When Courage Was Stronger Than Fear: Remarkable Stories of Christians Who Saved Jews from the Holocaust

Hellman, a New York-based journalist, first published Avenue of the Righteous in 1980. Avenue profiled four men and women who successfully saved Jews from the Nazis. This revised, expanded edition of that text, for which Hellman revisited all of his original subjects or their families, adds a fifth profile to the original four, as well as brief epilogues that bring each account to the present. Those profiled include an Italian priest who hid a Jewish family in a vacated convent and a Polish woman who took in and raised an abandoned Jewish infant. Hellman singles out his subjects for their "mingling of humdrum daily duties, quiet acts of moral power," and literally "death-defying" decisions. His five accounts, although somewhat melodramatic, are nevertheless inspirational in their portrayal of selfless individuals who acted with enormous courage at moments of great danger to themselves. --Bertina Loeffler Sedlack

Book Description
Twenty years ago, in Avenue of the Righteous, the original edition of this book, Peter Hellman wrote one of the first accounts of the men and women who succeeded in saving Jews from the Nazis. These courageous few have been recognized as the 'Righteous of Nations' by Israel, with trees planted in their honor. This updated edition includes the stories of five of the Righteous, tales of high drama, heartbreak, and hope that mark the return of a significant contribution to the literature of the Holocaust.