Risk
Capital punishment of entire families, for aiding Jews, was the most draconian such Nazi practice against any nation in occupied Europe. On November 10, 1941, the death penalty was expanded by Hans Frank to apply to Poles who helped Jews "in any way: by taking them in for the night, giving them a lift in a vehicle of any kind" or "feed runaway Jews or sell them foodstuffs." The law was made public by posters distributed in all major cities. Polish rescuers were fully conscious of the dangers facing them and their families not only from the Germans but also from betrayers (see:szmalcownik) within the local population.
Over 700 Polish "Righteous among the Nations" received their medals of honor posthumously, being murdered by the Germans for aiding or sheltering their Jewish neighbors. Estimates of the number of Poles who were killed for aiding Jews range in the tens of thousands.
Gunnar S. Paulsson, in his work on the Jews of Warsaw, has demonstrated that, despite the much harsher conditions, Warsaw's Polish residents managed to support and conceal the same percentage of Jews as did the residents of cities in safer, supposedly less antisemitic countries of Western Europe.
Read more about this topic: Polish Righteous Among The Nations
Famous quotes containing the word risk:
“Man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)
“Nature, we are starting to realize, is every bit as important as nurture. Genetic influences, brain chemistry, and neurological development contribute strongly to who we are as children and what we become as adults. For example, tendencies to excessive worrying or timidity, leadership qualities, risk taking, obedience to authority, all appear to have a constitutional aspect.”
—Stanley Turecki (20th century)
“The married are those who have taken the terrible risk of intimacy and, having taken it, know life without intimacy to be impossible.”
—Carolyn Heilbrun (b. 1926)