By Donald H. Harrison in San Diego
French citizen Ivan Beltrami saw a tree planted in his honor at Yad Vashem’s Avenue of the Righteous. He commented in wonder: “I don’t think I really deserve this.” The director of Israel’s Holocaust memorial responded: “All the Righteous say the same thing but why didn’t everyone do ‘this ordinary thing?’”
That dialogue is capsulized in the title of This Ordinary Thing, an hour-long documentary directed by Nick Davis and produced by Albert A. Tapper. It features bite-sized testimonies of 45 European non-Jews taking us through the steps of the Holocaust: discrimination against Jews, their marginalization, ghettoization, going into hiding at great risk to their benefactors, liberation, and recovery. They were typically, although not uniformly, modest about their own bravery.
Most of the Righteous whose testimonies were compiled have since died, requiring voice actors to lend their talents to this very worthwhile Holocaust memory project. Some of the voice actors are also known for their on-screen performances, among them F. Murray Abraham, Ellen Burstyn, Carrie Coon, Stephen Fry, Marcia Gay Harden, Jeremy Irons, Helen Mirren, and Lily Tomlin.
Photographs of the Righteous, pictures of hiding places for Jewish Survivors, historic film footage, and symbolic shots, such as candles aglow, are melded into a cinematic montage that is now touring various film festivals pending the documentary’s general release in March 2026.
Anecdotes about scary moments when Nazis barged into their homes to conduct inspections, or when other neighbors blackmailed them into trading something of value for their silence, were mixed with reflections about why and how some people became rescuers.
Libuse Fries of Czechoslovakia confided, “It was dangerous, but I was young and I hated the Nazis. This was my resistance.”
Arnold Douwes of The Netherlands related “One time I went to a minister who said he would take Jews but he got scared when I got there and said no because he had a family and couldn’t take the risk. I said okay, thank you very much. I walked out of the house. I told the Jews waiting outside, ‘Everything is fine. Wait here a few minutes and then knock on the door. He’ll let you in.’ I left them standing there in the rain, and I knew that when the minister saw them there like that, he’d let them in. And he did.”
The Talmudic teaching that “whoever saves one life saves the entire world” also is quoted.
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.
The Hands of Choice Memorial – Safed. The Jewish Response, the only one in the world.
Non-Jews choosing to save Jews during the Holocaust was not the norm. Non-Jews who made that choice are and were extraordinary people who risked their lives to save their fellow Human Beings. They deserve the utmost honor. People who do so today must also be honored. The Gardens of the Righteous around the world makes such efforts.
Yet, Yad Vashem has a major weakness, an absolute failure, in its memorialization of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem does not have and refuses to have a special recognition of Jews who Chose to Save Jews during the Holocaust at the risk to their own lives, and there were many.
In Tzefat (Safed) is a memorial, unique in Israel and anywhere in the world. It is called the Hands of Choice.
It is a memorial to Jews who chose to save their fellow Jews at the risk to their own and their family’s lives.
The San Diego Jewish World carried a story about the Hands of Choice, built in 2021.
https://www.sdjewishworld.com/2021/07/24/jews-who-saved-other-jews-memorialized/