It is fitting that the United Nations, as part of the international commemoration of the Holocaust on January 27, is paying tribute this year not only to the millions of innocents who died in the Nazi gas chambers, but also to those who made extraordinary sacrifices to hide and protect tens of thousands of Jews and others from certain death at the hands of Hitler's genocidal pogrom.

I'm speaking, of course, of the rescuers -- those individuals who made a calculated decision to shelter Jews and others wanted by the Nazis for no crime other than being the members of a deeply hated minority.