The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe

by Samuel P. Oliner, Pearl M. Oliner, Harold M. Schulweis (Contributor)

Why, during the Holocaust, did some ordinary people risk their lives and the lives of their families to help others--even total strangers--while others stood passively by? Samuel Oliner, a Holocaust survivor who has interviewed more than 700 European rescuers and nonrescuers, provides some surprising answers in this compelling work.

Genres: History, Psychology, Nonfiction, Social Science, Holocaust, Biography

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

Reviews

[Carrie Yang · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the required readings in a political science class that has ended up staying with me and becoming more meaningful in the past few years. As with other case studies, this book spends a long time explaining the methodology and why certain factors did not work. It actually takes until the very end to try to explain what creates the altruistic personality, or if there is even one. But I think it was worth the read.

It is a fascinating question, and sometimes I find myself revisiting the hypothetical: would I have rescued a Jewish person at the height of the Nazi regime and at a huge risk to myself and family?

I don't know. But there is something really profound and beautiful about this that I haven't quite figured out yet.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most fascinating things I have ever read. Through their extensive interviews with people who helped to rescue Jews in Nazi Europe, the Oliners find common threads in their lives. They create a portrait of the altruistic personality and how it is shaped in the context of the family. I read this book as a new college graduate, and twenty years later, it still informs how I raise my children, or at least try to. The gist of it? Lavish kindness and understanding on your children and your neighbors. Teach your children to do the same for others and fill them with so much love that it spills out of them, making it impossible for them to turn away from someone in need.

[Redpoet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most significant to me books I have read in a long time. I have asked myself time and again what was it about those too few ordinary people in Europe who saved Jews during the Holocaust. Why were they different than those who did nothing or worse (who so badly and sadly outnumbered them)? This book has some answers. We are not talking here about those who were members of this or that political grouping with a strong political ideological orientation. No, we are talking about people who were just...people.

Amongst other things this book accomplished is a somewhat restoration in my faith in humanity. These people were a small minority, but they did exist. Their existence proves that humanity has a potential for good which we too often fail to see.

The rescuers stories are long overdue being told by themselves, and then being studied not just for a look at the past but with the future in mind.

This book helps us to understand why they did what they did and if there is anything we can do to encourage there being more of them in the future.

I won’t go into the answers and the suggestions this book provides. I call upon you to find out for yourself, by reading it.

[Ava Courtney Sylvester · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Essential Read to Save Us All

After himself surviving the Holocaust due to the altruism of another, Samuel Oliver proposes that to ensure such a tragedy should never again occur, we must change the world by striving to emulate the very altruism that saved him.

To make us all safe from another holocaust, Oliver and his research team interviewed hundreds of people who, through actions large and small, saved the lives of Jewish people during the Nazi occupation. By collecting their stories, conducting in-depth interviews regarding their upbringing and moral viewpoints, and administering psychosocial exams, Oliver endeavors to uncover what factors build the altruistic personality. He also compared these rescuers with bystanders to see what factors may have cultivated each type of person.

This book hopes to do no less than to save humanity from our worst atrocities by bringing about the better angels of our nature. It deserves a place along other crucial masterpieces regarding the Holocaust as those by Viktor Frankl, Stanley Milgram, and Elie Wiesel.

[Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting! This is a research book, but it was organized a little differently so that made it feel like a documentary. The beginning took a while to get through as it felt like I was reading a long history textbook, but once I got to the actual experiences of the people they interviewed, I couldn't put it down. I've read a lot of historical fiction about World War II, and most of them paint rescuers in a very perfect heroic light. There is no doubt that they were heroes, but hearing about the internal and external difficulties they faced as a consequence of helping strangers made them more human. I also loved that many of the stories were told in there own words!

[Glenn Franco Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Sam Oliner was one of my professors in a genocide emphasis phase at Humboldt State University. The emphasis was essentially equivalent, at that time, to a minor.

Sam, as I came to know him, was a gentle, insightful soul. His book is important because it provides insight into what makes people altruistic ~ something that seems to be lacking in the contemporaneous world.

[Susan Lindsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book (along with Eva Fogelman's Conscience and Courage) is one of the most important works on the motivations and characteristics of those brave souls who rescued Jews in Nazi Europe. A pivotal and extensively researched work.