The Option to Choose Good

I've never cared much for coffee-table books; they are usually overpriced, over-photographed, and under-utilized. And unless you like fluffy travel writing, chances are they won't appeal to you.

Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust (Holmes and Meier, 1992, $29.95, paper), by Gay Block and Malka Drucker, looks like a coffee-table book: It is big, full of stunning and alluring portrait photographs, and sports a cover that beckons you to pick it up from the table. But there is no fluff in this book; it explores islands of human goodness in a sea of human failure. Supported by the Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers, Malka Drucker and Gay Block traveled across the globe to interview 105 rescuers from 11 different countries. The fruit of their travels has resulted in this book, a film, and a traveling exhibit of the photographic portraits of the rescuers.

Rabbi Harold Schulweis of the foundation sums up the project's rationale in his afterword: "The rescuers teach us to stand with the threatened. They confirm with their bodies our conviction that there were and always are alternatives to passive complicity to evil. We who remember the sinister face of the torturers will not forget the benign countenance of goodness."

The authors have wisely allowed the rescuers to tell their stories in their own words. Their accounts are powerful in their simplicity. Some of the interviews appear to be cathartic for those sharing. As the Dutch rescuer Semmy Riekerk said in conclusion: "I've told you things I've never told others before."

Many tell how difficult it was to be emotionally tense for years on end. Rescuers carried wastepots down from attics and up from cellars, lied, stole, and sometimes even killed to protect the Jews in their care. Malka Csizmadia's home stood across the fence from a Jewish work camp in the Budapest ghetto. Beginning with one simple act of human generosity over the fence, an act that soon snowballed, her home became a center of resistance and solidarity. But it was not easy. As she said simply, "I'd rather have a bullet in my head than do it again."

Because each country's social and cultural history differs, and because of the uniqueness of their experiences under Nazi rule, the book is arranged geographically by nation-state, with an introduction setting the context for each country. Such differences apparently did not end with the war. At war's conclusion, some nations honored their rescuers. Others, like Poland, discriminated against them, treating some rescuers as social pariahs for helping the Jews.

While many worked alone, others were part of extensive underground networks. Still there were similarities, for few could save any Jews without some help. Marion Pritchard, who saved 150 Jews around Amsterdam, and who says she did not talk about the war for years "perhaps because I had some guilt that I didn't do enough," claims that it took at least 10 others to shelter a Jew in a Europe gone mad with Nazism. One needed the doctor to make discreet house calls, the postperson to ignore the extra mail, the grocer not to ask about the big orders, and the neighbors not to report what they could easily see and hear.

In trying to explain her altruism, Dutch rescuer Semmy Riekerk evinced the modesty that shines through most of the interviews. "I think every human being is like a piano," she said. "In every man and woman lives the whole scale from very bad to very good. It's the circumstances that bring out the tone. You can't always live by the high tones. I don't want you to get the wrong impression of me. I am as bad as every other personsometimes."

In Catholic theology the principle of the "fundamental option" further explains what Riekerk means. People like Riekerk may indeed be as bad as others at certain times, but they have adopted a basic moral orientation - a fundamental option to choose good - which manifests itself much more regularly than their potential to do evil, and which is more likely to win out in times of moral stress like the Holocaust.

In a provocative prologue, Cynthia Ozick says these people were the true heroes of war-torn Europe. They rose above the others, becoming part of the few who actively chose to be other than bystanders. Whether they are heroes or not, their story is holy, and their lives point to the best of which we humans are capable, provided we orient our lives toward the good. That will have to be enough. And for this reader at least, it is more than enough.

PATRICK G. COY was a regular contributor to Sojourners when this review appeared. His A Revolution of the Heart: Essays on the Catholic Worker, was released in paper from New Society Publishers soon after this review appeared.