the RSHA.
Reich Main Security Office | Role in the Holocaust
Starting in the late 1970s, conferences and gatherings of survivors, their descendants, as well as rescuers and liberators began to take place and were often the impetus for the establishment and maintenance of permanent organizations.
Holocaust survivors | Organizations and conferences
After that, the information would have been submitted to the government of Israel, which would then begin negotiations for restitution with the governments of countries in which the properties were lost and other relevant bodies. Project HEART insisted that any compensation recovered would have been disbursed directly to Holocaust survivors and their heirs if they can be located.
Holocaust Era Asset Restitution Taskforce | Participation in the project
At Cluj, survivors of extermination camps set up the Jewish Democratic Group (GDE), an association backed by communist agents. A Jewish People's Democratic Community (CPED), originally called Jewish Anti-hitlerite Group, was co-opted on the Northern Transylvanian Democratic Committee, which functioned as a quasi-government of the region. It was led by a communist cadre and Holocaust survivor, Hillel Kohn, but failed to obey PCR commands by insisting for the restitution of assets confiscated during the Holocaust, as well as for the "protection of unhindered freedom of emigration". More to the south, Arad hosted a Union of Democratic Jews, which, in October 1944, inaugurated a process to restore property confiscated under fascism.
Jewish Democratic Committee | Creation
They were tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi state, the neutralization of any opposition, policing the German people for their commitment to Nazi ideology, and providing domestic and foreign intelligence. The SS was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews and millions of other victims during the Holocaust. Members of all of its branches committed war crimes and crimes against humanity during World War II (1939–45). The SS was also involved in commercial enterprises and exploited concentration camp inmates as slave labor. After Nazi Germany's defeat, the SS and the Nazi Party were judged by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg to be criminal organizations.
Schutzstaffel | Introduction
In 1968 the Library of Congress created a new category, "Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)". The term was popularised in the United States by the NBC mini-series "Holocaust" (1978), about a fictional family of German Jews, and in November that year the President's Commission on the Holocaust was established. As non-Jewish groups began to include themselves as Holocaust victims, many Jews chose to use the Hebrew terms "Shoah" or "Churban". The Nazis used the phrase "Final Solution to the Jewish Question" ().
The Holocaust | Terminology
In 2002 he was elected as Chairman of the Executive of the Claims Conference and held this position until 2006. As a representative of the Claims Conference in his various duties, Sanbar was a member of the Swiss National Committee on Needy Holocaust Survivors, and in 1998 appointed o the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims led by former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger.
Moshe Sanbar | Work for Holocaust survivors
In addition to former inmates of concentration camps and ghettos, this includes refugees and people in hiding." Most notably, as well as Jews, this includes Poles, Romani people, Jehovah's Witnesses and those who were persecuted for political reasons such as Communists, those who were persecuted for religious reasons (such as Pastor Niemoller), and homosexuals and those of other sexual orientations. It includes those who were actually in hiding in Nazi-occupied countries. The latter includes Hidden Children, who were hidden to escape the Nazis. Most especially, in contrast to the ICHEIC definition, it includes refugees, who fled from their homeland to escape the Nazis, and never lived in a Nazi-controlled country.
List of Holocaust survivors | Introduction
To make for smoother intra-governmental cooperation in the implementation of this so-called "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", the Wannsee conference was held near Berlin on 20 January 1942, with the participation of fifteen senior officials, led by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann; the records of which provide the best evidence of the central planning of the Holocaust. Just five weeks later on 22 February, Hitler was recorded saying to his closest associates: "We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew."
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Authorization
In an interview with "Financial Times", Ramin stated that he has also initiated the "Holocaust commission" and he is the founder of the Conference on Holocaust in Tehran. Ramin suggested that former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad establish a committee for clarifying the "real extent" of the Holocaust.
Mohammad-Ali Ramin | Views on the Holocaust
On 25 January 1945, she was taken into a Swiss hospital and died just a few hours later. Soon after, Ruth, Eva, and Mirjam boarded a Red Cross ship, the "Gripsholm", bound for New York where they were reunited with their father.
Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide | History
The Humanitarian Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust was created by the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA) as a result of the "Meili Affair". The fund enabled the Swiss financial industry to participate in the process of paying reparations to the victims of Nazi looting during World War II that was abetted by Swiss banks and the failure of Swiss life insurance companies to honor the policies of Holocaust victims. The fund is administered by the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims.
Humanitarian Fund for the Victims of the Holocaust | Introduction
In Hungary, for example, about one-third of the original Jewish population survived because liberation came before the Nazis could completely carry out their plans for the deportation and annihilation of the entire population.
Holocaust survivors | In collaborationist regimes and occupied countries
An ongoing effort to pursue Nazis and collaborators resulted, famously, in the 1960 capture of Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann in Argentina (an operation led by Rafi Eitan) and to his subsequent trial in Israel in 1961. Simon Wiesenthal became one of the most famous Nazi hunters.
Responsibility for the Holocaust | Legal proceedings against Nazis
THHP defines itself an organization of "concerned individuals working together to educate and inform about the Holocaust." Some of the members remain anonymous. The founding director was Harry W. Mazal, OBE, who died in 2011. Among the material presented, there are essays about scientific and legal analyses, events and people, expert witness testimony, original Nazi documents, transcripts of many of the Nuremberg trials, and the complete texts of two influential works, Jean-Claude Pressac's "Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers" and Robert Jay Lifton's "The Nazi Doctors". There are also extensive sections on the Auschwitz and Operation Reinhard extermination camps.
The Holocaust History Project | Introduction
In the post-War period, Agudath Israel was active in Europe to provide aid for Holocaust Survivors. There was a branch in the World Agudath Israel World Organization in England located att 37/38 Mitre Street in London. Another branch was located in Switzerland, located at 59 Lavaterstrasseled which was led by Dr. Shlomo Ehrman. In allied-occupied Germany there were branches as well. The Cental-Committee of Agudath Israel of the British Zone was led by Rabbi Yisroel Moshe Olewski, Rabbi Shlomo Zev Zweigenhaft and Efraim Londoner and was located in Bergen-Belsen. Yehuda Leib Girsht represented Agudath Israel on the camp committee of Bergen Belsen .
World Agudath Israel | Post World War II
His landmark report called for separate Jewish camps and for United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) participation in administering them—with JDC's help. In response, Schwartz virtually re-created JDC, putting together a field organization that covered Europe and later North Africa and designing a more proactive operational strategy. Supplementing the relief supplied by the army, by UNRRA, and by UNRRA's successor agency—the International Refugee Organization—JDC distributed emergency aid, but also fed the educational and cultural needs of the displaced, providing typewriters, books, Torah scrolls, ritual articles, and holiday provisions. JDC funds were directed at restoring a sense of community and normalcy in the camps with new medical facilities, schools, synagogues, and cultural activities.
American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee | Post World War II Rescue of Holocaust Survivors
The Programme has worked closely with Holocaust survivors to ensure that their stories are heard and heeded as a warning of the consequences of anti-Semitism and other forms of discrimination. It continues to combat Holocaust denial, also called for in General Assembly resolution 61/255. In all of its activities, with students around the world in particular, the Holocaust Programme draws essential links between the underlying causes of genocide, the lessons to be learned from the Holocaust and the promotion of human rights and democratic values today.
The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme | Introduction
The Committee on the Holocaust, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity was established to support educators who choose to relate the Holocaust to other genocides and crimes against humanity. A central accomplishment of the Committee is the recently finalized survey, A Matter of Comparison: The Holocaust, Genocides and Crimes Against Humanity; An Analysis and Overview of Comparative Literature and Programs The Committee has also recently completed a working paper entitled "History Never Repeats itself, but Sometimes it Rhymes: comparing the Holocaust to different Atrocities". This working paper aims to explore what we mean by "compare" when we relate the Holocaust to other genocides and crimes against humanity.
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance | Committee on the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity
Association of Holocaust Organizations
Education about the Holocaust | External Links
Abraham Treger served as the Committee's chairman between 1946 and 1948 and then emigrated with his wife Ida to Haifa, Israel.
Central Committee of the Liberated Jews | Introduction
She was soon followed by the French historian and nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld with his association of the" Sons and Daughters of Jews Deported from France". Already two years later he published a collection of documents from the archives about the internment and deportation of French Jews during WWII. In 1997, the archives adopted a new filing plan - B AI ("Services généraux – Archives institutionnelles") - which included computerized documents.
International Committee of the Red Cross archives | Post-Cold War
Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency (or Jewish Agency Rescue Committee or simply: Rescue Committee; Hebrew: ועד ההצלה של הסוכנות היהודית) was an organization founded in the Land of Israel on 22 November 1942 by the Jewish Agency in order to save the Jews of Europe under Nazi occupation during the Holocaust. The Committee was headed by Yitzhak Gruenbaum (he said: "One Cow in Palestine is worth more than all the Jews in Poland") and among other members were representatives of the Agency, the Jewish National Council, and representatives of the various Zionist parties. The make-up of the committee signaled the unity within the Jewish community in the Land of Israel in their effort to save the Jews of Europe.
Rescue Committee of the Jewish Agency | Introduction
Komoly became the Chairman of the Zionist Federation in Hungary, where his father was previously the chairman. Together with Rudolf Kasztner he created the Aid and Rescue Committee, which provided assistance to Jews fleeing prosecution in Poland and Hungary. After Germany invaded Hungary in March 1944, Komoly became the head of the International Red Cross department in charge of helping Jewish children. With the help of the embassies of Switzerland and other neutral countries, the Red Cross created 35 refuges for orphaned children (mostly Jewish), where about 6000 children and 600 volunteers working there were ultimately saved from deportation and possible extermination.
Ottó Komoly | Political and Rescue activities
He wrote that Levites, members of the Levitical tribe—and especially Kohanim, the family dynasty of Jewish Priests within that tribe—must play a special role. In his writings, especially in his book, "HaKohanim vHaLeviim", "The Priests and the Levites", he stressed that members of these groups exist in the realm between history (below) and redemption (above), and were called upon to take a leading role in a call to prayer, repentance, and action that would help bring an end to suffering. He wrote, "Today, we also are living through a time of flood, Not of water, but of a bright fire, which burns and turns Jewish life into ruin.
Mnachem Risikoff | Risikoff's responses to the Holocaust