My Brother’s Keeper by Rod Gragg. Little, Brown & Co., 2016 250 pages £12.99
ISBN 978 1 455 566 280
What a beautiful book. Beautiful for two reasons.
Firstly, its 250 pages yield 30 different stories, so, about 8 pages for each story – not enough to get bored ! This book can be put down and picked up at a whim without ever losing your place or interest.
In the second place, it does a great deal to reinforce one’s faith in redeemed human nature in what must have been the most hideously desperate of wartime circumstances.
The subtitle of the book gives the game away – ‘Christians who risked all to protect Jewish targets of the Holocaust’. Stories of danger, daring, hope and often, death.
From an evangelical pastor in Germany to a farm family in Poland, a teenage girl in Austria,
a young teacher in Hungary, a watch-maker in Holland, a British spy, a Chinese diplomat,
an American soldier and a royal princess – all of whom (and more) Yad Vashem, the Israeli holocaust memorial, declared “they are perhaps the sole rays of light in this dark era, the few whose consciences prevented them from being indifferent.”
One has to be enormously grateful to the author for the prodigious amount of research undertaken to produce such a collection of stories, the truth of which may be measured by the extensive references, some of which are personal memories by survivors as well as those who helped them to survive.
Despite the slaughter of 6 million Jews, the undaunted commitment, resourcefulness and sometimes, sheer audacity of the people whose courage is recalled here, undoubtedly helped in part to assure the survival of the Jews and, ultimately, the creation of the state of Israel.
One eternal accolade from the nation of Israel holds these heroes and heroines together in one single bond of humane unity – “The Righteous Among the Nations.”
What more significant honour for gentiles can there be from God’s chosen people ?