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The citizens of Poland have the world's highest count of individuals who have been recognized by Yad Vashem as Righteous Among the Nations for saving Jews from extermination during the Holocaust in World War II. There are Polish men and women recognized as Righteous to this day, over a quarter of the total number of awards. It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Poles concealed and aided hundreds of thousands of their Polish-Jewish neighbors.〔〔 Many of these initiatives were carried out by individuals, but there also existed organized networks of Polish resistance which were dedicated to aiding Jews – most notably, the ''Żegota'' organization. In German-occupied Poland the task of rescuing Jews was especially difficult and dangerous. All household members were punished by death if a Jew was found concealed in their home or on their property.〔 It is estimated that the number of Poles who were killed by the Nazis for aiding Jews was as high as tens of thousands, 704 of whom were posthumously honored with medals.〔〔〔 ==Activities== Before World War II, Poland's Jewish community had numbered between 3,300,000〔 and 3,500,000 persons – about 10 percent of the country's total population. During World War II, Germany's Nazi regime sent millions of deportees from every European country to the concentration camps it set up in the General Government in occupied Poland.〔 Soon after war had broken out, the Germans began their extermination of Polish Jews, ethnic Polish, Romani, Russians, Czech, and others minorities of Poland. Most were quickly rounded up and imprisoned in ghettos, which they were forbidden to leave. As it became apparent that, not only were conditions in the ghettos terrible (hunger, diseases, etc.), but that the Jews were being singled out for extermination at Nazi concentration camps, they increasingly tried to escape and hide in order to survive the war.〔 Many Polish Gentiles concealed hundreds of thousands of their Jewish neighbors. Many of these efforts arose spontaneously from individual initiatives, but there were also organized networks dedicated to aiding the Jews.〔 Most notably, in September 1942 a Provisional Committee to Aid Jews (''Tymczasowy Komitet Pomocy Żydom'') was founded on the initiative of Polish novelist Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, of the famous artistic and literary Kossak family. This body soon became the Council for Aid to Jews (''Rada Pomocy Żydom''), known by the codename ''Żegota'', with Julian Grobelny as its president and Irena Sendler as head of its children's section.〔〔 It is not exactly known how many Jews were helped by ''Żegota'', but at one point in 1943 it had 2,500 Jewish children under its care in Warsaw alone. At the end of the war, Sendler attempted to locate their parents but nearly all of them had died at Treblinka. It is estimated that about half of the Jews who survived the war (thus over 50,000) were aided in some shape or form by Żegota.〔 In numerous instances, Jews were saved by the entire communities, with everyone engaged,〔 such as in the villages of Markowa〔 and Głuchów near Łańcut,〔 Główne, Ozorków, Borkowo near Sierpc, Dąbrowica near Ulanów, in Głupianka near Otwock,〔 Teresin near Chełm,〔 Rudka, Jedlanka, Makoszka, Tyśmienica, and Bójki in Parczew-Ostrów Lubelski area,〔 and Mętów, near Głusk. Numerous families who concealed their Jewish neighbors paid the ultimate price for doing so.〔 Most notably, several hundred Poles were massacred in Słonim. In Huta Stara near Buczacz, all Polish Christians and the Jewish countrymen they protected were burned alive in a church.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Polish Righteous Among the Nations」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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