Shlomo, a volunteer at Yad Vashem was walking back to the museum via the Avenue of the Righteous Amongst the Nations. He noticed an elderly man looking around puzzled so he asked him if he could help him.
He explained that he was a German gentile and had visited Yad Vashem several times but had never noticed this section. “What is this Righteous Amongst the Nations?” he asked.
Shlomo explained that these were non-Jewish people who had risked their lives and the lives of their families, for no reward whatsoever, by hiding and saving Jews during the Holocaust. If they were discovered it meant instant death to their entire family. Many were killed and tortured by the Nazis when their secret was discovered, even if the Jews were no longer hiding with them. In some instances Jewish families had survived whereas their German rescuers had perished.
Long after the Holocaust, in the 1960s when survivors started to talk about their experiences, the directors at Yad Vashem realized that the number of brave gentiles who had risked their lives was not insignificant and demanded recognition, and so it was decided to dedicate an avenue of trees to commemorating these people.
Jewish people who had been hidden by their friends and neighbors came to Yad Vashem and told their stories and a tree was planted in honor of these brave, good people. If the rescuers were still alive the Israeli government often brought them to Israel to participate in the tree planting ceremony. There, in the presence of several generations of Jewish descendants, they could see that by saving one person or one family, they had in fact saved many more.
The man smiled. “Ah I understand.” He was quiet for a moment. “You know when I was a little boy in Germany during the war my parents once told me not to worry if I heard noises in the cellar as we had mice there. They also told me that if we don’t feed these mice they will turn into big rats. So every night my father used to go down to the cellar with plates of food. I believed him completely. It would never occur to me to doubt what he said. It was only after the war that I realized what they had been doing and who had been down there.” He sighed. “ So it would seem that my parents were righteous too.”
Shlomo nodded. “Certainly they were,” he said. “And we owe them our gratitude.”
The old man looked around at the longs rows of shady trees which make up the avenue. He stooped to read a plaque. Suddenly Shlomo saw him turn a ghostly white color and almost faint.
Shlomo ran over to him and he pointed a shaking finger at the plaque beneath the tree under which they were standing.
“Look. That plaque is in memory of my father.” He said, his voice shaking. “I never knew it was here. He never said anything.” He stood still for a moment deep in thought. “ I wonder if my father even knew about it. But at least I now know that our Jewish neighbors survived the war.”