Susanna Kokkonen from Christian Friends of Yad Vashem talks to Paul Calvert about Holocaust education, and their project to honour non-Jews who risked their lives and careers to help Jews during the Holocaust.

Paul: You must hear some wonderful and amazing stories among the sadness of the Holocaust?

Susanna: Yes. A lot of survivors have said that this is the only light in that story and that if there wasn't the story of the righteous amongst the nations you would completely lose your belief in humanity. It would be so dark.

I think there are some stories that are better known by the general public.

One that I want to mention is of course Oskar Schindler, because of the film Schindler's list. When it came out it had a huge impact on how people understood the Holocaust and how much they knew about it. It started a kind of new time, a new period, where people really wanted to learn more about the Holocaust.

It's very interesting because the director could not have known what he was doing, when he was doing it. I think personally that the last part in the film where you see the people here in Jerusalem actually going to Oskar Schindler's grave, that that was very important, because it established for people the connection between the past and the present.

The people in the film are real people and they are living and breathing and they can go to his grave, because of what he did. A lot of people come here and want to see his tree.

The other one who is well known is Corrie Ten Boom. She is very different.

She was from the Netherlands and came from a very religious background. There had been a prayer for the peace of Jerusalem for 100 years before the Holocaust. Even then for such a religious family, mainly the father and sisters Corrie and Betsy, to join the resistance and become active in the resistance is not an easy thing to happen.

It's an amazing story because the father died after 10 days in Scheveningen prison. Then the sisters were taken to Ravensbruck and Betsy died there and other family members perished as well.

It's a very moving story, but what makes it so special and why I think it stands out among the stories, is that Corrie after the war devoted her life to travelling and speaking about her experiences. She felt that she could go to prisons and that she could go to the people who are the lowest in society, because she had been there.

Paul: It's very important to remember those people who went through the Holocaust. Is it just as important to remember the righteous amongst the nations as well?

Susanna: When we say that we remember the Holocaust, I think it depends what we mean by that, because I think we need to remember every aspect. You can't talk about the righteous amongst the nations on their own, without telling the story of the Holocaust. Meaning that most of the people were not righteous and most of the people were silent bystanders. So it would be wrong to separate one aspect from the other aspects, because then you don't understand how small this group was in the vast sea of people who were doing nothing.

So I think even in the story of Corrie Ten Boom or Oskar Schindler, you don't just see what they did, you actually see the price that was paid by so many people.

Paul: Do you think that there are other stories out there today that haven't been told?