In Zoo Cages: 5 Ways Jews Were Rescued in Europe

Righteous Among the Nations greatly aided European Jews. Key methods included hiding Jews in their homes, forging documents for them, facilitating their escape, rescuing children, and providing encouragement and support.

1. Hiding Jews in the rescuers' homes or farms - In the rural areas of Eastern Europe, hideouts or bunkers were dug under homes, barns, and stables, where Jews could remain hidden. Jews were concealed in attics, forest hideouts, and any place that could provide shelter and concealment, such as cemeteries, even in sewer tunnels and zoo cages. In addition to the constant threat of death hanging over the Jews, the physical conditions were unbearable. They lived in cramped, dark, cold spaces. The rescuers also lived in fear of discovery. They had to provide food for the hiders—a challenging task for poor families, especially during wartime—and manage the sanitation needs of those hiding. Sometimes Jews were presented as non-Jews, relatives of the rescuers, or adopted children. Jews were also hidden in city apartments, children were left in monasteries, with nuns concealing their true identities. In Western Europe, Jews mainly hid in homes, farms, and monasteries.

2. Forging fake documents and false identities – To assume a non-Jewish identity, Jews needed fake papers and assistance in surviving under false identities. Rescuers included counterfeiters or officials who issued forged documents, clergy who forged baptismal certificates, and foreign diplomats who provided visas, passports, or protective papers contrary to their countries' policies. By late 1944, diplomats in Budapest issued protective papers and flew their national flags over entire buildings, indicating these homes were under their countries' protection. German rescuers, like Oskar Schindler and Berthold Beitz, used pretexts and deception to protect their workers from deportation, claiming the Jews were essential to the German war effort.

(Photo: shutterstock)

3. Smuggling and aiding the escape of Jews – Some rescuers helped Jews escape from particularly dangerous areas to safer regions. This included smuggling Jews out of ghettos and prisons, assisting in crossing borders to countries not occupied by the Germans, such as neutral Switzerland, Italian-controlled areas from which Jews were not deported, or Hungary before the March 1944 German occupation.

4. Saving children – Parents faced agonizing dilemmas whether to part with their children and entrust them to the care of strangers in hopes of increasing their survival chances. In some cases, children were adopted by families or monasteries after their parents were murdered. In many instances, families chose to take in a child and hide them. In various countries, especially Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France, underground organizations found homes for children, provided financial, food, and medical support, and ensured their proper care.

(Illustrative Photo: shutterstock)

5. Encouragement and support - Lorenzo Perrone, a Righteous Among the Nations, saved Primo Levi during the war. After the war, Levi described Lorenzo's humanity as a primary factor that helped him endure, stating: "If there is a reason why I survived, it was primarily thanks to Lorenzo. Not necessarily for his material help, but much more because through his behavior and kindness, he reminded me daily that there still existed a just and humane world beyond the barbed wire. There were people with heart and pure values outside the camp. Not everything was corrupt and cruel. A world without hate and fear existed, albeit distant and unclear at the moment, but worth surviving to return to."

Berthold Beitz, who saved many Jews by providing them jobs at his oil company, also encouraged their spirits. Almost as important as the daily bread was the certainty for the labor camp inmates that there was someone nearby who shared their plight and to whom they could turn in times of need. Many survivors recounted how in their moments of despair, Beitz always gave them courage and foresaw a quick end to their sufferings. These humiliated people also drew encouragement from Beitz's words, repeatedly stating that as a German, he was ashamed of his countrymen's crimes.