Here’s how this week’s arts and culture column begins:
More than 27,000 individuals have been recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations” at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial established in 1953 in Jerusalem. The criteria to receive the honor includes being a non-Jewish person who risked life, liberty, or safety to rescue a Jew from the threat of death or deportation; there must be eyewitness testimony or unequivocal evidence of their actions; and they must not have received any monetary or other rewards.
The number might seem large. But in his recent book, In the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust (Harper, $28.99), author Richard Hurowitz points out that 27,000 people represent one-half of one-hundredth of 1% of the European population during World War II, or about 1 in 20,000.
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