My Brother's Keeper: Christians Who Risked All to Protect Jewish Targets of the Nazi Holocaust

by Rod Gragg

2017 Christian Book Award Finalist

Thirty captivating profiles of Christians who risked everything to rescue their Jewish neighbors from Nazi terror during the Holocaust.

My Brother's Keeper unfolds powerful stories of Christians from across denominations who gave everything they had to save the Jewish people from the evils of the Holocaust. This unlikely group of believers, later honored by the nation of Israel as "The Righteous Among the Nations," includes ordinary teenage girls, pastors, priests, a German army officer, a former Italian fascist, an international spy, and even a princess.

In one gripping profile after another, these extraordinary historical accounts offer stories of steadfast believers who together helped thousands of Jewish individuals and families to safety. Many of these everyday heroes perished alongside the very people they were trying to protect. There is no doubt that all of their stories showcase the best of humanity -- even in the face of unthinkable evil.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Holocaust, World War II, War, European History, Christian

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Yibbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking, inspiring, frustrating, encouraging…This is one of those books that is difficult to rate. It’s hard to read and harder to put down. The incredibly heroic and self-sacrificing acts of so many under those circumstances are amazing and deserve a high rating, and the eternal impact some of them had deserves even a higher rating, but so much heartache...
This would be a very good book to use as an introduction to both WW2 and the Holocaust. Each rescuer’s story is interwoven with the particular segment of WW2 that most directly affected them. For example, the stories of the Kindertransport rescuers are told along with the history of the fall of Austria and Czechoslovakia. If you are very familiar with the history of the war, it may move a little slowly, but it’s still worth reading.
The only problem I had was with the marketing. It is Christian in the broadest sense of the word. While many of the stories are about born-again believers, there are many others about Catholics, Seventh-Day Adventists, and self-professed nominal Christians. There was one story that came across that maybe the author was making more of his church affiliation than he did. The faith of those that were born-again is shared in a little more detail than the others, but that’s the only difference I see from many secular collections.
The most heartening thing about the whole book is reading that not only were some of the Jews saved from death in the Holocaust but saved also from sin and eternal death by faith in Jesus Christ as their Messiah. That is the reason this book has such a high rating. It has the joy of eternal life in its pages.
Thanks to NetGalley and FaithWords / Center Street for the free ARC to review.

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of these people were familiar to me, but there were several that I did not recognize. Their sacrifice for Christ was amazing and convicting. German soldiers risking their lives for the Jewish people, normal, every day people hiding Jews in their house, an American soldier protecting his fellow Jewish soldiers, and on and on the stories go. It was so interesting that I would have loved to read more details about each person. It is written in chronological order and is very accurate to historical timeline. My biggest struggle while reading this was trying to remember that it actually did happen!!

I highly recommend this!

*I received this from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review*

[Tom Burkholder · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the book My Brother’s Keeper, author Rod Gragg introduces us to Christians from all walks of life that sacrificed to save Jews during the Holocaust. Each one of these Christians were honored by the nation of Israel as “The Righteous Among the Nations.”
I would highly recommend this book. The stories of people living out their Christian faith to save the lives of Jews are incredible and very inspiring. I received a copy of this e-book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

[Savannah McCrary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an excellent book. I always love a good story of a Christian hero from history, and this book has thirty stories of Christians who helped Jews during the Holocaust. I was only familiar with three of them, so I enjoyed being introduced to some new everyday heroes from the World War II era. There were so many things I liked about this book. I liked the variety of people included (a German Lutheran pastor, German military men, a Greek princess, a Chinese diplomat, an Austrian teenage girl, an American Master Sergeant, a Mennonite woman from Indiana, and many more, including people from England, France, Italy, Poland, other Eastern European countries, other Scandivanian countries…). I also loved how the author didn’t just tell the stories of these people but provided the historical background, so that in reading this book, you’ll also get an overview of many of the major events leading up to and during WWII. It does tell of the Nazi murder of the Jews, which is, of course, quite horrifying. Those parts aren’t too long, though. I recognized a couple of the stories as being some of the ones that provided inspiration for one of my favorite WWII historical fiction books, The Auschwitz Escape by Joel C. Rosenberg, so that was fun, too!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is such a beautiful book. The last chapter (as well as many others) really speaks to the antisemitism happening today.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thankful for books like this to record these important stories.

[Kathleen (Kat) Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

"They are perhaps the sole rays of light in this dark era, the few whose consciences prevented them from being indifferent." ~ Yad Vashem

"Many did nothing - even though they called themselves Christians. Others joined the Nazis and supported Shoah, or Holocaust - the dark deadly storm that swept over Europe with the rise of Nazi Germany. In it more than six million Jewish men, women and children perished, killed by starvation or illness, fatally tortured or beaten, shot by Nazi death squads, or executed in concentration camp gas chambers. Contrary to popular misconception, in may ways the Jews of Europe resisted the evil that befell them. And as the unimaginable horror of the Holocaust descended upon Europe, countless people who professed the name of Christ also refused to remain silent or inactive. Many risked everything to help rescue Jewish targets of Nazi tyranny. Some even made the ultimate sacrifice, faithfully fulling the words of Jesus: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

My Brother's Keeper by Rod Gragg records the stories of thirty of them, all of whom have been honored by the State of Israel as "the Righteous Among the Nations." One of the Christians whose story is recounted in this work likely spoke for all herein when he explained why he chose to risk everything to save a single Jewish life. "I know that when I stand before God on Judgment Day," he said, "I shall not be asked the question posed to Cain - where were you when your brother's blood was crying out to God? " (pg 10).

My Brother's Keeper shares both the stories of these men and women who rose up in the face of perhaps the greatest evil atrocities of human kind and vowed not to stand by and do nothing when Hitler and his men tried in vain to rid the world of the Jewish race. Notables like Corrie Ten Bloom are captured as well as those whose names people might not recognize but save thousands of lives through their heroic efforts, some even paying with their own lives instead of standing idly by. This book also shares the history of such people like Hitler, Oskar Shindler and others so you get a full sense of what happened from the beginning until the brutal end. Why did the US and other nations not get involved when they knew what was happening in Germany and in other countries that Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were controlling piece by piece. This is a part of world history we cannot forget and it shows that good can still overcome evil if people are willing to step up and challenge them.

I received My Brother's Keeper by Rod Gragg compliments of Center Street Publishing, a division of Hachette Book Groups. It is hard to read these accounts and in the process you, the reader, are transported back to this time in history where people were stripped of their world possessions, wealth, and humanity for the sole reason of their birthright. The book shares these 30 accounts along with some historical pictures and is one I will not part with, and thus has become a part of my library sharing the history of the Jewish Holocaust as well as those that died trying to risk all to protect them. For me, this is a true 5 out of 5 stars.

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Brother's Keeper by Rod Gragg is a powerful, moving book about ordinary people who did extraordinary acts of bravery to help the Jewish nation caught up in Europe as the Nazi's marched and implemented the Final Solution. My Brother's Keeper is thirty stories of people honoured by the State Of Israel as the Righteous Among The Nations. These people shone as lights in a darkened Europe as they helped God's children.
The people came from all walks of life - the old and the young, the rich and the poor - united by their compassion for a persecuted people. Dr Feng Shan Ho said "I thought it was only natural to feel compassion." He personally saved the lives of over twelve thousand.
I had heard of some of the people - Frank Foley, the ten Booms, Princess Alice and Nicholas Winton with his kindertransport. Nicholas Winton believed "there is a difference between passive goodness and active goodness." In just a few months he saved six hundred and sixty eight children before the war began.
The other stories were all unknown to me but were all amazingly brave Christians. Their faith propelled them to action with no thought for their own safety. Otto and Gertrud Morike "believed their faith in Jesus... compelled them to resist Nazi tyranny and its persecution of the Jews."
The Danes as a nation were incredible. They stood together to resist the Nazis and as a result ninety five per cent of Denmark's Jews survived the Holocaust.
Some of the brave men and women paid with their lives - imprisoned, executed, inmates of the concentration camps. They believed in obeying God in the face of extreme evil. They saw no distinction between people. They are all God's children.
Within each chapter there is much detail about the war as well as the individual stories. My Brother's Keeper is not an easy book to read. Hitler and his evil regime beggars belief but the extraordinary acts of bravery will take your breath away.
We owe it to the six million who perished to continue to tell their stories. We need to keep their memory alive. We need to tell the subsequent generations so they did not perish only to be forgotten and consigned to history.
"Whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved an entire world."
May we never forget.
I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.

[Charity Andrews · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really tough read - looking at life during the holocaust through the eyes of a little child. It was so well written and just unbelievable that these things ever happened. I highly recommend. Please pick up a copy and read it for yourself.

[Jaina Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is also available on my blog, Read Till Dawn.

I asked to review My Brother's Keeper because it looked like a really great compilation of nonfictional stories from WWII, but once it actually showed up on my doorstep I continually put off cracking it open because I thought it would be too depressing (and also because it looked kind of boring).

It wasn't boring, though. Come to think of it, I've never read a book about the treatment of Jews during WWII that was boring–everything was just so horrific back then that even the most snooze-inducing historian couldn't dull the horrifying tales. As for my other concern, yes, My Brother's Keeper was definitely depressing. Its description of the systematic hunting down and wiping out of an entire race is horrifyingly detailed, and primary source quotes and images are used hauntingly throughout the book. Every chapter opens with a black and white image, occasionally of the featured person/family but often of German soldiers or real children who were murdered in concentration camps. In the beginning of the chapter there's a little bit of background on the featured figures, a detailed description of the historical context and the evils that they faced (including some truly horrific descriptions of German murder techniques), and then a detailed account of how they risked their lives to help the Jews and what happened to them afterward. I'd say that most of the featured people wound up surviving the war, though a large amount of them spent at least some time in a concentration camp. In one or two instances, the heroes–and their entire families–were murdered outright for their "crimes" under German law.

Honestly, it's pretty amazing to read about the people who risked everything to help save hundreds (sometimes thousands) of Jews from the Germans. Many heroes found it incomprehensible that the Jewish children were also being targeted, so they set up elaborate systems that rescued thousands of young innocents right out from under the Germans' grasp. It's amazing. But at the same time, I can't believe the depths of inhumanity that went on during the war. It's great that there were some heroes who rescued children, sure, but it's also horrifying to learn that 1.5 million kids died during the Holocaust. That's obscene. That's . . . I can't even find words for it. Monstrous fits, but it's not even enough. The actions of the people described in the book were amazing, incredibly brave, but they didn't even begin to conquer out the terrible evil of all the people who perpetrated the murder of innocents–or all of those who sat by and watched them do it. Gragg discusses the fact that many Christians throughout Europe allowed themselves to get swept up by the Germans, swearing their loyalty to the Third Reich and turning their backs on their Jewish neighbors, but he says that all of the people in My Brother's Keeper channeled their belief in God toward a conviction that they had to help the Jews in whatever way they could. I think that's amazing, but again–I only wish that more people, Christian or atheist or whatever, had stood up to the monstrosity of the Nazis.

But then I stop and wonder what I would have done in their shoes, and I'm afraid that I would have shut up and put my head down in order to save myself. And even if I worked up the courage to sacrifice myself, it's hard to decide whether it's worth saving others at the risk of having all of my loved ones murdered. It was an impossible time, an impossible situation. The Nazis were truly monsters in every sense of the word, and the noble secret actions of these thirty heroes (and of many more, I'm sure!) are even more incredible in contrast to the inhumanity surrounding them. I weep for all those they couldn't save, but I still celebrate every life they managed to save.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

[Cindy Strine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does an excellent job of telling the story of specific Christians who saved Jewish lives during World War II. I have previously read other books about several of the people included. Named Righteous Among the Nations, these heroes had deep faith which led to their actions.

The short bios of a wide range of people in a variety of countries takes us through many different stages of World War II. From those who issued thousands of visas prior to the official outbreak of war to the ghettos, concentration camps and liberation.

The book is definitely written from a Christian perspective. Quoting bible verses and sharing personal statements from the deeply religious characters. These mirror the biographies and books I have read about several people within the book.

The author does an excellent job of describing the people, their actions, their beliefs, the impact, and the dangers that faced them. They are in depth enough to engage the reader, and in some cases encourage the reader to seek more information about the Righteous. These stories just scratch the surface of those who helped save Jewish people. As the humble people state, they wish they could have done so much more.

The storytelling is engaging and the book is well-written. I listened to it as an audio book and it kept my attention, flowing seamlessly through the different parts. I recommend it to those who already have an understanding of key elements of WWII and who are open to expressions of faith and religion.

[Rebekah Gyger · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 Stars

I was really impressed with this one. Gragg's research is extensive, looking at not only the individuals who would later be named "The Righteous Among the Nations" but also the environment in which they lived and events that directly and indirectly affected their missions. While some of the information was knowledge that I already had, there was a lot that I was either unfamiliar with or else needed a reminder.


Another highlight of this book is that, for Christian readers, Gragg does not brush off the faith of these individuals he writes about. Instead he explains why so many felt it was their Christian duty to defend their Jewish brothers. Yet he manages to do this without preaching or quoting scripture other than what the subjects used themselves, so that it can be read by those who may not otherwise appreciate his mention of Christian principles.


Throughout, my only complaint was the lack of subject headings and breaks in the text. I understand that this is a personal preference, but I like to see beforehand what the next section will be about, and the only divider Gragg uses are bolded quotes taken from the succeeding paragraphs. While this allows for a more continuous text, it makes it difficult to come back later and find the section I was looking for.


I have provided an honest review after having received a copy of the book from the publisher.

[Cherry · Rating 2 out of 5]

Probably a 2.5 but rounding down for some questionable vagueness and for not putting things in a proper perspective. Don't get me wrong, the people whose stories were told in this book were courageous and risked, or in some cases, lost their lives for the sake of others, and they did this because of their faith. But the stories here are not really told in the true context of what was happening, and it doesn't mention any of the people of faith who interpreted that faith in a different way. This is a nice set of stories of good people and those stories should be told. This is not a strong or powerful history of the Holocaust and it is not a deeply researched journalistic endeavor that will give you insights into the overall role Christians and Christianity played in the Holocaust. It's more of a feel-good papering over of all of that messy truth.

[Josie · Rating 4 out of 5]

There were some phenomenal stories in this book. It is centered around Christian men and women who risked their lives (and often lost them) to save the lives of Jews being persecuted during WWII. While I was familiar with a couple of the stories, the majority of them were unknown to me and I appreciate how hopeful this book was. It showed how thousands of Jews were saved from death by the brave acts of these men and women because they felt as Christians, it was their duty to do so, even at such high risks and costs. I was thoroughly inspired by their brave acts and often found myself imagining if I too could be so brave in such a situation. I will admit it was a little slow to get in to, I thoroughly enjoyed the middle but by the end I had a hard time concentrating on it and missed a lot of the last few stories, but it is well worth the read.

[Adri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Just WOW! I had no idea about the incredible stories shared in this audiobook, and I'm so glad I listened.

It's deeply moving to learn about the people who risked everything to save Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Their acts of bravery and true charity are nothing short of inspiring.

While I was familiar with Corrie Ten Boom, having read most of her books, her story is only one small chapter in this powerful collection of remarkable individuals and their extraordinary stories.

The Holocaust was truly horrific, but it's heartening to know that, amidst the darkness, there were those who were blessed and saved along the way.

I’m sure there are countless other stories that remain unwritten, lost to history, but these accounts remind us of the incredible courage and compassion that existed, even in the darkest of times.

[Cassandra Nicole Walker · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t finish this book. It is the first time I’ve ever consciously decided to not finish a book. I’ve read plenty of books about the nazi occupation and I had looked forward to this one due to the stellar ratings but I came to find that only Christians must be reading this book and propelling it forward. Sure, it has some interesting stories of these unsung heroes of the war, but the fact that the author is trying to push them into this Christian mold - they did it bc they were Christian, just does not resonate with me. Let the stories speak for themselves. No need to push this link.

[Sophia Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the many tragedies of the Holocaust, besides the horrible loss of millions of Jews, is that many so-called Christians turned a blind eye to Nazi atrocities. Here's a book that chronicles the efforts of 30 Christians to rescue Jewish victims during the Nazi regime. These ordinary folks range in age, denomination, ethnicity, and region, but share the same faith-rooted drive to sacrifice comfort, safety, and even lives for what is right and just.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories of these incredible Christians, many of whom gave their lives, to protect Jews should be more well known. My heart ached and the soared with the plights of the Jews and the their saviors. Well written and devastating, this book is a must read for all. We must never forget the Holocaust. It could happen again if we allow ourselves to become complacent. No matter the evils in this world, there is always goodness and these heroes proved it.

[Dezmin Canales · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book was interesting and engaging. It had many different people that actually changed the course of the Holocaust. The plot and setting of the story was also engaging because of all the different people and their actions. The theme of the book unfolded the powerful and dangerous stories of each christian men and women who dedicated their lives to save Jewish people during WW2. Its heartbreaking but an alluring story.

[Brenda Seefeldt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inspiring! Cleverly telling more details of Nazi Germany than generally learned in education, the author weaves in these true stories of common people who had conviction. I have been recommending this book to so many people. So real and inspiring.

[Megan Franks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading about some lesser known Christians who risk their lives and livelihoods to help victims of the holocaust. It’s a great reminder about how ordinary people have the power to extraordinarily impact lives.

[Gary · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many incredible stories of those who risked all to protect those that had no one else, at the risk, and in many cases the loss, of their own lives.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
John 15:13 ESV

[Tonya Vondersaar · Rating 5 out of 5]

This discusses many Christian individuals that helped Jewish people during the Holocaust. Many of these people risked their own lives to help those in need. It talks about how their lives were affected during this process and some were even killed because of the assistance given.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stories about Christians who helped Jewish people during the Holocaust.

[Thara Tenney · Rating 4 out of 5]

These people are my heroes.

It is my hope that we as a people never again return to this type.

If we do it is my hope that I would become a rebel despite the probability of being executed.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

These short stories were interesting. Some I had heard of and most I had not.

[Esther Dushinsky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Audiobook

[Debbie Poland MacAvoy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many stories of brave Christians helping Jewish people during WWII. Some I'd heard of, but others I hadn't. Horrific atrocities are described.

[Sarah Warner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a beautiful compilation of incredibly inspirational stories! I am left in awe of these people and their brave testimonies

[Nanci · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories of those who dared to protect the Jewish population during WW2 even at the cost of their own lives. Perfect reminder at this time in history.