A Forgotten Episode of Holocaust-Era Heroism

Oct. 26 2023

With so much hostility on offer, it’s good to remember those who stood up for the Jews, even at risk to themselves, in much darker times. I was thus happy to come across Georgia Gilholy’s review of Roger Moorhouse’s The Forgers, which tells the story of a massive operation to rescue Jews from the Shoah:

The Polish ambassador Aleksander Ładoś, working from his picturesque Swiss embassy, spearheaded a network of “pious dishonesty” that forged identity papers for Latin American countries and then smuggled them into Nazi-occupied Europe. We do not know how many souls escaped the Third Reich’s death machine by using the more than 10,000 passports forged by Ładoś’s Polish network—Moorhouse concedes that many who obtained one did not survive—but some estimates put the number between two and three thousand.

Against this apocalyptic backdrop, unlikely heroes emerged. Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, a right-wing Catholic novelist who had long complained that Jews were a socioeconomic scourge Poles must encourage to emigrate, became one of their fiercest defenders, co-founding two underground organizations that helped Jews flee the Nazi genocide. For this she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz in 1943. “The world looks upon this murder, more horrible than anything else history has ever seen, and stays silent,” she lamented. “Whoever is silent witnessing murder becomes a partner to it.” There is no doubt, writes Moorhouse, that this otherwise unpleasant woman had risked her life in the name of “Christian civilization and culture, love of fellow man and humanity.”

Indeed, Kossak was one of pre-World War II Poland’s most prominent anti-Semites. She herself admitted that the Final Solution, in her view, served Poland’s national goals—but that ultimately her religious and moral commitments had to trump national loyalty. Perhaps some other people will likewise surprise us in the days and weeks to come.

Read more at First Things

More about: Anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Holocaust rescue, Poland, Righteous Among the Nations

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023