What images come to mind when you think of the Holocaust?
In this short article, my good friend Art Shostak writes:
“For more than 70 years, [the] narrative has been flawed by overreliance on the horror story of the Shoah, a painful focus on atrocious acts perpetrators committed against victims. At the same time, little or no attention has been paid to its inseparable counterpart, what I call the “help story” – an inspiring focus on admirable life-risking things victims tried to do for one another, kin and stranger alike.”
He explains:
“Accounts exist in survivor memoirs of high-risk efforts made by upstanders in the ghettos to staff forbidden schools, operate hidden mikvaot (Jewish ritual baths), and conduct clandestine b’nai mitzvah ceremonies, etc.
In the Nazi camps, some of these individuals secretly relieved the workload of exhausted peers. They smuggled in food and medicine “organized” (stolen) from the stored goods of doomed arrivals sent directly to the gas.
Long-timers schooled newbies in survival secrets. They punished informers and thieves, shielded “illegal” religious services, and did much more, scores of examples of which are included in my 2017 book, Secret Altruism: Forbidden Care as Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust.”