“Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire”
Is a phrase from the Talmud, a central Judaic text, which describes the idea that when one life is saved, the rescuer has also saved the lives of that person’s descendants as well.
Through twenty-one portrait photographs, the exhibit Polish Heroes: Those Who Rescued Jews honors this idea of ultimate bravery and willingness to sacrifice, at a time when the penalty for helping Jews was often death and applied not only to the rescuer but also his or her family and even their neighbors.
Polish Heroes was created by the late Chris Schwartz, the founder and director of the Galicia Jewish Museum, as a tribute to the more than 6,000 non-Jewish Poles named Righteous Among The Nations by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Authority in Israel and specifically focuses on twenty-one recipients who live in Krakow today.
The exhibit will be on display at the VHM from November 21st through January 31st, 2011.
For more information please call the Museum at 804-257-5400 or visit our website, www.va-holocaust.com/events