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WOn 19 April 1943, members of the Belgian Resistance stopped a Holocaust train and freed a number of Jews who were being transported to Auschwitz concentration camp from Mechelen transit camp in Belgium, on the twentieth convoy from the camp. In the aftermath of the attack, a number of others were able to jump from the train too. In all, 233 people managed to escape, of whom 118 ultimately survived. The remainder were either killed during the escape or were recaptured soon afterwards. The attack was unusual as an attempt by the resistance to free Jewish deportees and marks the only mass breakout by deportees on a Holocaust train.
WBrutus is a short film directed by Konstantin Fam of 2015, the second novel of the film trilogy "Witnesses" and the sequel of the "Shoes", dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims.
WCarl Fredriksens Transport was the code name for an operation during the occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany to help Jews and other persecuted Norwegians escape persecution, deportation, and murder in death camps.
WDuring the Holocaust in Greece, the entire, 275-person Jewish population of the island of Zakynthos was not deported after Mayor Loukas Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos (1890–1958) refused Nazi orders to turn in a list of the members of the town's Jewish community for deportation to the death camps. Instead they secretly hid the town's 275 Jews in various rural villages and turned in a list that included only their own two names. The entire Jewish population survived the war.
WThe first Jews known to have reached the island of Hispaniola were Sephardi Jews who came from the Iberian Peninsula during the colonization era in the 1490s.
WGerda III is a lighthouse tender located at Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut, United States. Gerda III was built in 1928 in Denmark and was used as a common work boat. In 1943 Gerda III was used by 19-year old Henny Sinding to smuggle Jews from Nazi occupied Denmark to Sweden. Approximately 300 Jews were rescued by Gerda III. The Danish Parliament donated Gerda III to The Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Mystic Seaport now cares for the vessel and features her as part of their collection of watercraft. The rescue story is the subject of the film, A Day in October, released in 1991.
WThe Glass House was a building used by the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz to help Jews in Budapest during the Holocaust.
WKaddish is the second feature film directed by Konstantin Fam. Like Konstantin’s previous work, this film is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust.
WThe Kastner train consisted of 35 cattle wagons that left Budapest on 30 June 1944, during the German occupation of Hungary, carrying over 1,600 Jews temporarily to Bergen-Belsen and safety in Switzerland after large ransom paid by Swiss Orthodox Jew Yitzchak Sternbuch, Recha Sternbuch's husband. The train was named after Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian-Jewish lawyer and journalist, who was a founding member of the Budapest Aid and Rescue Committee, a group that smuggled Jews out of occupied Europe during the Holocaust. Kastner negotiated with Adolf Eichmann, the German SS officer in charge of deporting Hungary's Jews to Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland, to allow over 1,600 Jews to escape in exchange for gold, diamonds, and cash.
WThe Attorney-General of the Government of Israel v. Malchiel Gruenwald, commonly known as the Kastner trial, was a libel case in Jerusalem, Israel. Hearings were held from 1 January to October 1954 in the District Court of Jerusalem before Judge Benjamin Halevi (1910–1996), who published his decision on 22 June 1955.
WThe Kindertransport was an organised rescue effort that took place during the nine months prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust. The programme was supported, publicised and encouraged by the British government. Importantly the British government waived all those visa immigration requirements which were not within the ability of the British Jewish community to fulfil. The British government put no number limit on the programme – it was the start of the Second World War that brought it to an end, at which time about 10,000 kindertransport children had been brought to the United Kingdom.
WThe Leica Freedom Train was a rescue effort in which hundreds of Jews were smuggled out of Nazi Germany before the Holocaust by Ernst Leitz II of the Leica Camera company, and his daughter Elsie Kuehn-Leitz.
WMonsieur Batignole is a French film released in 2002. The film was directed by Gérard Jugnot and featured Gérard Jugnot, Jules Sitruk, Jean-Paul Rouve, Götz Burger, Michèle Garcia and Alexia Portal in lead roles. The film depicts the story of an ordinary grocer, Edmond Batignole, who helps the young son of his Jewish neighbour, and the boy's two cousins, to reach Switzerland safely.
WLeonard Nathaniel Goldsmid-Montefiore was a wealthy member of the Montefiore family, the only son of Claude Montefiore, and he succeeded his father as a leader of Jewish philanthropic organisations in the UK including the Anglo-Jewish Association, the Central British Fund for German Jewry, and the Jewish Board of Guardians. He was a founder and president of the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide.
WMV Mefküre was a Turkish wooden-hulled motor schooner chartered to carry Jewish Holocaust refugees from Romania to Istanbul, sailing under the Turkish and Red Cross flags. On 5 August 1944 a Soviet submarine sank her in the Black Sea by shellfire, killing more than 300 refugees.
WMy Italian Secret: The Forgotten Heroes is a 2014 documentary film, directed and written by Oren Jacoby, that tells the story of the rescue of thousands of Italian Jews during World War II by ordinary and prominent Italians, including the champion cyclist Gino Bartali. The film had its U.S. premiere at the Hamptons International Film Festival in October 2014, and opened at theaters in Los Angeles and New York in March 2015.
WNumber the Stars is a work of historical fiction by the American author Lois Lowry about the escape of a Jewish family, the Rosens, from Copenhagen, Denmark, during World War II.
WOľšavica is a village and obec in Levoča District in the Prešov Region of central-eastern Slovakia.
WThe Park of Generous Souls is a park in Zvolen, Slovakia dedicated to Slovak citizens who helped save Jews during the Holocaust.
WPolish Jews were the primary victims of the German-organized Holocaust in Poland. Throughout the German occupation of Poland, many Poles rescued Jews from the Holocaust, in the process risking their lives – and the lives of their families. Poles were, by nationality, the most numerous persons who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. To date, 7,112 ethnic Poles have been recognized by the State of Israel as Righteous among the Nations – more, by far, than the citizens of any other country.
WZakynthos or Zante is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands. Zakynthos is a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and its only municipality. It covers an area of 405.55 km2 (156.6 sq mi) and its coastline is roughly 123 km (76 mi) in length. The name, like all similar names ending in -nthos, is pre-Mycenaean or Pelasgian in origin. In Greek mythology the island was said to be named after Zakynthos, the son of the legendary Arcadian chief Dardanus.
WThe rescue of the Danish Jews occurred during Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark during World War II. On October 1, 1943, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered Danish Jews to be arrested and deported. The Danish resistance movement, with the assistance of many Danish citizens, managed to evacuate 7,220 of Denmark's 7,800 Jews, plus 686 non-Jewish spouses, by sea to nearby neutral Sweden. These efforts started before Hitler's order due to the plans being leaked on September 28, 1943 by German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz.
WSchindler's Ark is a Booker Prize-winning historical fiction novel published in 1982 by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally. The United States edition of the book was titled Schindler's List; it was later reissued in Commonwealth countries under that name as well. The novel was also awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction in 1983.
WSchindler's List is a 1993 American epic historical drama film directed and produced by Steven Spielberg and written by Steven Zaillian. It is based on the 1982 historical fiction novel Schindler's Ark by Australian novelist Thomas Keneally. The film follows Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II. It stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as SS officer Amon Göth and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.
WShoes is a 2012 international short film directed, written and produced by Konstantin Fam. The film is the result of a joint effort by professional team from Russia, the USA, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Belarus and Ukraine. The film is the first novel of the film trilogy "Witnesses" dedicated to the memory of victims of the Holocaust. It was the only nominee from Russia for the Academy Awards in the short film category in 2013.
WTriora is a comune (municipality) in the province of Imperia in the Italian region Liguria, located about 100 kilometres (62 mi) southwest of Genoa and about 25 kilometres (16 mi) northwest of Imperia, on the border with France. As of 31 December 2004, it had a population of 416 and an area of 68.0 square kilometres (26.3 sq mi).
WVarian's War is a 2001 joint Canadian/American/United Kingdom film made-for-television drama. The film was written and directed by Lionel Chetwynd, based on the life and wartime exploits of Varian Fry who saved more than 2,000 Jewish artists from Vichy France, the conquered ally of Nazi Germany. Varian's War stars William Hurt, heading an all-star ensemble cast of Julia Ormond, Matt Craven, Maury Chaykin, Alan Arkin and Lynn Redgrave.
WViolin is the final novel of the film trilogy "Witnesses". The film opens at the beginning of the 20th century in a violin shop, where an instrument was created as a present for a Jewish boy. Later that violin became a witness to the tragic events that took place during the Holocaust. When the instrument turned a hundred years old, its journey ended a concert at the Wailing Wall.
WThe Winton Train was a private passenger train that travelled from the Czech Republic to Great Britain in September 2009 in tribute to the wartime efforts of Sir Nicholas Winton, described as the 'British Schindler' for his part in saving refugee children from Czechoslovakia.
WWitnesses is a historical drama directed by Konstantin Fam, consisting of three novellas "Shoes", "Brutus" and "Violin", united by a common concept and dedicated to the memory of Holocaust victims. Also known as The Trilogy "Witnesses".
WZakynthos or Zante is a Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It is the third largest of the Ionian Islands. Zakynthos is a separate regional unit of the Ionian Islands region, and its only municipality. It covers an area of 405.55 km2 (156.6 sq mi) and its coastline is roughly 123 km (76 mi) in length. The name, like all similar names ending in -nthos, is pre-Mycenaean or Pelasgian in origin. In Greek mythology the island was said to be named after Zakynthos, the son of the legendary Arcadian chief Dardanus.
WThe Zookeeper's Wife is a 2017 war drama film directed by Niki Caro, written by Angela Workman and based on Diane Ackerman's non-fiction book of the same name. The film tells the true story of how Jan and Antonina Żabiński rescued hundreds of Polish Jews from the Germans by hiding them in their Warsaw zoo during World War II. It stars Jessica Chastain, Johan Heldenbergh, Daniel Brühl and Michael McElhatton.