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PARTISAN REVIEW
egoistic one we accept so matter-of-factly?
It is Mr. Paldiel's own goodness that leaves me gasping. How I want
to assent to his thesis! How alluring it is! His thesis asserts that it is the
rescuers who are in possession of the reality of human nature , not the
bystanders; it is the rescuers who are the ordinary human article. "In a
place where there are no human beings,
be
one" - it is apparent that the
rescuers were born to embody this rabbinic text. It is not, they say, that
they are exceptions; it is that they are human. They are not to be con–
sidered "extraordinary," "above the merely decent."
Yet their conduct emphasizes - exemplifies - the exceptional.
For instance:
Giorgio Perlasca, an Italian from Padua, had a job in the Spanish
Embassy in Budapest. When the Spanish envoy fled before the invading
Russians, Perlasca substituted the Spanish "Jorge" for the Italian
"Giorgio" and passed himself off as the Spanish charge d 'affairs. He car–
ried food and powdered milk to safe houses under the Spanish flag,
where several hundred Jews at a time found a haven. He issued protective
documents that facilitated the escape of Jews with Spanish passes. "I be–
gan to feel like a fish in water," he said of his life as an impostor: the
sole purpose of his masquerade was to save Jews. And he saved thousands.
Bert Berchove was a Dutch upholsterer who lived with his wife and
two children in a large apartment over his shop, in a town not far from
Amsterdam. At first he intended to help only his wife's best friend, who
was Jewish; her parents had already been deported. Berchove constructed
a hiding place in the attic, behind a false wall. Eventually thirty-seven
Jews were hidden there .
In a Dominican convent near Vilna, seven nuns and their mother su–
perior sheltered a number ofJews who had escaped from the ghetto, in–
cluding some poets and writers . The fugitives were disguised in nuns'
habits. The sisters did not stop at hiding Jews: they scoured the country–
side for weapons to smuggle into the ghetto.
Who will say that the nuns, the upholsterer, and the impostor are
not extraordinary in their altruism, their courage, the electrifying bold–
ness of their imaginations? How many nuns have we met who would
think of dressing Jewish poets in wimples? How many upholsterers do we
know who would actually design and build a false wall? Who among us
would dream of fabricating a fake diplomatic identity in order to save
Jewish lives? Compassion, it is clear, sharpens intuition and augments
imagination.
For me, the rescuers are
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the ordinary human article. Nothing
would have been easier than for each and every one of them to have re-
