Hosenfeld was named by the committee set up by Israel’s Holocaust museum Yad Vashem after Szpilman wrote to Yad Vashem to say that the Wermacht officer stationed in Poland helped him find a hiding place and provided him with food, blankets and moral support in November 1944.

The pianist also mentioned Hosenfeld in his diaries, which later became the basis for Roman Polanski’s film ”The Pianist,” the museum said in an e-mailed statement.

The title, Righteous Among Nations, is awarded by a special commission headed by a Supreme Court justice based on a well- defined set of criteria and regulations, according to the Yad Vashem Web site.

About 6 million European Jews were killed in the Holocaust during World War II in a systematic Nazi campaign across Europe that included random executions, plunder and death camps.

Hosenfeld, who was arrested and tried by the Soviets after the war, died in Soviet prison in 1952. He was also named as a rescuer by Holocaust survivor Leon Wurm, who said Hosenfeld employed him at a sports center he was in charge of.

The committee decided on Hosenfeld’s title after it was given his diaries and as letters to his wife showed he consistently opposed the Nazi policy toward the Jews, Yad Vashem said.

Hosenfeld’s children, who live in Germany, will receive a medal and certificate on their father’s behalf, Yad Vashem said, adding that no date has been set yet for the official ceremony.

To contact the writer on the story: Gwen Ackerman in Jerusalem at gackerman@bloomberg.net

Wilm Hosenfeld was drafted into the German Army shortly before the outbreak of World War II and was stationed in Poland, where he spent most of the war as a sports and culture officer. During the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, he interrogated prisoners.

After the war, Hosenfeld was arrested and tried by the Soviets and sentenced to life imprisonment. His sentence was subsequently commuted to 25 years, but Hosenfeld died in a Soviet prison in 1952.

Over the years, the testimony of two Holocaust survivors was presented to Yad Vashem, detailing how the German officer had provided them with shelter from the Nazis.

Leon Wurm testified that Hosenfeld employed him at the sports center after his escape from the train to Treblinka, while Wladyslaw wrote to Yad Vashem, as well as in his diaries (which became the basis for the film), that in November 1944 Hosenfeld helped him find a hiding place and that he provided blankets, food and moral support.

Yad Vashem had previously considering bestowing the German officer with its highest honor for saving the pair, but waited until it was clear that he was not involved in war crimes during the Warsaw Uprising.

Recently, new material, including Hosenfeld’s personal diaries, and letters to his wife were reviewed by Yad Vashem, which clarify his ”consistent stance” against the Nazi policy toward the Jews, Yad Vashem said.

In his writing, Hosenfeld stressed his growing disgust with the regime’s oppression of Poles, the persecution of Polish clergy, abuse of the Jews, and, with the beginning of the Final Solution, his horror at the extermination of the Jewish people.

Although Hosenfeld supported the Nazi party in its beginnings, it is clear that as he saw the consequences of the Nazis’ rise to power, his opposition to them was deep and consistent, Yad Vashem said.

Hosenfeld’s children, who live in Germany, will receive the medal and certificate on their late father’s behalf.

More than 22,000 non-Jews have been recognized as ”Righteous Among the Nations” by Yad Vashem.

On March 2001 the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation (IRWF), a non-governmental organization founded in Argentina, agreed to a cooperation work with the Center of Studies on anti-Semitism of the Berlin University of Technology, ran by professor Wolfgang Benz and under the academic and executive responsibility of Dr. Beate Kosmala and Claudia Schoppmann, with the assistance of Isabel Enzenbach, Frank Görlich, Markus Pfeiffer and Dennis Riffel.

The agreement between both organizations arrived hours after the meetings that Baruch Tenembaum, founder of the IRWF, kept with the president of Germany, Johannes Rau, at the official residence Schloss Belevue and with the Mayor of Berlin, Eberhard Diepgen at the City Hall Palace.

Due to a scholarship granted by the IRWF, the volunteer Johanna Hopfengärtner arrives to Buenos Aires during September 2001, not only to prepare her thesis about the subject of the Jewish – German refugees in Argentina, but also to collaborate with the edition of the program about German Saviors in its version for the Internet in three languages: Spanish, German and English. Hopfengärtner was born in Nürnberg in 1975 and since 1998 she lives in the city of Berlin.

THE STORY AND THE METHOD

When, on November 30, 1942 the Foss family, living at Pestalozzistrasse in Berlin, was threatened with deportation, the acquaintanceship with the salesperson, Helene von Schell, proved to be a lifeline. She offered the married couple and their two sons a hiding place in her small apartment on Waldstrasse in the Moabit district, where the family was able to hide until liberation in April 1945.

This courageous act is commemorated on a memorial plaque which since March 1996 hangs on the apartment building where Helene von Schell lived until her death in 1956.

In April 1997, a research group began to investigate the ”Rescue of Jews in National Socialist Germany”. During a two year project phase, a differentiated database was developed in order to register as many as possible different kinds of rescue efforts, both successful and failed, that occurred between 1933 and 1945 in Germany.

The project concentrates on the period from 1941 to 1945. Until now, data entries of approximately 2,000 women and men who helped persecuted Jews and of almost 1,000 Jews who lived in hiding have been inputted. In each ”case”, whenever possible, the length of time, type and degree of help offered, as well as statements pertaining to the motivation of the rescuers is noted.

The project focuses on the region of Berlin, since this is where the largest Jewish community existed before World War II. About half of the attempts to escape deportation by hiding took place in Berlin and its environs.

Given the millions of Germans who looked away with indifference or who approved of the genocide and actively supported it, the number of rescuers is shockingly low – but still larger as is generally known. The documented examples show that even under the conditions of the Nazi dictatorship a considerable number of non-Jewish Germans were willing and in a position to show solidarity with persecuted Jews and save them from extermination.

Moreover, the aim of the project is to provide the resistance research with new stimulus. Most of the helpers did not regard their behavior as resistance, but rather as a matter of course. Nonetheless, from today’s perspective, we should understand the lifesaving efforts of these women and men as a form of resistance. This view brings with it a new definition of the term resistance which no longer solely applies to military action directed at eliminating the regime, as was the case for so long in the Federal Republic of Germany. Given the impossibility of overthrowing Hitler, for many Germans, helping Jews was the only way to express their resistance to National Socialism.

Translation: IRWF