CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE - Hardcover

Fogelman, Eva

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385420277 ISBN 13: 9780385420273

Publisher: Doubleday, 1994

Synopsis

In this brilliantly researched and insightful  book, psychologist Eva Fogelman presents compelling  stories of rescuers of Jews during the  Holocaust--and offers a revealing analysis of their  motivations. Based on her extensive experience as a  therapist treating Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and  those who helped them, Fogelman delves into the  psychology of altruism,illuminating why these  rescuers chose to act while others simply stood by.  While analyzing motivations, Conscience And  Courage tells the stories of such  little-known individuals as Stefnaia Podgorska  Burzminska, a Polish teenager who hid thirteen Jews in her  home; Alexander Roslan, a dealer in the black  market who kept uprooting his family to shelter three  Jewish children in his care, as well as more  heralded individuals such as Oskar Schindler, Raoul  Wallenberg, ad Miep Gies. Speaking to the same  audience that flocked to Steven Spielberg's Academy  Award-winning movie, Schindler's  List, Conscience And Courage is the  first book to go beyond the stories to answer the  question: Why did they  help?

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Fogelman has made a monor contribution to Holocaust studies in collcting these accounts of conscience and courage." --The Washington Post Book World.
"By evoking the noble along with the horrible, Ms. Fogelman helps to add a dimension to our understanding of the Holocaust. And, more than that, hers is a work of remembrance." --The New York Times Book Review

From Kirkus Reviews:

Fogelman's survey of heroic subversion of the Nazi genocide of the Jews by non-Jews begins with the story of her own father, Simcha Fogelman, rescued by a Russian baker in the Byelorussian town of Illya in 1942. The odd thing about many of these rescuers- -like the currently famous Oskar Schindler or Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenburg--is that they were frequently notorious rakes, thieves, and embezzlers--in other words, outright criminals. Fogelman (Center for Social Research/CUNY) tries in this ample study to understand the particular background and conditioning that produces a ``rescuer'' as opposed to either a passive bystander or an active accessory. And an extraordinary gallery of characters is brought to life: Angel Sanz-Briz, the Spanish minister in Budapest who issued thousands of phony Spanish passports to Hungarian Jews; Miep Gies, the rescuer--for a time--of Anne Frank; Stefaniz Podgorska, a teenage girl who smuggled food into the ghetto of Przemysl and hid refugees from it; Alexander Roslan, who built a hiding cupboard in his apartment and when visited by suspicious Gestapo agents wined and dined them until they were too drunk to remember why they had come; Louisa Steenstra, a former secretary at a Jewish-owned furniture factory in Groningen who ventured into the local concentration camp to get a suitcase of clothes to a Jewish friend. Perhaps one of the strangest stories is that of the Japanese consul in Kovno, Lithuania, Sempo Sugihara, who ignored his diplomatic instructions and issued illegal transit visas to Jews via Japan--visas that his own government kept refusing to validate. At the end of each day, his hands would be so numb from writing these fake visas that his wife would have to massage them back to life. It is estimated that he saved between 4,500 and 10,000 Jews. Perhaps inexplicable but uplifting stories of humanity. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0385420277
• ISBN 13: 9780385420273
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 413