Israel – The Nazi officer made famous in Roman Polanski’s movie “The Pianist” has been posthumously honored by Israel’s Holocaust memorial.
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Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari says the museum awarded the honor of “righteous among the nations” to Capt. Wilm Hosenfeld based on testimonies of Holocaust survivors. She says he rescued at least two Jews in Poland from the Nazi genocide.
Hosenfeld joined the Nazi party before World War II, but later wrote about his “disgust and horror” at the systematic murder of European Jews. After the war, Hosenfeld was arrested and jailed by the Soviets. He died in a Soviet prison in 1952.
The museum says it will award a medal and certificate to Hosenfeld’s descendants on his behalf. No date has been set for the ceremony.
Accourding to the movie he helps the Jew only at the end of the war, as many other Nazis did, to save their own heads, you even see him asking a Jew to help him get out of prison.
I hope Yad V’Shem looked in to this, as this happens in many books and many stories, the Nazis realized they were loosing, so they started helping some Jews, so they should testify for them in court.
Dr. Hans Münch was one of about 40 SS doctors at Auschwitz. He was the only person acquitted at the Auschwitz trials in Krakow. As a although all the doctors were required to attend selektzia, he refused. He used his position to conduct “experiments” in which inmates were actually sheltered from harm. On his first day in Auschwitz he recalls being shown the inmates and reaching out and shaking the hand of the first person online “Hello I’m Dr. Heim.” He was quickly pulled aside and told “we don’t do that here.” Being a doctor he was not obligated to join the military but joined both the party and the military as an opportunist.
A truly great man with truly nobility of soul, who deserved honor and veneration from everyone, Jews or non-Jews.