What are the origins of this fun-filled festive custom?
Polish nurse Irena Sendler, often referred to as "Jolanta," served as head of the children's department of Żegota Council to Aid Jews. Sendler is credited with smuggling 2,500 Jewish children out of Warsaw's ghetto.
One of the most beloved of Italian cyclists, Gino Bartali won the Tour de France in 1938 and 1948, and the Giro d'Italia twice, in 1936 and 1937.
Sendler would hide the children with Polish Catholic families, giving each one a Christian pseudonym and false identity papers. She wore a yellow Star of David throughout her activities, in solidarity with the Jews.
Schindler is the subject of the novel 'Schindler's Ark' (1982)and its Academy Award-winning film adaptation 'Schindler's List' (1993), which shows his extraordinary dedication to saving his Jewish employees.
Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist and member of the Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. He did so by hiring them for his enamelware and ammunition factories in occupied Poland and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Bartali also earned respect for his work in helping Jews who were being persecuted during the Italian Social Republic. It even emerged in 2010 that Bartali had hidden a Jewish family in his cellar.
Childs received the Medal of Freedom in 1946, and he was later US ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia.
Varian Fry was an American journalist who volunteered in 1940 to head the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization supported by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, in Vichy, France.
Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish architect and diplomat, serving as Sweden's special envoy in Budapest between July and December 1944. In just six months, Wallenberg saved tens of thousands of lives by redesigning Swedish protective papers, which identified Hungarian Jews as Swedish subjects.
On January 17, 1945, during the Siege of Budapest by the Red Army, agents of SMERSH detained Wallenberg on suspicion of espionage, and he subsequently disappeared. Though there were rumors of sightings of him and of his execution, there are still no conclusive facts about what happened to him.
Of Jewish heritage himself, Steinhardt (right) helped many eminent intellectuals fleeing Europe to find refuge in Turkey, Palestine, and the US.
Winton's story is told in the film 'One Life' (2024), which is based on the biography of the same name, written by his daughter Barbara Winton. He's pictured here in 2009 with one of the children evacuated to Britain.
Sir Nicholas Winton was a British stockbroker who organized the rescue of 669 Czech-Jewish children from German-occupied Czechoslovakia before war broke out.
There, Fry and other volunteers used bribery, black-market funds, forged documents, clandestine mountain routes, and any other means possible to help rescue more than 2,000 individuals and Jewish refugees.
Carl Lutz served as the Swiss vice-consul in Budapest, Hungary, from 1942 until the end of World War II. The diplomat is credited with saving over 62,000 Jews in a very large-scale rescue operation.
Pictured is a life-saving visa issued by de Sousa Mendes on June 19, 1940, bearing the signature of his secretary, José Seabra.
Aleksander Ładoś was a Polish politician and diplomat who headed the Legation of Poland to Switzerland from 1940 to 1945. Ładoś was a member and de facto leader of the Ładoś Group, also known as the Bernese Group, a secret group of Polish diplomats and Jewish organizations. Together they saved several hundred Jews by providing them with illegal Latin American, mostly Paraguayan, passports.
Martha and Waitstill Sharp were American Unitarian aid workers who helped thousands of people escape persecution in 1939-1940. The married couple aided Jews, intellectuals, and children in Prague, Marseille, and Lisbon.
Jan Zwartendijk was the director of the Philips factories in Lithuania and part-time acting consul of the Dutch government-in-exile during World War II. During his time as a diplomat, he supervised the writing of 2,345 visas for Curaçao to save Jews from the Holocaust.
Sources: (History) (The Independent) (Smithsonian Magazine) (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
See also: What was the fake disease that saved dozens of Jews during WWII?
As the Portuguese consul-general in Bordeaux, France, Aristides de Sousa Mendes defied the orders of António de Oliveira Salazar's Estado Novo regime, issuing visas and passports to refugees fleeing Germany, including Jews.
As US ambassador to Turkey in 1942, Laurence Steinhardt played a significant role in Jewish-related refugee transit evacuations from Europe.
After Kristallnacht in 1938, Ho Feng-Shan, Chinese consul general in Vienna, issued thousands of visas to Austrian Jews. Risking his life and career, he disobeyed the instructions of his superiors.
Due to his actions, half of the Jewish population of Budapest survived the Holocaust. Pictured is a letter of protection issued by Lutz in 1944.
It has been estimated that as many as 100,000 people alive today are the descendants of the recipients of Sugihara visas. Pictured is a Czechoslovak passport with a visa, which he granted in 1940.
Dimitar Peshev was the Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly of Bulgaria and Minister of Justice before World War II. He rebelled against the pro-German cabinet and prevented the deportation of Bulgaria's 48,000 Jews.
In 1941, 26-year-old Lois Gunden, an American French teacher from Goshen, Indiana, came to work with the Mennonite Central Committee in southern France. There she helped establish an orphanage and rescue mission for children. Gunden even rescued some children directly from Camp de Rivesaltes, an internment camp.
During World War II, J. Rives Childs served as US consul general in Morocco. There he helped 1,200 Hungarian Jews obtain entry visas for Spanish Morocco.
Chiune Sugihara was a Japanese diplomat who served as vice-consul for the Japanese Empire in Kaunas, Lithuania. He issued an estimated 6,000 transit visas, mainly to Polish Jews stranded in Lithuania.
Harald Edelstam was a Swedish diplomat in Norway, who helped protect and smuggle hundreds of Jews and Norwegian resistance fighters to Sweden. Later during the early '70s, he was stationed in Santiago, Chile, where he helped over 1,200 Chileans, hundreds of Cuban diplomats and civilians, and 67 Uruguayan and Bolivian refugees escape persecution by dictator Augusto Pinochet.
As persecution of Jews in Europe mounted in the years prior to and during World War II, many people desperately sought visas and other ways to escape prosecution. With that, heroes emerged to stand up to the terror. Many fought quietly, like a Swiss diplomat who took advantage of the officers' respect for paperwork, or the Polish nurse who smuggled thousands of Jewish kids from Warsaw's ghetto. Some of these heroes would survive the war; others, however, weren't as fortunate.
Click on to discover the brave individuals who saved thousands of Jews.
Heroes of World War II: Thrilling stories of courage and sacrifice that saved lives
Instances of humanity in turbulent times...
LIFESTYLE Holocaust
As persecution of Jews in Europe mounted in the years prior to and during World War II, many people desperately sought visas and other ways to escape prosecution. With that, heroes emerged to stand up to the terror. Many fought quietly, like a Swiss diplomat who took advantage of the officers' respect for paperwork, or the Polish nurse who smuggled thousands of Jewish kids from Warsaw's ghetto. Some of these heroes would survive the war; others, however, weren't as fortunate.
Click on to discover the brave individuals who saved thousands of Jews.