Numbers of 'righteous gentiles' honoured up
to 1990 by the State of Israel for having helped
individual Jews to escape deportation and death
between 1939 and 1945.
On 19 August 1953 the Israeli
Parliament passed a law making it the duty of the
State of Israel to recognise the work done by non-Jews
in saving Jewish lives during the war. An expression
of honour was awarded in the name of the Jewish people,
to every non-Jewish person or family who had risked
their lives to save Jews. Evidence of such action
has to come initially from one of those who was actually
saved; the evidence is then examined by a committee
of eighteen judges and experts.
At the national Holocaust memorial,
known as "Yad Vashem", in Jerusalem, an
"avenue of the righteous" was begun 1962,
where each non-Jew who is honoured plants a tree,
or has a tree planted in his or her name.This map
shows the number of "righteous gentiles"
honoured between 1962, when the first tree was planted,
and 31 December 1990; the total number is 8611.
One of the awards for Norway
was a collective one for the members of the Norwegian
Resistance movement, all of whom helped Jews to escape.
The Danish awards include one which was made to the
King in honour of the Danish nation.
