“I am my brother’s keeper” exhibition at Yad VaShem

To mark 50 years since the inception of the commission headed by a retired Supreme Justice judge and Yad VaShem in order to confer the title of Righteous Among the Nations, the museum inaugurated a special exhibition of the subject of the Righteous Among the Nations. Five short documentary films are screened in the exhibition hall and each one deals with one of the plurality of human dilemmas and situations facing the rescuers and the Jews whose lives they tried to save. A selection of stories among the thousands of rescue stories that are documented in Yad VaShem presents the impossible choices and challenges those later recognized as Righteous Among the Nations and their Jewish wards faced.

In each film, the Christians who saved Jews are prominent and one of the five films is titled “Under the Wings of the Church” and documents primarily the work of the Catholic Church in Florence, Italy, a work which was headed by Archbishop Elia Angelo Della Costa (1872-1961), who acted in close collaboration with the Rabbi of Florence, Natan Cassuto. In another film, “Paying the Ultimate Price”, stories are related about Righteous Among the Nations who paid with their lives for having attempted to save Jews and among them clergy and practicing Christian faithful. In a film entitled “The Courage to Defy”, the story focuses on the efforts of Dimitry Peshev to get the orders to deport the Jews from Bulgaria revoked. He succeeded and thus saved 48000 Jews and in this was aided by the heads of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church.

For those who cannot get to the exhibition, a very developed web site can be visited here