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Remembering the rescuers

By Jessie Bazan, Comm '14

On an early March afternoon in Bosnia, 86-year-old Servet Korkut settles down onto her tweed red couch for a picture. It’s a chilly, overcast day in the city of Sarajevo as Korkut drapes the handmade maroon scarf around her neck that she just received in the mail, made by a group of Marquette students in Milwaukee, some 5,000 miles away. The scarf, along with a monthly cash award, was sent through the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous as a small token of gratitude for the heroism Servet displayed 70 years earlier, during a dark time in Jewish history when being a hero often meant making the ultimate sacrifice.

As a Holocaust rescuer, Korkut and other heroes tried to save as many innocent Jews as possible, often by hiding victims in their houses or helping disguise their identities. Dr. Stephani Richards-Wilson, Arts '84, Grad '86, and assistant dean for the Klingler College of Arts and Sciences, holds multiple degrees in German and explains just how much courage it took to be a rescuer.

“The rescuers knew if they got caught, they could be tortured or executed,” says Richards-Wilson, who researches the Holocaust resistance movement. “It’s hard for people to understand nowadays how scary and terrifying the Nazi regime was.”

As one way of acknowledging these sacrifices years later, the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous established a charity knitting project. Richards-Wilson heard about the project last spring and asked her College of Arts and Sciences Student Council members and other faculty volunteers if they wanted to participate. The response was overwhelming.

“With help from the Marquette community of faculty and staff, our council was able to collect over 50 scarves,” says Katie Koegler, Arts '11, the council’s co-president.

Many of the rescuers sent pictures and thank-you notes to the volunteer knitters. Servet’s daughter, Lamija, wrote, “In a name of my mother and me, I want to thank you, and the students from Wisconsin, for nice present they sent us. My mother will use and wear the scarf for sure.”

Employees at the JFR were also grateful to the Marquette knitters. “The Marquette student is reaching out to say thank you to a Christian hero who risked his or her life during the Holocaust to save Jews. It is a very powerful act,” says Executive Vice President Stanlee Stahl, “It is important for young people to understand that period in history — not just World War II, but the Holocaust. There were perpetrators, victims, bystanders and a handful of people who chose to become rescuers — to stand up and do the right thing. They give each and every one of us a tangible legacy.”

Interested in contributing a scarf to the project? Scarves can be dropped off on campus at Marquette Hall, Room 208 (to Stephani Richard-Wilson's attention) or sent directly to the JFR's offices in New York.