Written by Michael Stepakoff

Getting a Jewish education was a top priority in my house. I grew up in Atlanta, where my family belonged to a 5,000-member Conservative synagogue. I attended Hebrew school in the evenings and on Sundays, and was active in B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO). Every summer, I attended Jewish overnight camp in the Georgia mountains.

Camp is one of the fondest memories I have of growing up Jewish. There, we experienced Judaism in a natural setting, apart from the religious establishment. We sang Israeli folk songs, had skits and dances, and learned about God and Israel in creative ways. It was a blast!

Written by Jim Jacob

For three months after college, I backpacked alone around Western Europe, staying now and then at Christian youth hostels. I was on a meager budget, and hostels were economical-about $2 or $3 a night. During my stays, I realized that many of the people working at these hostels seemed to exude love and warmth. Although relatively poor and facing other challenges in life, they seemed to be filled with more peace and joy than I had ever experienced – and I was a healthy, aspiring lawyer from a caring Jewish family.

Written by Jeff Lowenthal

For four years I attended Hebrew school with my friends three times a week to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah, but it was in my second year that we discussed one issue that piqued my interest. “Jesus was a good man,” the teacher said. “He was a rabbi, but not the Messiah.” Though I said nothing at the time, I was disappointed because I had come to like Jesus from watching movies shown on TV around Christmas and Easter. I liked His gentle nature and powerful words.

Written by Elliot Klayman

I did not choose to be born to Jewish parents into a modern Orthodox home in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nor did I choose to be circumcised the eighth day; or even to attend Cheder (Jewish Day School) and become a Bar Mitzvah – but this was my childhood. I had a strong Jewish cultural identity championed by my maternal grandparents, who came from Lithuanian shtetl life. This was a very positive experience, although there was always a bright line between them (the non-Jews) and us, the Jews.

In the space of a mere six months, from July 9, 1944, to January 17, 1945, Swedish architect and businessman Raoul Wallenberg was able – both directly and indirectly – to save 100,000 Jews from extermination.

Wallenberg was born in 1912 to a prominent and successful family in Sweden, a privilege that allowed him to study architecture abroad at the University of Michigan. While there, he studied hard, finished early, and graduated-along with future President Gerald Ford-at the top of his class. The market for architects in Sweden was small, however, so after graduating he moved first to Cape Town, South Africa, and then to Haifa, in what was then Palestine (now Israel), to take a job in a Dutch bank office. It was there, in Haifa, that Wallenberg first met Jewish people who had escaped the Nazi persecution that was beginning to take root in Germany. Their stories affected him deeply.

Corrie ten Boom was born in 1892, to a family of Dutch Reformed faith in the Netherlands. Even before the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, the ten Boom family had a history of concern for Jewish people. Her father owned a small jewelry store in the Jewish section of the city, and they joined with their Jewish neighbors in Sabbath worship and Bible study. Her grandfather had supported efforts to improve Jewish-Christian relations in the nineteenth century. Her brother, Willem, a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, had been assigned to convert Jews to the Christian faith. Rather than force conversions, however, he studied antisemitism and opened a nursing home for people of all faiths that eventually became a safe house for Jewish refugees during the war.

Jan Karski is unique among the many hundreds of righteous gentiles for his singular effort to bring the truth of Hitler’s campaign against the Jews to light in Western Europe and the United States.

He was born in 1914, in a diverse neighborhood of Lodz, Poland, whose population was primarily Jewish. Karski served in a variety of diplomatic posts even before joining the Polish ministry of foreign affairs in late 1939. His career was put on hiatus, however, with the outbreak of World War II and his subsequent conscription into the army. He was taken prisoner by the Red Army early in his service, and narrowly avoided death at the hands of the Russians by taking part in a prisoner transfer that sent him to Germany. Karsi escaped from the train while en route to a POW camp, and made his way back to Warsaw. Upon his return to his native country, Karski immediately joined the resistance movement in Poland, one of the first of its kind.