Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust Come to Light in Photography Exhibition

The faces are much older now, if no less anonymous. Looking down from the walls of the Santa Monica College Photography Gallery, the subjects of the “Rescuers of the Holocaust” exhibition wear expressions of contentment, bitterness and defiance in their later years.

Before World War II finally ended 45 years ago, this same group of faces was among a small minority that dared to aid the escape of Jews from Nazi Germany and other occupied European countries. Today, these rescuers and the very real risks they undertook have remained largely unknown, their own stories lost under the overwhelming horror of an estimated 6 million Jews who were exterminated between 1933 and 1945.

Photographer Gay Block sought to change that with “Rescuers of the Holocaust,” in its premiere exhibition at the Santa Monica gallery through Dec. 21. It is the result of an exhaustive five-year project that took her through Israel, Europe and North America in a daunting search for her often unrecognized subjects. In it, she has gathered together a history that has been little acknowledged beyond scholarly dissertations.

“The stories were so difficult to listen to,” Block said last week. “They were so heart-wrenching. The photography seemed so silly, so superficial, superfluous and needless. Because the stories were so emotional, I had to turn off a little bit, even, and not be so emotionally involved or I would not have been able to do it.”

The 16- by 20-inch color portraits, shot with a 6- by 7-inch medium format camera, are presented in two forms in the show: 36 of the prints are displayed simply with a printed caption that briefly recounts that rescuer’s war experience. The remaining 18 photographs are incorporated into large scrapbook-like panels, combining the warm images with found snapshots and hand-written, first-person accounts as told by the subjects themselves.

Among those was the portrait of John Weidner, who led the Dutch-Paris Underground with the support of the Dutch government and the World Council of Churches. The Gestapo kept after Weidner, a fugitive who changed his name three times during his rescue work. He was ultimately caught and tortured, suffering a severe head injury that still affects his speech. He later escaped and now lives in California.

“I brought my sister into Dutch-Paris,” reads the account next to his portrait. “The most terrible day of the war for me was the day she was arrested.” She later died in custody.

“The people who collaborated in saving the Jews were treated as much like terrorists or the Underground Resistance,” said gallery Director Robert Godwin. “They were executed and shunned by their neighbors. Some of these people kept a secret for 40 years that they even helped the Jews and were unaware that it was considered heroic. They did it as a normal function.”

Block, 48, became intrigued with the subject after meeting four surviving rescuers now living in California. She hadn’t before fully acknowledged the role of these otherwise normal people, whose activities could be as subtle as leaving an extra loaf of bread or bottle of milk for those in hiding. The original idea was to collaborate on a children’s book with writer Malka Drucker, who later accompanied Block in her travels. The book idea failed to interest a publisher, so the photographer chose to continue the rescuers project as a more personal work.

It was an unusual move for the photographer, who had been exhibited internationally with photographic works of a very different scale. Among those was a series of diptychs contrasting portraits of clothed and unclothed bodies, revealing the often humorous affectations of apparel. Other projects had focused on her origins in the small Jewish community in Houston, where she had lived before moving to Westwood in 1986. At the beginning of the rescuers project, she saw herself as more of an unwitting documentarian and didn’t feel the work she was creating carried the same artistic merit as her earlier photography.

“It was something I felt an obligation to do, but I didn’t really think of it as my work,” she said. “And then I realized I was coming at it from a different way than I’d done any of my other work before. Always my work teaches me something from the photographs.

“This became more personal, one of the most personal things I’ve ever done. I didn’t realize that was happening.”

The resulting show presents an unromanticized look at the later lives of these men and women, lit naturally and subtly in their everyday surroundings. Block had first photographed these subjects in black and white, but soon found the added drama of that medium was unnecessary. What was important to show, she said, was that these people were outwardly no different than anyone else.

The opening of “Rescuers of the Holocaust” earlier this month attracted about 500 people, an uncommonly large turnout for any campus photography gallery, Godwin said. Among those circling within the gallery walls were four surviving rescuers depicted in the photographs.

“That was wonderful,” said Irene Gut Opdyke, 68, who hid and alerted Jews trapped in occupied Poland. “I was very happy because there were many, many other people that are still not recognized.”

Among the youngest of the rescuers, Opdyke now spends part of the year traveling the country for the United Jewish Appeal discussing her experiences. She said she hoped the story of the people who helped save some escaping Jews would become better understood.

It has been only since the mid-1980s, Block said, that these people have been rewarded with any meaningful recognition. At Yav Veshem, the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, a section has been reserved to honor “the righteous among the nations.” And those rescuers who are verified by two living witnesses are awarded a medal by Yav Veshem and invited to plant a tree in their honor at the museum.

But it has been slow in coming, Block said. “Many Holocaust survivors feel it’s just criminal, practically, to honor the few that did help,” she said. “I can certainly understand how they feel, when so many were not helped at all.”

In Israel, Block photographed and interviewed Stefan Rocynski, a Polish rescuer who emigrated to the country with his Jewish wife after the war. Rocynski told Block that because he wasn’t Jewish, he felt ostracized from the society in Israel, mistreated and denied rights given to other citizens. The caption beneath his photograph reads in part, “I will yet one day hang myself from the tree planted in my honor.”

Mostly, the surviving rescuers have blended back into the old neighborhoods where their families have lived for generations or emigrated anonymously to the United States and elsewhere. Many had never discussed their painful experiences in all the years since. One woman Block and Drucker found in Prague wept in gratitude that someone was finally interested in hearing her stories of the war.

“There was a woman from Germany who talks about how much shame she still feels for her country, for her people. She says, ‘I can’t let that go. We did it. The fact that I was able to save one person doesn’t help me at all.’

“The good thing about doing this now,” Block added, “is how few heroes we have today to hold on to and act as role models.”

“Rescuers of the Holocaust,” an exhibition of portraits by photographer Gay Block, continues through Dec. 21 at the Santa Monica College Photography Gallery, adjacent to the campus library, 1900 Pico Blvd . , Santa Monica. No admission. For more information, call (213) 452-9289.