Historic Figures Who Set Out to Save Jews From the Holocaust

34. The Diplomat Who Strove to Save Jews Had a Royal Upbringing

Abdol Hossein Sardari (1914 – 1981) was a member of Iran’s Qajar dynasty, which had reigned since the late eighteenth century. In 1925, the Qajars were overthrown, and Sardari’s family was forced to flee Iran, abandoning their properties and much of their wealth. They settled in Europe, where Sardari was raised.

Instead of a royal’s life of luxury, waited on hand and foot, he ended up having to earn his keep and make his own way in life. Sardari studied law at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and graduated with a law degree in 1936. In 1937, he was hired as an Iranian diplomat at the Paris embassy. That was where he was when the Germans launched the blitzkrieg that crushed France in 1940.

33. When Sardari Was Left in Charge of the Iranian Embassy in Paris, He Began Issuing Visas to Save Jews From the Nazis

When the Germans conquered Paris in 1940, Iran’s ambassador left for Vichy, where a collaborationist French government had set up shop. He left Sardari, by then promoted to Consul General, to look after the embassy’s affairs in Paris. At the time, there was a small Iranian and Central Asian Jewish community living in the city and the surrounding region.

In September 1940, the German occupation authorities ordered all Jews in France to register with the police. To save Iranian Jews, Sardari intervened to argue that they were not really Jews, but a different ethnic group. He told the Nazis, at some later point in history, a small number of Iranians began to find the teachings of the Prophet Moses attractive – and these Mousaique, or Iranian Followers of Moses, which he dubbed “Djuguten,” were not part of the Jewish race.

32. This Diplomat Invented a New Religion, Race, and Ethnicity to Keep Jews From Getting Designated as Jews

The Nazis had exempted Iranians from the discriminatory 1935 Nuremberg Laws on grounds that they were “pure-blooded Aryans”. So Sardari claimed that Iran’s Jews were not actually Jews, but Iranian Aryans known as “Jugutis”. Iran, according to Sardari, did not actually have Jews: Persia’s King Cyrus had freed the Jews from the Babylonian Exile in 538 BC, and they had all returned home. However, some Aryan Iranians had come across those Jews before they returned, liked their Mosaic laws and customs, and imitated them. They were still the same as other Iranians, sharing the same legal, civil, and military rights and responsibilities.

Sardari basically said that Iran’s Jews were just eccentric Iranians who had been LARP-ing as Jews for 2500 years. German race “experts” were consulted to determine whether “Jugutis” were real. They were non-committal and asked for more funding for additional research. In the meantime, the Nazis accepted Sardari’s made-up Juguti designation. That was long enough for him to save thousands of Iranian and non-Iranian Jews.

31. Issuing Visas to Save Thousands From the Nazis

Early in the German occupation, Sardari guessed what the Nazis were up to, so he decided to save Iranian Jews by getting them out of France as quickly as possible. When his Jewish countrymen asked him to help non-Iranian Jewish friends and acquaintances, Sardari began issuing them Iranian passports and visas as well. He won the Germans’ friendship by throwing lavish parties at the Iranian embassy, then used that to get them to accept his claims about Iranian Jews not really being Jews.

The Juguti ruse eventually reached Adolf Eichmann, the SS man in charge of Jewish affairs. He dismissed it as “the usual Jewish tricks and attempts at camouflage“. Nonetheless, between the Juguti argument and outright bribery, Sardari got the Germans to accept roughly 500 – 1500 passports issued to Jews, designated as non-Jewish Iranians, with visas to get them out of Nazi-occupied Europe. The passports were issued to families, not individuals. A conservative estimate of one thousand passports, with two to three individuals per passport, would mean that Sardari managed to save 2000 – 3000 Jews.

30. This Diplomat Continued His Mission to Save Jews Despite Getting Stripped of Diplomatic Immunity and Being Recalled by His Government

Iran’s monarch, Reza Shah, had been friendly toward the Third Reich. Too friendly for the British and Soviets, who launched a joint invasion in 1941 that deposed Reza, and replaced him with his son. The new Iranian government ordered Sardari to return, but he insisted on remaining in order to save as many Jews as he could, using his own money to maintain the Paris embassy. In 1942, the German Foreign Ministry stripped Sardari of diplomatic immunity. He still stayed in the Paris embassy, and continued to churn out passports and visas to save as many Jews as he could.

Sardari returned to Tehran in 1952, and was charged with misconduct for issuing passports during WWII. It was a serious career setback, and he was eventually forced to retire. He moved to Britain, where he spent the rest of his life, dying in obscurity in 1981. He never sought recognition for his deeds. In 1978, he responded to an inquiry from the Israeli Holocaust Memorial with the simple statement: “As you may know, I had the pleasure of being the Iranian Consul in Paris during the German occupation of France, and as such it was my duty to save all Iranians, including Iranian Jews“.

29. Sardari’s Was Part of a Broader Iranian WWII Story, In Which Tens of Thousands of Jews Were Saved From the Holocaust

The similarities between Abdol Hossein Sardari and Oskar Schindler of Schindler’s List as Holocaust heroes were notable. A key difference however is that, unlike Schindler, Sardari never enjoyed the fame and respect that Schindler enjoyed at the end of his life. The Iranian diplomat’s efforts to save Jews might surprise those unfamiliar with his story but are more familiar with the current Iranian government’s Holocaust denialism.

Nonetheless, Sardari and his wartime deeds are part of a broader story of Iranian efforts during WWII to save Jews from the Holocaust. In addition to Sardari’s efforts in Paris and occupied France, the Iranian government welcomed about 400,000 Polish refugees during the war. Included amongst their number were 25,000 to 30,000 Polish Jews, whose prospects would have been bleak had they remained in Poland, where 90% of that country’s Jews fell victim to the Holocaust.

28. Not All Efforts to Save Jews Were Dramatic, and Most Ended in Heartbreaking Failure

Some risked their lives to save Jews from the Nazis. Unfortunately, they were relatively few and far in between. Even more unfortunate, they failed more often than not. Of Jews in countries occupied by Germany during WWII, roughly 67% perished, with death rates reaching as high as 90% or more in Germany, Poland, and the Baltic countries.

Most people who tried to save Jews did not resort to arms, but tried to assist in undramatic ways that nonetheless required great courage, considering the draconian penalties for getting caught. Such assistance included offering fugitive Jews shelter, food, fake identity papers, smuggling them to safety beyond the Third Reich’s borders, or other means of support to enable them to hide or save themselves. Some who lacked the means to do even that much did the only thing they could: set a moral example by refusing to go along with the Nazis.

27. The Man Who Refused to Go Along With the Crowd

Among those who lacked the means to help Jews through any means other than moral example was August Landmesser, a German shipyard worker from Hamburg. He is best known for appearing in a photograph in which he conspicuously stood out from the crowd by refusing to perform the Nazi salute. It happened in 1936, at the launch of a new ship. A crowd can be seen raising their hand in the infamous gesture, except for Landmesser. He stood – and stood out from the crowd – with his arms crossed.

As seen below, August Landmesser’s actions then and afterward probably did not save a single Jew. He nonetheless set a moral example of a man who did what was within his power to do. He was willing to give it all up, including his life, rather than go with the crowd, and go along with evil.

26. From Being a Nazi, to Getting Kicked Out of the Nazi Party for Falling in Love With a Jewish Woman

Born in 1910, Landmesser joined the Nazi Party when he was twenty-one years old. However, he was kicked out four years later when he fell in love with and got engaged to a Jewish woman, Irma Eckler. The couple were prevented from marrying by the 1935 Nuremberg Laws, which forbade marriage and intercourse between Aryans and Jews.

They had a daughter out of wedlock later that year. Thus, when the photo that made Landmesser famous was taken, he did not bother hiding his disdain for the Nazis. Unfortunately, the love story of August Landmesser and Irma Eckler did not end with them living happily ever after. It ended instead in tragedy, a more typical outcome of efforts to save Jews from the Holocaust than the moving stories in which such attempts succeeded.

25. August Landmesser’s Failed Attempt to Save His Family Was a More Typical Outcome of Efforts to Save Jews From the Nazis

In 1937, Landmesser tried to save his family by fleeing with his infant daughter and pregnant wife to Denmark. Unfortunately, they were intercepted at the border and forced to turn back to Germany. Landmesser was charged with violating the Nuremberg Laws, but got off with a warning. However, when he refused to abandon his wife and family, Landmesser was sent to a concentration camp in 1938.

Irma Eckler was also sent to a concentration camp, where she was most likely murdered in 1942, with Landmesser able to do nothing to save her. He was released in 1941, and drifted in menial jobs until 1944, when he was drafted into the German army and placed in a penal battalion. He was killed in Croatia on October 17^th, 1944. Landmesser and Eckler were survived by two daughters, who lived through the war in an orphanage.

24. The Japanese Diplomat Who Managed to Save Five Times as Many Jews as Oskar Schindler

The exploits of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986) during WWII are little-known today. That is unfortunate, because he risked his life and the lives of his family, and eventually sacrificed his career, to save the lives of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. He did it from the Japanese consulate in Lithuania, where he issued visas that facilitated the escape of Jewish refugees from war-torn Europe.

When the Japanese government caught on to what Sugihara was doing, it ordered him to stop. He did not, and continued to issue visas in defiance of his superiors’ directives until his consulate was closed and he was recalled. By the time he was done, Sugihara had managed to save roughly 6000 Jewish refugees. That was about five times as many Jews as had been saved by the more famous Oskar Schindler.

23. This Angel of Mercy Deliberately Failed an Exam to Thwart an Overbearing Father

Chiune Sugihara, was born into a middle-class Japanese family. His father was a civil servant who worked for Japan’s version of the IRS. Growing up, Sugihara hit the books hard, proved himself a model student, and received top honors. His father wanted him to become a doctor, but Sugihara had other ideas. So he deliberately failed to get into medical school by writing only his name on the entrance exam.

Instead of studying medicine, he majored in English in college, and in 1919, passed the Japanese Foreign Ministry Scholarship exams. Sugihara took a two-year break in 1920 to fulfill his national service obligations, serving as an infantry officer in the Japanese army. He resigned his commission in 1922, and took and passed the Foreign Ministry’s language qualification exams. He was then assigned to Harbin, China, where he further studied German and Russian.

22. Even Before WWII, Chiune Sugihara Was Willing to Risk His Career to Save Others

Sugihara eventually graduated from Japan’s elite training center on the USSR, the Harbin Gakuin, and became one of the Foreign Ministry’s go-to experts on the Soviet Union. When Japan seized Manchuria from China in the 1930s and established a puppet state under Japanese supervision, he became his country’s director of foreign affairs there. In that capacity, he negotiated the purchase of the North Manchurian Railroad from the USSR in 1932.

In 1935, in a display of conscientiousness that augured his willingness to risk it all to save others, Sugihara resigned his position to protest Japanese mistreatment of the local Chinese. He was too valuable a civil servant to let go to waste, however, so he was assigned to the Foreign Ministry’s Information Department, and as a translator for the diplomatic legation in Finland. In November 1939, shortly after WWII began, Sugihara was assigned as vice-consul to the Japanese consulate in Kovno, capital of Lithuania.

21. The Stage Was Set for This Diplomat to Save Thousands When He Was Sent to Lithuania to Gather Intelligence

The Japanese government viewed managing relations with the USSR and staying informed about its intentions as vital, lest it stumble into an unwanted war with the Soviets. After years of provocations by Japan’s army in Manchuria, the Soviets surprised the Japanese by escalating hitherto minor border skirmishes into a serious conflict in 1939. The result was a humiliating Japanese defeat at the Battle of Khalkin Gol. Already bogged down in a quagmire of a war in China, the Japanese government fretted about possible Soviet plans to seize Manchuria, or to directly intervene in the Sino-Japanese conflict on China’s side.

Because a war between the USSR and Germany would keep the Soviets too busy on their western border to bother the Japanese in the Far East, staying informed about such a possibility was vital. Accordingly, Sugihara’s primary task in Lithuania was to provide intelligence on German and Soviet troop movements in the Baltic region, and to report on any indications of an impending German attack against the USSR.

20. To Save Those Endangered in Europe, Sugihara Began Issuing Japanese Visas in Ever-Greater Numbers

Gathering intelligence about Soviet and German military movements and plans brought Sugihara into contact with anti-German and anti-Soviet elements. They included the Polish underground, whose operations extended beyond German-occupied Poland and into Lithuania. Then, in 1940, the Soviets marched into and occupied Lithuania, along with Estonia and Latvia, as a preliminary to annexing them into the USSR. The inhabitants were subjected to brutal repression by the NKVD – the Soviet secret police – and waves of arrests, torture, and executions swept the newly-occupied Baltic states.

That was when Sugihara began making creative use of his consular authority to help and save those at risk. He recognized that, with most of Europe engulfed by war, the most practical escape route for refugees in Lithuania was not westwards, but eastwards through the Soviet Union, and thence to Japan. So he started granting visas in ever greater numbers to those seeking to save themselves from impending doom.

19. This Diplomat Began Gaming the Visa-Granting Process to Save People

Members of the Polish underground approached Sugihara with bogus visas to Curacao and other Dutch possessions in the Americas, and asked him to help with transit visas. He agreed to help save them and facilitate their escape by granting 10-day transit visas through Japan to their destinations. That entitled the bearers to travel across the USSR en route to Japan or Japanese-controlled territory. From there, they could continue to their final destination.

Sugihara started discreetly at first, issuing transit visas, and eventually visas to Japan as a final destination, to those who had fed him intelligence. He then began issuing visas to members of the underground in general. Eventually, he abandoned any pretense. Setting aside the fiction that he was granting transit visas to facilitate the travel of those already in possession of final destination visas, Sugihara began stamping visas for all and sundry, even those who lacked any travel papers whatsoever. By the time it was over, he had stamped thousands of visas. They were most likely the difference between life and death for those lucky enough to get them.

18. Desperate to Save Themselves From the Looming Nazi Menace, Jewish Refugees Formed Long Lines Outside Sugihara’s Consulate

Most of the visas issued by Chiune Sugihara went to Jewish refugees. They formed long lines outside the Japanese consulate in Kovno, desperate for the piece of paper and stamp that would allow them to save themselves and their families. The Nazis, who had conquered Poland and divided it with the Soviets in 1939, had already begun the process of ridding their part of Poland of its Jewish inhabitants, and taken the first steps towards outright genocide.

Within months, discriminatory laws had closed most professions to Jews. They were expelled from the parts of Poland annexed to Germany, and herded into ghettos in what was left of the country. Tens of thousands were simply murdered. Poland was becoming unlivable for Jews. Against that backdrop, Sugihara’s consulate in neighboring Lithuania became a literal lifesaver for those fortunate enough to get there.

17. Sugihara’s Efforts to Save Jewish Refugees Attracted to the Unwelcome Attentions of Officials Back in Japan

After he had granted about 1800 visas to refugees, authorities in Tokyo noticed the unusually large number of visas being issued from their consulate in Kovno. Until then, it had been a backwater of a diplomatic outpost that saw little activity. Japan’s Foreign Ministry insisted that visas should be granted only to those who had gone through the appropriate immigration procedures, and had adequate funds. Most of the refugees granted visas by Sugihara did not meet those criterion.

So his superiors sent a cable, reminding him to: “make sure that they [refugees] have finished their procedure for their entry visas and also they must possess the travel money or the money that they need during their stay in Japan. Otherwise, you should not give them the transit visa“.

16. This Diplomat Defied His Government In Order to Continue His Efforts to Save Jewish Refugees

Responding to Tokyo’s cable directing that he stick to the rules when issuing visas, Sugihara acknowledged that had issued visas to people who had not satisfied all the requirements. However, he explained the extenuating circumstances: Japan was the only practical destination country for those headed towards the Americas, and visas from his consulate were needed for departure from the Soviet Union. Then, ignoring the Foreign Ministry’s demands that he stop cutting corners and stick to the rules, Sugihara continued issuing visas to and through Japan on his own.

By the norms of Japanese bureaucracy, and especially those of the Foreign Ministry, Sugihara’s disobedience and outright defiance of his superiors’ instructions were shocking. He was willing to break such taboos in order to save others. As desperate refugees crowded outside his consulate, Sugihara kept on issuing hand written-visas, spending up to 20 hours a day on the task, producing a month’s worth of visas every single day.

15. Sugihara Kept Up His Efforts to Save Jews to the Literal Last Minute

Chiune Sugihara had the refugees call him “Sempo” – the Sino-Japanese reading of his name’s Japanese characters – because it was easier for them to pronounce than his given name. He also got in touch with Soviet officials, and convinced them to let the Jewish refugees travel across the USSR via the Trans Siberian Railway. When they balked, he overcame their intransigence by sweetening the deal for corrupt bureaucrats when necessary, arranging for the Jews to pay them five times the normal ticket price.

It finally ended on September 4^th, 1940, when Sugihara had to leave because the consulate was about to close. He kept writing visas en route from his hotel to Kovno’s train station, and continued doing so on the train, throwing visas out the window into the crowd of desperate refugees. As the train began pulling away, he started throwing blank sheets out the window, containing only his signature and the consulate’s seal, so they could be filled in and turned into visas. His final words to those he was trying to save were: “Please forgive me. I cannot write anymore. I wish you the best“.

14. Israel Labeled Chiune Sugihara as One of “The Righteous Among Nations”

Many of the Jewish refugees whom Sugihara had set out to save made it to Kobe, Japan, where there was a Jewish community. From there, most secured asylum visas to Canada, Australia, Palestine, the US, and Latin America. Sugihara’s visas – including family visas that allowed multiple people to travel together – saved the lives of roughly 6000 Jews. About 40,000 of their descendants are alive today because of his actions.

In 1985, Chiune Sugihara was named by the Israeli government as one of the “Righteous Among Nations” – an honorific used to describe non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews from extermination. He is the only Japanese national to be so honored. He died a year later, in a hospital in Kamakura.

13. A Teenage Forger Who Helped Save Thousands From the Holocaust

French teenager Adolphe Kaminsky joined the Resistance after France’s defeat and occupation by the Germans in 1940. He was a precocious and self-taught gifted chemist, which he combined with a talent for forgery. He used those skills to make himself perhaps Europe’s best underground forger. He specialized in identity papers, and forged documents that helped save the lives of thousands of Jews. He continued his forgery career after the war, to help liberation movements around the world.

Adolphe was born in 1925 to Russian Jewish parents who had emigrated to Argentina, before relocating to France in 1932. He dropped out of school when he was thirteen to help support his family, and got a job working for a dry cleaner. That introduced him to various compounds, which led to a familiarity with, and subsequent passion for, chemistry. He started reading up on chemistry, and took a part-time job working for a chemist on the weekend. That came in handy during his subsequent career as a forger, and helped save thousands from the Holocaust.

12. A Display of Chemistry Skill Set This Teenager on a Forgery Career

When Germany conquered France in 1940, Adolphe Kaminsky was fifteen-years-old. It did not take long before he and his Jewish family felt the Nazi yoke. The Kaminsky home was seized early in the occupation to quarter German troops, and the Kaminskys were evicted. The following year, the Nazis shot Adolphe’s mother dead, without the teenager being able to do anything to save her. In 1943, his family was interned in a holding camp, preparatory to deportation to Auschwitz. They were only spared after intervention from the Argentinean consul.

By then, Adolphe had joined the French Resistance at age sixteen. Sent by his father to pick up forged identity papers from a Resistance cell, he discovered that they had trouble removing a particular dye. The precocious chemist gave them a solution off the top of his head that immediately solved their problem. Impressed, the Resistance recruited him and put him to work in an underground laboratory in Paris.

11. “The Robin Hood of False Papers” Helped Save Over 14,000 Jews From the Holocaust

Adolphe Kaminsky spent the rest of WWII working out of a secret Resistance laboratory in Paris. He specialized in forging identity papers for those on the run from the Nazis and in need of fake ID, particularly Jews. By the war’s end, he had produced fake documents that helped save over 14,000 Jewish men, women, and children, from the Holocaust. After the war, Adolphe worked as a professional photographer. He also continued his clandestine work as a master forger, lending his talents to disadvantaged peoples and liberation causes around the world.

He created documents for thousands of freedom fighters, such as the Algerian FLN, refugees, exiles, and pacifists. As the Jerusalem Post summed his career: “He grew to be a humanist forger, a utopian outlaw, the Robin Hood of false papers, preparing passports and identity cards for the world’s oppressed.” He continued forging until 1971, before moving to Algeria. He lived there for ten years, married a Tuareg woman, and had five children with her, including a well-known French hip-hop artist known as Roce.

10. This Future Resistance Heroine Grew Up In One of Paris’ Most Intellectual Homes

In 1925, Charlotte Sorkine Noshpitz was born in Paris to a Jewish family, with a Romanian mother and a Belorussian father. She was raised in an intellectual household – one of her grandfathers was an anthropology professor. Charlotte grew up in a mentally stimulating environment, and her home had a weekly salon that often hosted French luminaries of the arts, letters, sciences, and academia. Little in Charlotte’s background gave hint that one day she would turn to guns and bombs to fight evil, or that she would save numerous Jewish children by smuggling them from beyond the Nazis’ clutches.

Her life took a drastic turn for the worse after the Nazis defeated France in 1940. The collaborationist Vichy regime enacted discriminatory laws that revoked the French citizenship of naturalized Jews, and authorized the internship of foreign Jews or the restricted of their residence. When out in public, Charlotte and her family were forced to wear yellow stars of David sewn to their clothes to identify themselves as Jews.

9. After Her Mother Was Sent to Auschwitz, This Teenager Joined the French Resistance

By 1942, Charlotte Noshpitz’s father was in hiding. Later that year, her mother was sent to Auschwitz. Her father and brother fled to Nice in southern France, and were followed soon thereafter by Charlotte. She joined the local Resistance when she was seventeen years old.

After her father stumbled upon her stash of weapons, Charlotte arranged false identity papers to get him out of the country and out of her hair. She told him that she would go with him to Switzerland, but when they reached the border she handed him to a guide to escort him the rest of the way, bid him adieu, then turned around and returned to the fight.

8. This Teenager Guided Fugitives to Safety Beyond German Reach

Charlotte Noshpitz’s Resistance work included stashing and transporting weapons and money, often beneath the Germans’ noses, and creating and supplying fake documents. She also helped save fugitives from the Nazis by guiding them to the French border and safety beyond in Switzerland or Spain. Her charges included many Jewish children.

She also took part in direct action such as planting explosives – including a bomb that went off in a Paris movie theater where SS members were gathered. During the 1944 Paris Uprising that preceded that city’s liberation, Charlotte was in the thick of the fighting.

7. After the War, This Heroine Befriended Ernest Hemingway, and Went on to a Rewarding Professional Career

For her wartime services and efforts that helped save the lives of so many, Charlotte Noshpitz was awarded a slew of decorations. They included the Médaille de la Résistance, the Croix du Combattant Volontaire de la Resistance, the Médaille des Services Volontaires Dans la France Libre, and the War Commemoration Medal. After the war, Charlotte resumed her education. She studied psychology at the Sorbonne, art history at the Louvre, and languages.

She sailed to America to further her mental health studies and to examine a model health treatment center in Kansas for replication in Paris. During a rough crossing of the Atlantic, she met and befriended Ernest Hemingway. After her return to France, she married in a ceremony attended by her Resistance compatriots, and settled into family life and a rewarding professional career.

6. Before He Became the World’s Most Famous Mime, This Teenager Used His Miming Talents to Save Jewish Children

Marcel Marceau (1923 – 2007) was the world’s most famous mime, and his white-faced character, the melancholy vagabond Bip, became known around the globe. Before he was famous, Marcel spent his teenage years hiding from the Nazis and fighting for the French Resistance during WWII. As part of his underground activities, Marceau managed to save numerous Jewish children from the Nazis by smuggling them to safety. He had aspired to become a mime ever since he first saw a Charlie Chaplain movie as a child. Miming talent came in handy to distract and quiet the tiny tots as he smuggled them past German guards and across the border to safety in Switzerland.

Born Marcel Mangel, the future star was sixteen when WWII began. When the Nazis conquered France, Marceau’s father, a kosher butcher, had to hide the family’s Jewish origins and fled with them to central France. Marcel’s father was captured, however, and sent to his death in Auschwitz. The teenager moved to Paris, and with forged identity papers in which he adopted the surname “Marceau” after a French Revolutionary War general, joined the Resistance.

5. After Using His Miming Skills to Save Children, Marcel Marceau Used them to Become a Global Star

Marcel Marceau’s mime skills were not only good enough to save children from the Holocaust, but to also made him a star. After the Allies landed in France, Marceau gave his first major performance before an audience of 3000 soldiers in a liberated Paris. He then joined the Free French army for the rest of the war. His talent for languages and near fluency in English and German got him appointed as a liaison officer embedded with George Patton’s Third US Army.

After the war, Marceau had a long and eventful career. His accomplishments included winning an Emmy Award, and getting declared a national treasure in Japan despite not being Japanese. He also became a member of the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and forged a decades-long friendship with Michael Jackson, who borrowed some of Marceau’s moves in his dance routines. In 2020, Resistance, a biographical drama about his life, starring Jesse Eisenberg as Marceau, was released.

4. This Resistance Heroine Grew Up in an Antifascist Home That Sheltered Fugitives From the Nazis

Dutch Resistance Heroine Truus Menger-Oversteegen was born into a left-wing working-class family in 1923. She grew up in an industrial district north of Amsterdam known as the “Red Zone” for its residents’ political bent. Before WWII, her family actively assisted an organization known as Red Aid, which helped save Jewish and political refugees from the Nazis by facilitating their escape from Germany.

Truus grew up accustomed to fugitives hiding in her home from Dutch police, who were likely to return them to the German border and hand them to the dreaded Gestapo. She was thus already an antifascist long before the Germans conquered the Netherlands in 1940, when Truus was fifteen-years-old.

Read More: Resistance Fighters from World War I & II.

3. This Heroine Joined the Resistance When She Was Sixteen

When the Nazis began deporting the Netherlands’ Jews, the country’s communists and socialists came together in February 1941, to lead a massive strike in protest. It was one of the few successful nationwide protests against the Germans, and it encouraged the rise of the Dutch resistance.

The widespread protests against the deportation of Jews led the Nazis to ramp up their repression and brutality, in order to cow the Dutch into obedience and toeing the line. The repression increased the alienation of the Dutch people, and drove them in increasing numbers into the arms of the budding resistance. Truus Menger-Oversteegen joined the Dutch Resistance when she was sixteen. She began by distributing leaflets and illegal newspapers, and offering assistance to fugitives seeking to save themselves from the occupiers.

2. An Attempt to Save Jewish Children That Ended in Tragedy and Massacre

In 1941, following a massive Dutch workers’ strike, the Nazi occupation authorities cracked down hard. That further radicalized Truus, and spurred her to join an armed resistance that engaged in direct action against the Germans. After receiving military training and learning how to operate a firearm, Truus’ early assignments included flirting with and seducing German soldiers, and leading them into the woods, to be killed by her comrades. Before long, the teenager was shooting Germans herself, and using explosives to blow up bridges and railroad tracks.

Life as an armed partisan was a difficult row to hoe, full of dangers and marked by tragedy as often as success. Early on, Truus was present at a failed mission to save Jewish children from German clutches. It ended with the fugitives caught in searchlights in an open field, where most were massacred, mown down with machine guns.

1. Despite a Nazi Bounty on Her Head, This Heroine Survived the War to Become a Respected Artist, Sculptress, and Public Speaker

By the time WWII had ended, many of Truus-Menger-Oversteegen’s Resistance comrades had been arrested and executed, with her unable to do anything to save them. Suspicion was rife that Truus’ and other left-wing cells had been betrayed by conservative members of the Resistance. The right-wing of the Resistance was perceived as having been backward during the actual fight, only to come forward at the hour of liberation to claim the lion’s share of the credit.

Despite the setbacks and daily dangers, Truus courageously soldiered on and kept up the fight, evading capture despite a sizeable reward that was placed on her head. After the war, she put down her arms, and beating swords into ploughshares, raised a family and went on to make a name for herself as a respected artist and sculptress, and as a public speaker at war memorial services.

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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Art of Manliness – Lessons in Manliness: Chiune Sugihara

BBC – The ‘Iranian Schindler’ Who Saved Jews From the Nazis

Business Insider – The Tragically Powerful Story Behind the Lone German Who Refused to Give Hitler the Nazi Salute

History Collection – The Fake Disease Created to save Italian Jews in World War II

Christian Science Monitor, July 1^st, 2015 – What Happened to the Man Who Refused to Give a Nazi Salute?

NYPost – Meet the Dutch girls who seduced Nazis and Led them to Their Deaths

Forward, June 11^th, 2013 – True History of an Unknown Hero of the French Jewish Resistance

History – The French Resistance’s Secret Weapon? The Mime Marcel Marceau

History Collection – SS Officer’s Dramatic Trial Confessions Claimed He Joined the Nazi Regime to Save Jews

History – This Teenager Killed Nazis With Her Sister During WWII

Jewish Virtual Library – Chiune Sugihara (1900 – 1986)

Kaminsky, Sarah – Adolfo Kaminsky: A Forger’s Life (2016)

Mokhtari, Fariborz – In the Lion’s Shadow: The Iranian Schindler and His Homeland in the Second World War (2012)

History Collection – The Time the US Refused To Save Jewish Refugees From Nazi Germany

Times of Israel, January 4th, 2018 – Japan’s Schindler: A Genuine Hero Tangled in a Web of Myth

Times of Israel, May 1^st, 2019 – Unrecognized ‘Iranian Schindler’ Said to Have Saved Countless Paris Jews in WWII

Vice, May 11^th, 2016 – This 90 Year Old Lady Seduced and Killed Nazis as a Teenager

History Collection – Hermann Goering’s Brother Defied Him and Saved Jews in World War II

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Chiune (Sempo) Sugihara

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Abdol Hossein Sardari, an Iranian Hero of the Holocaust

Washington Jewish Week – Charlotte Sorkine: Unknown Hero of the French Resistance

Wikipedia – Adolfo Kaminsky

Wikipedia – Chiune Sugihara

Wikipedia – Truus Menger-Oversteegen

History Collection – An Italian Tour de France Winner Helped Save Hundreds of Jews from the Nazis