SPRING GYM SHOE SALE

How A Handful Of Men
Found Courage Against Evil gi

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSOCIATE EDITOR

ronislaw Jachym often is
haunted by childhood
memories of milk and chil-
dren and Nazi dogs.
He was raised in a small Pol-
ish village, Tarnow, near a forest
that attracted many Jews look-
ing to hide during World War H.
Though Bronislaw's own family
was poor, Mrs. Jachym often
gave bits of bread to her son and
told him to toss them to the hun-
gry passersby.
Bronislaw was particularly im-

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T H E D E T RO I T J E W IS H N E W S

Eva Fogelman

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In the last 40 years, the
death rate from heart
attack has dropped 34%
the death rate from con-
genital heart defects is
down 41%
and the death rate from
stroke is down 60%.
The American Heart
Association of Michigan
is 40 years old.

quip

American Heart
Association

of Michigan

A United Way Agency

pressed by one woman and the
two small children with her they
looked like biblical cherubs, he
thought. His mother offered the
three an extra portion of bread.
Less than half an hour later,
the Nazis, accompanied by their
fierce dogs, came through the
woods. They caught the woman
and her children and immedi-
ately shot them.
Today, Bronislaw Jachym is a
physician whose recollections of
helping Jews during the war is
always shadowed — at times to
the point of obsession — by his
memory of the woman and her
children, and of others who did
not survive.
`The slightest stimulus triggers
the past," writes author Eva Fo-
gelman. "The child he was still

mourns these people he never the Yad Vashem archives and
coming across the names of res-
knew."
Ms. Fogelman, who was vis- cuers "in very serendipitous kinds
iting Detroit last week, is the au- of ways. Someone would find out
thor of the new Conscience & the work I was doing, then one
Courage: Rescuers of Jews Dur- call would lead to another."
The men and women she even-
ing the Holocaust. A psychologist
in New York, she first considered tually profiled in Conscience &
the topic when she was a grad- Courage are "from all walks of
life," she said. 'There were jour-
uate student in 1981.
"I wanted to find out how hu- nalists and diplomats, farmers
man beings behave under ex- who could barely speak their na-
treme conditions of horror," she tive language, doctors, nurses, so-
cial workers and engineers. One
says.
did the special effects for James
Bond films."
Her key question was: "What
was the initial moment when
someone began to risk his life?"
Despite the variety of their pro-
fessions and backgrounds, reli-
gious leanings and levels of
education, the rescuers all shared
several consistencies.
First, each was "able to toler-
ate people different from them
and see Jews as human beings
just like themselves," she said.
Second, they had a role model
for altruism who had been influ-
ential since childhood.
Third, many experienced what
Ms. Fogelman called "an inter-
vening factor." Often, their be-
coming rescuers was not the
result of their own decision to go
out and save another, but a mat-
ter of a friend coming to the door
and asking for help.
To come to the aid of a Jew
during World War II was the act
of a remarkable person, Ms. Fo-
gelman said. It meant risking not
only one's own life, but the lives
of his family, his children. And it
meant not falling prey to seduc-
tive propaganda.
Nazi films like The Eternal
Jew were highly effective, Ms. Fo-
gelman said, creating a sense of
"us," the decent Germans,
Ms. Fogelman is the daughter against "them," the evil Jews.
(Some nations fought back as
of survivors, and her father was
saved several times by gentiles. soon as the films hit their shores;
He was working in a bakery in in Denmark, members of the Re-
Byelorussia when German troops sistance often set fire to theaters,
invaded; the shop supervisor, a or to the projectors in those the-
aters, before anti-Semitic films
were shown.)
Each rescuer had a
Today, rescuers continue to
face hatred in their home coun-
role model.
tries, where anti-Semitism is still
rampant, Ms. Fogelman said.
Eva Fogelman
"They are not moral heroes in
Russian, told questioning Nazis, their societies."
She also recounted the story of
`There are no Jews here." Later,
Ms. Fogelman's father joined the one rescuer who had received a
partisans, where he received food number of gifts from the man he
had saved. The rescuer's neigh-
from local farmers.
As Ms. Fogelman's research ex- bor's children were jealous, de-
tended from a graduate paper to manding of their father, "Why
a book, she began attending gath- didn't you help the Jews so we
erings of survivors, looking into could get some things, too?" ❑

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