A little over half of the Righteous Among the Nations recognized by Yad Vashem are women. While many of them acted in cooperation with other family members, some of these courageous women were the initiators of the rescue and acted independently to save Jews. Here are some of their stories.
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The Russian princess who saved Jews while she was incarcerated in the Vittel camp in France
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Suzanne SpaakThe mother of two who left the comfort of her upper-class home in Paris to join the Underground and rescue Jews
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The Belgian teacher who was outraged by the persecution of the Jews and joined a rescue network
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The Berlin housewife who hid Jews in her small apartment
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The Zegota activist who smuggled children out of the Warsaw Ghetto
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The Serbian single mother who sheltered two Jewish boys in her home
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The widowed chemist who escaped from the Soviet Union, and saved her Jewish colleague and her child in Slovakia
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The Mother Superior of a convent in Florence where Jewish families were hidden during the German raids
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The young Romanian worker who sheltered her Jewish neighbors during the Iasi pogrom
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The Ukrainian maid who remained faithful to her employer, hiding her and her children
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The American Mennonite from Goshen, Indiana, who saved Jewish children in France
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The Belorussian nanny who let her relatives believe that the little girl she was hiding was her illegitimate child
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The Dutch director of a private school who hid Jews in the school building
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The Lithuanian nurse whose husband had been murdered by the Soviets, and who saved a Jewish child from Kovno
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The impoverished single mother who hid Jews in her home near Athens, despite her own personal difficulties
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The Polish woman who was executed for hiding two Jews in her home