On three cases, entire countries resisted the deportation of their Jewish population during the Holocaust. In other countries, notable individuals or communities created resistance during the Holocaust which helped the Jews escape some concentration camps.
Since 1963, a commission organized by Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority in Israel, and headed by an Israeli Supreme Court justice, has been charged with the duty of awarding people who rescued Jews from the Holocaust the honorary title Righteous Among the Nations. As of January 2007, 21,758 people have received the honor.
Diplomats and people of influence
In a few cases, individual diplomats and people of influence, such as Oskar Schindler or Nicholas Winton, protected large numbers of Jews. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, the Italian Giorgio Perlasca, Chinese consul-general to Austria Ho Feng Shan, and others saved tens of thousands of Jews with fake diplomatic passes.
Sweden
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and his colleagues saved as many as 100,000 Hungarian Jews by providing them with diplomatic passes.
Portugal
Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes issued 30,000 visas to Jews and other persecuted minorities, though it cost him his career in 1941, when Portuguese dictator Salazar forced him out of his job. He died in poverty in 1954.
Brazil
Brazilian diplomat Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas illegally issued Brazilian diplomatic visas to hundreds of Jews in France during the Vichy Government, saving them from certain death.
Netherlands
Jan Zwartendijk was the Dutch honorary consul in Kaunas, Lithuania, in 1940. Helping thousands of mainly Polish Jews, he issued visas to Curaçao. In their passports, Zwartendijk stamped the text that no visa was required to enter the Dutch island. He deliberately left out the text that permission from the local governor was needed to obtain entry. This way, it seemed that the holder of the visa could travel to Curacao without restrictions. This enabled Chiune Sugihara, the Japanese consul in Kaunas (see below) to issue a transit visum for Japan, since the visa holder had a destination outside Japan. Zwartendijk received no honors during his life, but was posthumously awarded the Righteous Among the Nations honor in 1997.
Japan
Chiune Sempo Sugihara, Japanese Consul-General in Kaunas, Lithuania, 1939–1940, issued thousands of visas to Jews fleeing Poland in defiance of explicit orders from the Japanese foreign ministry. The last foreign diplomat to leave Kaunas, Sugihara continued stamping visas from the open window of his departing train. After the war, Sugihara was fired from the Japanese foreign service, ostensibly due to downsizing. In 1985, Sugihara's wife and son received the Righteous Among the Nations honor in Jerusalem, on behalf of the ailing Sugihara, who died in 1986.
Iran
Abdol Hossein Sardari, head of the Iranian consulate in Paris during the Nazi occupation, argued successfully with the German authorities that all Iranian citizens, including Persian Jews, be free from harassment and be allowed to leave Nazi territory as they wished. After realising the scale of the Germans' intentions, he also issued hundreds of Iranian passports in his consulate to non-Persian Jews, allowing them to go free. He remained a diplomat until the Iranian revolution, after which he was dismissed and died in poverty. Yad Vashem has honoured him several times.
Vatican City
Although Pope Pius XII did not publicly speak out against the murder of the Jews during the Holocaust, the Vatican did take action to save many Jews in Italy from deportation, including sheltering several hundred Jews in the catacombs of St. Peter's Basilica. In his Christmas addresses of 1941 and 1942, the pontiff was forceful on the topic but did not mention the Nazis by name. The Pope encouraged the bishops to speak out against the Nazi regime and to open the religious houses in their dioceses to hide Jews. In recent years, the Vatican has expressed its remorse for not speaking out with more authority against the genocide.
Resistance movements
Germany
A group of German intellectuals calling themselves the White Rose distributed leaflets anonymously from 1942 to 1943 calling for opposition to the Holocaust and Hitler. Seven of them were executed.