I really enjoyed this piece.
http://www.slate.com/id/2282613/ (http://www.slate.com/id/2282613/)
quote from the linked article: "We cannot now create a new story—'all these wonderful rescuers in Germany'—but we know the group is bigger than we expected, and that is really amazing," says Kosmala. "We are careful not to overestimate it—that's important I think—but there are ordinary people here, and not only people with money or people who had very good positions. So visitors see that ordinary people could do something. That is our main message: People could act. Could react. Because many Germans after the war were saying, 'We ourselves had to suffer under dictatorship! We couldn't do anything! We were persecuted as well!' These examples show what was possible, what people could do."
lw
yes, there were over 23,000 'Righteous among Nations' - gentiles (non-Jews) who put themselves at risk for no reason other than to actively save Jews from being murdered by the Nazis.
Stories of such people are marvellous. Irina Sendler in Warsaw, a social worker, put herself at risk a few times a day as she rescued children from the Ghetto, placing them in safe homes on the Aryan side of Warsaw. (She managed to save over a thousand children)
Every such story confirms that we have choices in life. It may take extraordinary courage to follow a non-conformist path, but the choice exists.
Thanks, LW for the link to this Slate article.