When Light Pierced the Darkness Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland

Everyone knows the name of Anne Frank but few people remember anything about the people who sheltered her. Who were the rescuers and what motivated them to risk their lives for persecuted Jews? Clearly such people deserve to be remembered and honored. And clearly an understanding of theirmotivations may help us cultivate such behavior in our own day. Focusing on such "righteous Christians," Tec, herself a survivor helped by Poles, vividly recreates what it was like to pass and hide among Christians and what it was like for Poles to rescue Jews. Concentrating on Poland, the Nazi center for Jewish annihilation, Tec amassed a vast array ofpublished accounts, unpublished testimonies, and interviews, yielding case histories of over 500 Polish helpers, preserving for posterity the heroism of such people, and filling a significant gap in our knowledge of the Holocaust.

Nechama Tec is Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut and the author of Dry Tears: The Story of a Lost Childhood.