Sidney Zoltak (second from right, top corner) in 2019 in Poland. Three generations of righteous rescuers from the Krynski family and three generations of the Zoltak family. Photo: Provided.

Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday, a unique social media initiative is putting a spotlight on the stories of the “Righteous Among Nations” or “Righteous Rescuers” who bravely helped save the lives of Jews during the Holocaust.

As part of the campaign, “#DontBeABystander: Those Who Risked It All To Save A Life,” the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) will share a series of two-minute videos highlighting the heroism of non-Jewish individuals who risked their lives to save Jews in German-occupied Europe.

That includes the rescuers of Sidney Zoltak, born in 1931 in Siemiatycze, Poland, whose family lived under the Nazi occupation beginning in June 1941. A year later they were forced into a ghetto within their town, but managed to escape the evening before it was liquidated.

After being on the run for almost two years, in the spring of 1943, when Zoltak was a young teen, the Krynski family sheltered them on their farm for 14 months — including seven months spent hidden in an underground bunker.

The Catholic Polish family also later sheltered Zoltak’s uncle, as well as his Jewish friends. When Zoltak and his parents returned to their hometown after being liberated in July 1944, they found that less than 70 Jews had survived from the 7,000 living there before World War II.

Zoltak reunited with the Krynskis in 1997 in Poland and again in 2019, where three generations of both families stood together on the same field that provided underground shelter during the Holocaust.

“We would speak to each other on the telephone all the time,” Zoltak told The Algemeiner on Thursday. “We talked to each other about the fact that we don’t consider each other as strangers — we consider each other as part of the family. And we also agreed that it was a wonderful feeling. We do feel as if we are blood relations.”

Now living in Montreal with his son, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren, Zoltak is also a member of the Claims Conference board of directors, a member of the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs and a published author. He said he has kept in touch with members of the Krysnski family who are still living, and reminisced about phone calls with Zygmunt Kryński — the shepherd boy who was the first to discover the Zoltaks hiding in the forest, and who went to ask his parents if they could shelter the Jewish family.

Having saved seven Jews from the Nazis, in 2011 the Krynskis were named as “Righteous Among the Nations,” those recognized by Yad Vashem for endangering their lives, and sometimes those of their families, while receiving no reward for their rescue efforts.

Throughout the #DontBeABystander campaign, launched in partnership with Yad Vashem, those named as Righteous Among the Nations will share what compelled them to save Jews, what their families thought of their actions, if they keep in touch with those they saved, and whether they would do it again.

#Holocaust: Helen and Andrzej Sitkowski risked their lives by offering Jews shelter from Nazi horrors – the Claims Conference’s #DontBeABystander campaign highlights those that placed humanity ahead of preservation. Please share Andrzej’s message and #NeverForget their courage. pic.twitter.com/S3SBO47rjS

— Claims Conference (@ClaimsCon) January 25, 2022

Some 28,000 Righteous Among the Nations have been recognized by Yad Vashem since it was established in 1953.

Reflecting on the enormity of the Nazi genocide, Zoltak lamented the “indifference” of those who did nothing to stop it.

“They looked at us as [if] it is happening to a remote people without doing anything about it,” he told The Algemeiner. “They stood idly by while six million of my people were murdered.”

He further explained, “Whenever I speak to groups, primarily young groups of students, the ones who are the future leaders of our country and our community, I talk to them not only about the perpetrators who committed all these crimes, but what and who was also the contributor to the gravity of the end result. And one of the main ones would be indifference. Nations were indifferent; people were indifferent; communities were indifferent. If it didn’t bother them directly they just stood by and nothing.”

Since 1963, the Claims Conference has been supporting and recognizing Righteous Among the Nations through a special assistance program.

“The Jewish people owe a debt of gratitude to their righteous rescuers. For some Jewish families at their most desperate hour, their saviors were guided by conscience and moral imperative, even above their own safety,” Gideon Taylor, president of the Claims Conference, said Tuesday.

“It is our duty not only to honor the rescuers for their refusal to be bystanders, but also to share their heroic endeavors as a counterbalance to humanity’s darkness and indifference during the Holocaust.”