Within Evil's Dark Malice

• In Poland, 2,900,000 Jews were exterminated; 88 percent of Polish Jews met their death during the Holocaust.
• In Belorussia, 245,000 of its Jews were annihilated, representing 65 percent of its Jewish population.
• In Bohemia/Moravia those numbers were 80,000 death, 89 percent of its Jewish demographic.
• Germany itself collected a mere 55 percent of its Jewish citizens to murder 130,000 during the Final Solution. 
• For Greece 65,000 of its Greek Jews were rounded up and slaughtered, representing 80 percent of its Jewish citizenry.
• Although 90,000 French Jewish lives were extinguished, this number represented only 26 percent of its Jewish citizens.
• Hungary sacrificed 70 percent of its Jews for a total of 450,000 murdered.
• Italy under fascist Mussolini surrendered 20 percent of its Jews, where 7500 met their deaths.
• Latvia managed to dispose of 77 percent of Latvian Jews when 70,000 were sent to death camps for disposal.
• Lithuania exceeded Latvia's cleansing accomplishing a 94 percent death rate in the murder of 220,000 Lithuanian Jews.
• The Netherlands handed over 106,000 Dutch Jews for a 76 percent clearance.
• Slovakia rendered to the Final Solution an 80 percent majority of its Jews when 71,000 were exterminated.
• Ukraine surrendered 60 percent of its Jewish population in the deaths of 900,000.
• Yugoslavia, with a death rate of 80 percent of its Jews, waved off 60,000 into the death chambers.
• Austria: 50,000/36%; Belgium: 25,000/60%; Bulgaria: 11,400/14%; Denmark: 50/1.3%; Finland: 7/2.8%; Great Britain: 130; Luxembourg: 1950/50%; Norway: 870/55%; Russia: 107,000/ll%; Romania: 270,000/33%.

Numbing numbers in their totality, difficult to comprehend let alone interpret as the reality of destroyed lives of men, women and children; the hale the halt and the infants among them. Solely because they were Jews. Deliberately to destroy the presence of Jews in Europe. Had the Axis powers triumphed the extermination program would have continued.

From 1941 to 1945 Britain interned on Mauritius 1500 Jews anxious to travel to Palestine. The British Navy sank a ship in 1939 with Jews attempting to enter Palestine. A number of Jews were deported by Britain to camps on the Channel Islands during its German occupation. Thousands of Jews were deported by Britain to Athlit and Cyprus; thousands more shipped to British internment camps, while some were deported to Germany.

Switzerland curtailed the flow of Jewish refugees into its embrace through a policy of refoulement enforced from 1938 until 1944. Still, some 30,000 found refuge in or passed through Switzerland, while 10,000 were turned away. Trains en route to concentration and death camps in the
East were routed through Switzerland, but its prewar Jewish population of 12,000 was withheld from the Nazis.

The black hell of the Holocaust was illuminated with occasional examples of the "Righteous Among the Nations", a Talmudic distinction describing any who risked themselves to help save others' lives, even utter strangers. Some distinguished themselves by responding to that inner call for compassion, like Oskar Schindler, while others hid Jews in their homes and others yet assisted Jews to cross borders toward safety, while diplomatic status was used on occasion to issue transit visas or grant citizenship to fleeing Jews.

These righteous hearts are honoured at Yad Vashem in Israel, and a tree is planted -- to honour each who valorously gave of themselves -- to express a living testimony to their heroism.