Saviors

World War I took an expensive toll on the Russian Empire, and the vast number of internally displaced people was one of its most dramatic consequences. Between 1914 and 1917, almost five million people were forced to leave their homes in the country’s western provinces and flee inland. Facing an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, the state — for the first time in its history — organized a census of refugees, helped in large part by a committee established in September 1914 by the Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova, the second daughter of Russia’s last monarch Tsar Nicholas II.

After decades in obscurity, Johannes Lepsius’s name resurfaced in 2005, when the German Bundestag passed a resolution marking the 90th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. The resolution, unanimously approved on June 16, 2005, stated: “The life’s work of Dr. Johannes Lepsius, who fought tenaciously and successfully for the survival of the Armenian people, must not be consigned to oblivion.”

An educator and cardiac surgeon, he pioneered the use of the saphenous vein in coronary bypass surgery, a technique that helped him save thousands of lives. Previously, he had spent 12 years as a doctor in a remote town in the Argentinian pampas, where he transformed living conditions by teaching basic health concepts, thus reducing child mortality and malnutrition rates.

“There is no man who more deserves this honor, for it was you, 40 years ago, who set on foot the international organization for the relief of the wounded on the battlefield. Without you, the Red Cross, the supreme humanitarian achievement of the 19th century would probably have never been undertaken.”

Located on the edge of Europe, Portugal was largely untouched by World War II and the extermination of Jews and Gypsies. But here, too, there were those who refused to remain idle as tragedy engulfed the continent. Aristides de Sousa Mendes showed true courage as he intervened to help people in danger. He issued visas to 30,000 refugees, the majority of whom were Jews fleeing the Nazis, helping them to avoid certain death. Today, Mendes’s name is engraved in gold in the pantheon of the Righteous Among the Nations.