Honoring Those Who Protect Jews Today

Second-generation Holocaust survivors like me felt a particular chill on the first night of Hanukkah. Jews were being hunted down, again. And like so many around the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about Ahmed Al Ahmed, the hero who protected the Sydney Jewish community from even more death and violence by Muslim fanatics, risking his life without expectation of reward.

My mother survived the Holocaust because someone in Belgium made a similar, extraordinary choice. Louise Anciaux, a Catholic headmistress, hid my mother and her sister as schoolgirls for 18 months until liberation. Like Ahmed, she acted against her best personal interests, driven not by ideology or reward, but by conscience. Louise saved Jews from Christian Nazis and their supporters; Ahmed saved them from Muslim extremists. Both demonstrate that moral courage knows no religion or nationality.

These two individuals who are so different in time and place are extraordinary not because they were fearless, but because they did not allow fear to dictate their moral choices.

Yad Vashem rightly defines Righteous Among the Nations as non-Jews who risked their lives, freedom, or position to save Jews during the Holocaust. The designation is specific to that historical period, 1939 to 1945, for those facing Nazi persecution.

Ahmed Al Ahmed’s story, alongside Madame Anciaux’s, raises an important question: Should there be a new designation to honor those who risk themselves to protect Jews today? Righteous Among the Nations applies solely to Holocaust rescuers, but when antisemitism leads to threats, attacks, and isolation in our own time, those who act with courage are making a moral choice no less significant, even if the historical context is different.

Honoring the righteous, past and present, requires telling their stories as living moral challenges. We should honor them by teaching and remembering their names alongside those of the victims, by integrating their choices into education about ethics, citizenship, and responsibility via schools, popular culture, and social media. Perhaps a new award should be initiated.

We must keep their heroism alive by refusing to relegate it to the history bin. I try to do that by telling the story of my mother’s savior every chance I get. When antisemitism resurfaces, when minorities are targeted, and when silence feels safer than speaking out, the righteous remind us that decency is always an option.