Righteous amongst the Nations Part 6: What makes a Rescuer?
by Rabbi Z. M. Salasnik, Bushey and District United Synagogue
by Rabbi Z. M. Salasnik, Bushey and District United Synagogue
Most rescuers are altruistic.
Even those who do not risk their lives expend money, time or even both in helping people escape from persecution or death.
We could assume that those who risked their lives to save Jews did so solely out of altruism and philo-Semitism.
Yet, while this is true of most, it was not always the case.
Zofia Kossak-Szczucka (1889-1968) was a liaison between Zegota, the (Polish) Council to Aid Jews, and the Catholic convents and orphanages, which hid several thousand Jews from the Nazis.
A staunch Catholic and an anti-Semite, she wrote ‘Our feelings toward Jews have not changed.
We do not stop thinking of them as political, economic and ideological enemies of Poland.
[However] we are required by G-d to protest, [as] G-d forbids us to kill.
We are required to do this by our Christian consciousness.
Every human being has the right to be loved by his fellow humans.
The blood of the defenceless cries to heaven for revenge.
Those who oppose our protest are not Catholics.’ It is possible to despise a group of people and yet to do everything possible to save them from annihilation.
Remarkably, the Nazi genocide transformed some racists into saviours.
In 2009, Poland issued a commemorative coin honouring her and two of the Polish women she worked with, Matylda Getter (1870-1968), a leading nun, and Irena Sendler (1910-2008), a nurse and social worker.
Some took in Jewish children with the hope of converting them to Christianity, altruistic in saving life yet at the same time motivated by an agenda opposed to the wishes of the rescued and their families.
This was not only the case in Catholic Poland.
In London, the Barbican Mission to the Jews took in Jewish refugees with the intention of converting them to Christianity.
At least these people had some altruistic motivation.
An example of someone who saved a Jew with a far more selfish ulterior motive was brought to my attention by Menasche Scharf, of the Kashrut Division of the London Beth Din (KLBD)*.
Viktor Pastek, a young SS guard, fell in love with a Jewish inmate of Birkenau.
To prove to her that he could get her out of the concentration camp, he smuggled out another Jewish inmate, Siegfried Lederer, and took him to Prague.
His hopes of smuggling out the girl he loved came to an end when a non-Jewish prisoner reported him and he was tortured and killed.
* "
From: Menasche Scharf
Sent: 02 June 2014 09:48
To: 'Rabbi Meir Salasnik' <zm@salasnik.net>
Dear Rabbi Salasnik,
RE: Gentile and gentle
You won’t going to believe this: a Nazi guard in Auschwitz took a Jewish inmate all the way to Prague. The escaped Jew lived in Petach Tiqwah (maybe he’s still alive?) for years after the war. The soldier himself returned to Auschwitz to repeat the trick but was handed in by a non-Jewish prisoner who was incarnated for multiple murders. He died at the hands of the Gestapo and his mutilated, dishevelled body was burned in the crematorium. The guard’s name was Viktor Pasteck – I must thank you for doubting this story, as I started Googling and found the following on my second attempt: http://sunsite.utk.edu/neighborhoods/witness/artists/wolin/josef.html
The full name of the Jew he saved was Siegfried Lederer – again I found it on Google: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZTlcAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA463&lpg=PA463&dq=Pasteck+nazi+Lederer&source=bl&ots=roVpVZpegX&sig=avb99lMmnefPIesbASqToBEOKZo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vTOMU_pQ0ufsBq7dgIgK&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Pasteck%20nazi%20Lederer&f=false and the following URL seems broken: http://holocaustcenterpgh.org/page.aspx?id=148359
What I did learn from the little research I did when trying to prove that the story is true, is that the real motive for Viktor helping a Jew escape was for love, but for a totally different kind than love for a Jew: he fell in love with a female Jewish prisoner.
Thank you for helping me realise that the belief that you cannot believe a Nazi is still holding…"
First published on 9 July 2014, on Jewish P.O.S.T. - the Jewish Voice for the People Of South Tottenham (now defunct).
* "
From: Menasche Scharf
Sent: 02 June 2014 09:48
To: 'Rabbi Meir Salasnik' <zm@salasnik.net>
Dear Rabbi Salasnik,
RE: Gentile and gentle
You won’t going to believe this: a Nazi guard in Auschwitz took a Jewish inmate all the way to Prague. The escaped Jew lived in Petach Tiqwah (maybe he’s still alive?) for years after the war. The soldier himself returned to Auschwitz to repeat the trick but was handed in by a non-Jewish prisoner who was incarnated for multiple murders. He died at the hands of the Gestapo and his mutilated, dishevelled body was burned in the crematorium. The guard’s name was Viktor Pasteck – I must thank you for doubting this story, as I started Googling and found the following on my second attempt: http://sunsite.utk.edu/neighborhoods/witness/artists/wolin/josef.html
The full name of the Jew he saved was Siegfried Lederer – again I found it on Google: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZTlcAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA463&lpg=PA463&dq=Pasteck+nazi+Lederer&source=bl&ots=roVpVZpegX&sig=avb99lMmnefPIesbASqToBEOKZo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=vTOMU_pQ0ufsBq7dgIgK&ved=0CDYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Pasteck%20nazi%20Lederer&f=false and the following URL seems broken: http://holocaustcenterpgh.org/page.aspx?id=148359
What I did learn from the little research I did when trying to prove that the story is true, is that the real motive for Viktor helping a Jew escape was for love, but for a totally different kind than love for a Jew: he fell in love with a female Jewish prisoner.
Thank you for helping me realise that the belief that you cannot believe a Nazi is still holding…"
First published on 9 July 2014, on Jewish P.O.S.T. - the Jewish Voice for the People Of South Tottenham (now defunct).
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