海角大神

The title of Richard Hurowitz鈥檚 tremendously moving new book 鈥淚n the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust鈥� refers to a real place. It鈥檚 located on the Avenue of the Righteous at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem. The garden, first planted in 1962, honors with a tree each person who worked to save Jewish lives during World War II 鈥� and as Hurowitz writes, 鈥渢he garden is verdant with foliage as hundreds more trees have been planted.鈥� 鈥淚n the Garden of the Righteous鈥� tells the story of some of the people whose names are honored there.

In this case, a quiet and lovely garden is a far more fitting monument than a gallery of heroic statues would be. Hurowitz, a writer whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, assembles the stories of people who made the lonely, terrifying decision to stand against the armored fist of the Nazi state. Drawing on interviews and archives, Hurowitz presents the details of a handful of these stories, and each one reads like a sharply etched, miniature version of Steven Spielberg鈥檚 1993 movie 鈥淪chindler鈥檚 List鈥� (or its literary source, Thomas Keneally鈥檚 1982 novel 鈥淪chindler鈥檚 Ark鈥�).聽

Hurowitz鈥檚 cast of characters is as varied as the ways in which human beings can respond to the worst of crises. The most dramatic member of that cast is Princess Alice, the great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria who married Prince Andrew of Greece and came into conflict with the encroaching Nazi forces that invaded Athens in the spring of 1941. As Hurowitz points out, her royal status was no guarantee of safety. 鈥淭he danger was constant, despite the princess鈥檚 stature,鈥� he writes. 鈥淎n Italian princess had been sent to a concentration camp for harboring Jews.鈥� In addition to sheltering Jews, Princess Alice funded soup kitchens and orphanages, and for a while, she was accorded respectful treatment from the Nazis, who assumed that her German heritage made her sympathetic to them. 鈥淏ut when a general visited her, she refused to shake his hand,鈥� Hurowitz writes. 鈥淲hen he asked what he might do for her, she replied, 鈥榊ou can take your troops out of my country.鈥欌��

Some of these stories are very nearly as unexpected as that of a defiant princess. One of the most memorable of these is the tale of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, 鈥渁 bon vivant who enjoyed well-tailored suits and gourmet food,鈥� who was posted to a Lithuanian city that had never seen a Japanese person before.聽

The thought of being a hero had obviously never occurred to Sugihara, but when he found himself suddenly confronted with thousands of Jewish refugees and Polish soldiers desperate to flee 鈥� perhaps to one of the Dutch colonies in the Americas 鈥� he felt he had no choice but to act in his modest capacity by issuing visas to as many of those people as possible. 鈥淚 cannot allow these people to die,鈥� he recalled thinking.

Perhaps the star of Hurowitz鈥檚 book is a figure he describes as 鈥渢he little-known midlevel Portuguese diplomat [who] quite possibly saved more people than any other individual during the Holocaust,鈥� a man named聽Aristides de聽Sousa Mendes, who used his bureaucratic authority to thwart his country鈥檚 punitive 鈥淐ircular 14鈥� policy that sharply restricted the movement of certain categories of refugees, including Jewish people.

In defiance of his superiors, Sousa Mendes wrote out visas for as many desperate people as he could. 鈥淚 would rather stand with God against man than with man against God,鈥� he said, and even later, when he was stripped of his official authority, he continued writing paperwork. It's estimated that he saved an estimated 30,000 people over聽several weeks in the summer of 1940, Hurowitz writes. Sousa Mendes聽even personally led hundreds of people to safe passage out of Portugal.聽

The number of these heroes was never large, as Hurowitz makes unblinkingly clear at the outset. Most people, confronted with threats to their livelihood, their lives, or the lives of their families, simply looked away rather than try to interfere. But even so, according to Hurowitz, there鈥檚 hope. 鈥淭he stories of the righteous allow us at least to contemplate the enormity of man鈥檚 cruelty by asking ourselves how we would hope to react when confronted with it,鈥� he writes. 鈥淚f you take your inspiration from the rescuers and bring kindness and compassion and courage with you, you will make the world a better place.鈥�

A surprising amount of 鈥淚n the Garden of the Righteous鈥� turns on paperwork; most of its heroes use bureaucracy's own machinery against it, thwarting unjust laws and inhumane governments. But the book鈥檚 heart is that simple statement from Sugihara: 鈥淚 cannot allow these people to die.鈥澛犅�