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Moshe Bejski in the Italian Parlament

Presentation of Gabriele Nissim’s book

Moshe Bejski

Moshe Bejski

Roma, Italy, February 27th 2003, Camera dei Deputati, Presentation of the book "Il Tribunale del Bene. La storia di Moshe Bejski, l’uomo che creò il Giardino dei Giusti". Discussion with the writer Gabriele Nissim and Moshe Bejski, the man who for twenty-five years chaired the Yad Vashem Commission of the Righteous.

Contributors:

On. Dario Rivolta, discussion’s promoter, On.Pier Ferdinando Casini, Camera dei Deputati’s President, Dott. Avraham Burg, Knesset’s President, Dott. Amos Luzzatto, Union of Italians Jewish Communities’s President, Dott. Paolo Gambescia, the "Il Messaggero" daily Director.

The life of Moshe Bejski
Born near Cracow in 1920, Moshe Bejski experienced the Nazi invasion of Poland as a Jew. Abandoned by his former Polish friends, he happened to cross paths with Oskar Schindler, the only German to have pity on him. Having miraculously escaped Auschwitz in this way, at the end of the war he emigrated to Israel, where he became a judge of the Constitutional Court.

In the 1960s, after the clamour of the Eichmann trial, at which he gave testimony, Moshe Bejski became a member of the newly formed Commission of the Righteous, and a few years later became its president. The Yad Vashem Memorial was built in the 1950s as a permanent memorial to the victims of the Holocaust and the Garden of the Righteous, within it, was created to honour all the Gentiles who had tried to help and rescue Jews from extermination at the hands of the Nazis.

While Simon Wiesenthal was hunting down the Nazi criminals, Moshe Bejski dedicated his efforts to extolling the virtues of the good, often coming up against the ingratitude of the survivors and sometimes having to face inextricable moral dilemmas when awarding or denying the title of "Righteous among the Nations". He also paid his debt of gratitude to his own rescuer, not only by helping Schindler economically, but also by fighting an uphill struggle for him to be placed among the Righteous, despite his disorderly life.

Under Moshe Bejski’s guidance, the Garden of the Righteous became the emblematic place of remembrance of Good in one of Mankind’s darkest hours. He showed us that Man can set himself against Evil even in extreme circumstances and he restored to the victims the strength to start again, reminding them, at the same time, of the debt of gratitude, against all forms of generalization and hatred. In 1995 Moshe Bejski left the presidency of the Commission to dedicate his efforts to educating young people. Over the last few years the example of the first Garden of the Righteous has been followed in other parts of the world, such as Yerevan and Sarajevo.

Controversial cases
In the second part of his book Gabriele Nissim examines the most controversial cases that Moshe Bejski had to deal with when deciding whether or not to award the title of Righteous among the Nations. Could someone who had rescued a Jew and had then killed another person, for example, be considered righteous, or a woman who had hidden fugitives from their persecutors while prostituting herself with Nazi officers or, again, someone who had saved scores of Jews in Poland, but had never ceased to be an anti-Semite? Could someone who had aided Jews, but had demanded money in exchange, or had rescued another person only because they were in love? Was it the intention or the result that counted? Could those who had failed in their attempt still be considered righteous? Could the value of a rescue attempt be acknowledged when the rescuer’s life was not at stake?

Among the criteria for including the Righteous in the Roll of Honour Moshe Bejski also introduced the principle of the inherent consistency of the rescuer’s gesture, which has to be triggered by a genuinely humanitarian spirit. This does not, however, imply absolute consistency in the behaviour of the rescuer, who can be granted all manner of extenuating circumstances from the human and personal point of view.
The president of the Commission was to refuse the title of Righteous to Andrei Sheptitzky, primate of the Ukrainian orthodox church, no fewer than sixteen times: the latter had rescued the family of a rabbi by hiding them in his house, but in public he failed to utter a single word to condemn the Nazi persecution of the Jews taking place in his country, in front of his very eyes.

On the other hand, Moshe Bejski awarded the title to an officer of the Hungarian army who collaborated with the Nazi bosses, because he had rescued the Jews interned in a labour camp from death, by opposing the deportation order decreed by the Germans in command of the camp. According to the same principle, the judge of the "tribunal of Good" did his utmost to get his own rescuer, Oskar Schindler, included among the Righteous, despite Schindler’s links with the Nazis before rescuing 1200 Jews from extermination with his celebrated ‘list’ and despite acknowledging the faults and contradictions of an unruly man, addicted to alcohol and womanizing.

All the cases examined by Gabriele Nissim in his book "Il Tribunale del Bene. La storia di Moshe Bejski, l’uomo che creò il Giardino dei Giusti" come from the Yad Vashem archives, while the most heated debates were recounted by Bejski himself during long conversations with the author in his Tel Aviv home. Gabriele Nissim dedicated three years to writing this book, with numerous trips to Israel during which he interviewed Moshe Bejski and other members of the Commission and collected the material needed to document all the stories and cases narrated.

Don’t miss the story of the Righteous and the memory of Good

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