Yad Vashem posthumously honors Nazi officer made famous in The Pianist

[IndianaGreen]

Source: Haaretz

Last update - 20:41 16/02/2009

Yad Vashem posthumously honors Nazi officer made famous in The Pianist

The Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem said on Monday it was honoring a German officer whose rescue of a Polish Jewish musician is documented by Roman Polanski's 2002 Hollywood film "The Pianist".

The late Captain Wilm Hosenfeld is one of the few German World War Two soldiers to win the title of "Righteous among the Nations", among some 22,000 people honored for helping Jews avoid death in the Nazi Holocaust, in which 6 million perished.

In a statement, the Yad Vashem museum said it had decided to honor Hosenfeld, played in the movie by the German-born actor Thomas Kretschmann, after verifying that he had no hand in war crimes despite a military role in the occupation of Warsaw.

Hosenfeld, stationed in the Nazi-occupied Polish capital from 1940 to 1944, served mostly as a sports and culture officer, though he had some involvement in interrogations, the museum said.

Hosenfeld helped to shelter and feed the pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, who wrote about officer's kindness in his diary after escaping the Warsaw Ghetto, where he had been incarcerated as a Jew.

The diary of another Holocaust survivor said Hosenfeld had given him work after he escaped from a train en route to the Treblinka death camp, where most ghetto residents were sent, Yad Vashem said.

Read more: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1064586.html

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Let us never forget that this great evil took place because there weren't enough righteous people to prevent it. Today France acknowledged her shameful role in sending French Jews to Germany to their ultimate deaths.

Never forget!

[rpannier]

1. People like this man need to have more attention paid to them

In every society there is good and ill people.

While it is important to acknowledge the bad so people remember the evil they did. Focusing too much on the bad behavior has taught too many people this lesson, "I'm not as bad as 'X' so I must be a pretty good person."
Not being as bad as Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini, etal does not make you a good person. It just means you set the bar super low.

We do need to spend more time acknowledging those who 'stepped up' and did the right thing, even when it meant they could suffer the same (or worse) fate.
These are the people who should be emulated.
These people should be the standard for human behavior

[MasonJar]

2. If any DUers have not seen this movie, do so. The movie is one of

the film history's best. The German officer was portrayed as a great admirer of Classical Music, who assists the great pianists for his beautiful music. He was pictured as a charming gentle man. As I remember, the German died in a Russian gulag.

[catnhatnh]

3. Self Deleted

Because the person involved deserved the honor.

[IndianaGreen]

4. There is no moral equivalency to the Holocaust

and I say this as someone outraged by the Gazan bombing.

[catnhatnh]

5. I thought on it and took my post down.

I am sorry not for the remark but only because it would have politisized a man worthy of being honored.

[IndianaGreen]

7. Way to go, catnhatnh!

A rare quality around here is intellectual honesty, and you seem to have a good portion of it!

:fistbump:

[catnhatnh]

8. Thank you,

I'll take it to the wall, but only in the right place. Your posting deserves not to be hijacked.

[Lucky Luciano]

6. No Moral equivalency to the Holocaust....

Forget about the existence of Native Americans? Yea...there aren't very many left. THe Holocaust is probably the worst crime of the 20th century though.

[honoluludaniel]

10. Not to mention slavery...

Which only lasted about a couple hundred years. I wonder if that qualifies for moral equivalency?

[The Second Stone]

9. Moral equivalency is propaganda

Nothing is exactly equal. Gaza is horribly similar to the Warsaw Ghetto and Apartheid. That it is not exactly equivalent is beside the point. The Israelis have no right to starve and bomb the Palestinians in Gaza or steal the land in the West Bank. That there are some Palestinian terrorists does not make it any different from the Israeli campaign of terror and crimes. Palestine has a right to exist, just like Israel has a right to exist.

[Behind the Aegis]

11. Only similar to propagandists and/or liars.