As International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches on January 27, marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz and the beginning of the end of the Holocaust and WWII, there are stories of inspiration that call to us to be remembered, beyond the horrible facts that most know: six million Jews murdered in the event that defined the word genocide. At Auschwitz alone, 1.1 million people were killed, including 1 million Jews. 

Throughout Nazi occupied Europe, entire Jewish communities were simply erased. Where there were survivors, like in the Polish towns that my grandparents grew up in, the survivors who went back to the only place they had called home were often driven out at threat of death, and indeed following bloody pogroms in which Jews who had seen and experienced unspeakable horrors and looked to find other surviving loved ones, were killed by their own former neighbors and schoolmates. 

While the number of people saving Jews was far too few, there are a known 28,217 Righteous Gentiles, people who have been documented as having put their own lives at risk to save Jewish friends, neighbors and in some cases complete strangers. 

No Jewish community was left untouched, no matter how small. For instance, in the Netherlands, an estimated 102,000 Jews were killed, out of a pre-war population of 140,245, or 73%. Why the Netherlands?

With one of the smallest Jewish communities in Europe, the Netherlands is noteworthy for having the second largest number of Righteous Gentiles.  By comparison, in Poland........

© Townhall