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"When you look at the rescuers as a large group, you cannot put them into any of the categories that you are used to," says Nechama Tec, professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut and author of When Light Pierced the Darkness: Christian Rescue of Jews in Nazi-Occupied Poland. They include both rich and poor, educated and barely literate, believers and atheists. "But on closer examination you see a series of interrelated characteristics," she notes. She found, for example, that many of the rescuers were individualists. "Most of us do what society demands at the moment. But because the rescuers were not as constrained by the expectations of the group, they were better able to act on their own."
In addition, Tec found that many of the rescuers had a history of doing good deeds before the war -- some visiting people in the hospital, others collecting books for poor students, still others taking care of stray animals. "They just got into the habit of doing good," she says. "If they hadn't perceived that pattern as natural, they might have been paralyzed into inaction." At the same time, most of them never planned to be rescuers. They found themselves responding to a need first and the danger second. Many shared a sense of universalism. "They saw the Jews not as Jews but as persecuted human beings," the sociologist says. In her research, Tec, who was herself sheltered in Poland, found that only 10% of the rescuers had confined their help to friends they had known before the war.
Perhaps most astounding of all, the majority of the rescuers believe that the gift of goodness can be passed on. "It is like flowers growing in a certain soil," says Helena Melnyczuk, 71, who with her brother Orest, 67, and their father sheltered Jews in their house, across the street from a Ukrainian police station. "It is natural in every human being, but it must be nourished and cultivated." For that lesson alone, the rescuers deserve the world's gratitude.