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Heroic acts of Americans during Holocaust recalled
Obama attends Israeli ceremony
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis
New York Times

WASHINGTON — In a German prison camp 71 years ago, Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds stared down the barrel of his Nazi captor’s pistol and refused to say which of his fellow prisoners of war were Jewish.

“We are all Jews here,’’ said Edmonds, the highest-ranking US noncommissioned officer at Ziegenhein stalag that day, instead ordering more than 1,000 of his fellow prisoners to stand together in front of their barracks.

The Geneva Conventions required soldiers to provide only their names, ranks, and serial numbers, not their religions, Edmonds said, warning the German that if he shot them all, he would be tried for war crimes.

That act of defiance in January 1945 spared the lives of as many as 200 Jews, and, Wednesday, Edmonds received posthumous recognition by President Obama as the first US service member to be named Righteous Among the Nations, an honor bestowed on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.

Obama made an unusual appearance at the Israeli Embassy, which is all the more notable because only months ago he clashed openly with Israel over the Iran nuclear deal. He commemorated International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, holding up Edmonds and others who showed heroism during World War II as symbols of the values Israel and the United States share.

Obama was hosted by Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador to the United States who, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spent much of last year working to defeat the president’s highest foreign policy priority. It was the clearest sign to date that both governments are working to heal their relations.

Obama was introduced by Steven Spielberg, the Oscar-winning director whose 1993 film “Schindler’s List’’ recounted the tale of Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist named as Righteous Among the Nations decades ago for saving more than 1,000 Jews who worked in his factories.

The stories of those Obama recognized are no less cinematic, although until recently they have been virtually unknown, including to their families.

The award is granted by Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust remembrance and educational organization, which has bestowed it on more than 25,000 people, only five of them American.

Also honored Wednesday was Lois Gunden, a French teacher from Goshen, Ind., who traveled to southern France in 1941 on a Mennonite service project and established a home there where she sheltered children, including Jews whose parents she persuaded to leave them in her care, rather than face deportation or worse.

Mary Jean Gunden, 61, Gunden’s niece, said that her aunt had a “standard line’’ that she went to France in 1941 and ran a children’s home. She was later detained in Baden-Baden, Germany, by the Nazis, and she went home in a prisoner exchange in 1944.

“Unfortunately, none of us really asked a whole lot more than that,’’ Mary Jean Gunden said. “I’m not convinced that she ever actually realized the magnitude of what she had done.’’

After her aunt’s death in 2005, the younger Gunden researched her past, rifling through an old trunk containing letters, journals, and beach sandals for clues about what she had done in the seaside town of Canet Plage. She eventually contacted Yad Vashem with what she learned.

“Nobody talked about what happened during the war — it’s just now that people are trying to unearth what really was done and to find the stories of the people who tried to do good during these very dark times,’’ said Eric Escudier, a municipal worker in Perpignan, France, who, with his mother and aunt, wrote a book about Lois Gunden and the home she had established.