Rescuers

Despite all of the hate the was spread during the holocaust there were some genuinely kind people who did whatever they could at whatever risk to help their fellow people. 

Jan Zwartendijk- He helped issue permits to potential victims that would help them escape with the help of De Deker a Deutsche Ambassador. The permits said "an entrance visa is not required for the admission of aliens to Surinam, Curaçao, and other Dutch possessions in America" (Zwartendijk, par 3). They helped refugees escape from Lithuania and that was all the permit was good for. He was able to save 3,000-6,000 Jews from being sent to concentration camps.

 "Fits" Philips- Philips recently died at age 100 in 2005 from pneumonia (Crouch, par. 1). His strategy for saving them was to hire as many Jews as possible and then tell the Nazis that they were irreplaceable and that he needed to keep them for the sake of his business (Crouch, par. 6). Philip did this in a factory he created in a concentration camp and by keeping them he saved them from one of the largest camps, Auschwitz (Crouch, par. 5). He employed 469 Jews and 382 of them survived the war. He was given a medal for non-Jews who saved Jews in the holocaust. (Crouch, par. 8). Later on he was imprisoned, unfortunately.


Miep Gies- She famously took care of Anne Frank who wrote in a diary that was later published: Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. She died at age 100 in 2010. Gies took in the Franks without hesitation ("Interview with Miep Gies," par. 1). Otto had been her boss for four years and now she said it was extremely painful to have him live in fear and the tables were turned and now she had to take care of him ("Interview with Miep Gies," par. 4). She had to be clever and not buy all her food from one place and look suspicious. Instead she would buy from different places ("Interview with Miep Gies," par. 11). For the full and lengthy interview, click here Anne Frank Miep Gies Interview

Pictures 1-3 Anne Frank
Picture 4- Miep Gies
Picture 5- "Frits" Philips
Picture 6- Jan Zwartendjk

Works Cited

"Businessman Saved Dutch Jews." The New York Times. The New York Times, 06 Dec. 2005. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/

Crouch, Gregory. "Frederik Philips Dies at 1
2005/12/07/business/07philips.html>

"Interview with Miep Gies." Interview with Miep Gies. Scholastic Inc., 2015. Web. 28 Apr. 2015. <http://teacher.scholastic.com/frank/tscripts/miep.htm>.

"Jan Zwartendijk." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Council, 20 June 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007092>.