Book description
Collected here for the first time are the remarkable and moving
stories of the 27 British recipients of the 'Hero of the Holocaust'
award. During one of the darkest times in human history they refused
to stand by and do nothing; risking their lives to save Jewish
friends, or complete strangers. And yet many of their stories have
been forgotten.
Frank Foley, a British spy whose cover was working at the
British embassy in Berlin, took huge risks issuing forged visas to
enable around 10,000 Jews to escape Germany before the outbreak of war.
Jane Haining refused to come back to Scotland and leave the
Jewish orphans in her care in Hungary. When they were sent to
Auschwitz she was transported with them.
Louise and Ida Cook
were sisters from suburban London. They used their love of
opera as a cover to take daring trips to help Jews escape Nazi Germany
and Austria right up until the outbreak of war.
Ten British POWs hid and cared for young Hannah Sarah Rigler
when she escaped from a death march, having been forced to leave her
mother behind.
All those whose stories are collected here were ordinary people,
acting on no one's authority but their own, who found they could not
stand idly by in the face of such great evil.
Written by acclaimed Holocaust historian Lyn Smith, Heroes of the
Holocaust is a moving testament to the bravery of those whose
inspiring actions stand out in stark relief at a time of such horror.
Lyn Smith lectures in International Relations and Human Rights at the
Webster University (USA) in London. Over the past thirty years she has
worked continuously as a freelance interviewer for the Imperial War
Museum Holocaust Sound Archive, and was specially commissioned for the
IWM Holocaust Exhibition established in the late 1990s. She is the
author of the bestselling
Forgotten Voices of the Holocaust
.
