Sally Rogow's compilation of true stories of rescue during World War II, They Must Not Be Forgotten: Heroic Catholic Priests and Nuns Who Saved People From The Holocaust (Holy Fire Publishing, 2005), has been recognized and honoured by both Yad Vashem and the Catholic church.

As well, having developed and directed a graduate program for B.C. teachers working with students who are blind, visually impaired and/or have multiple disabilities, Rogow was inspired by the courage of those children to create an inspirational collection of 12 stories about teenagers in Europe who resisted the Nazis during World War II. Among the heroes and heroines in Faces of Courage: Young Heroes of World War II (Granville Island Publishing, 2003) are Jacques, a blind French teen who organized a student resistance group; Yojo, a Gypsy who guided downed British pilots over the Pyrenees Mountains; Kirsten, a Danish girl who helped Jewish children defy the Nazis; and the 'Eidelweiss Pirates', a group of German teenagers who opposed the Hitler Youth. Three of the stories are based on actual teenagers, including Jacques Lusseyran, the blind resistance leader who later wrote a book called And There Was Light. Born in Paris in 1924, he was physically blinded by a collision at school at age eight. At age 16, during the German occupation, he headed a resistance movement of 600 French youth. Betrayal led to his arrest and imprisonment at Buchenwald. He survived and wrote several books in which his own blindness is interpreted as a spiritual advantage. "Lusseyran," wrote Oliver Sacks, "sees the 'task' of blindness as reminding us of our other, deeper modes of perception and their mutuality."

In Faces of Courage, Rogow has reprinted the following quotation from Adolph Hitler about his Hitler Youth groups. "I want a brutal, domineering, fearless, cruel youth. Youth must be all that. It must bear pain. There must be nothing weak and gentle about it. The free, splendid beast of prey must once again flash from its eyes. That is how I will eradicate thousands of years of human domestication. That is how I will create the New Order."

In addition to Rogow's dramatizations based on historical events and circumstances, she has published a monograph, Hitler's Unwanted Children: The Story of Children with Disabilities in Nazi Germany (1999). It appears in the Journal of Holocaust Education. According to the United States Holocaust Museum:  “In the autumn of 1939, Adolf Hitler secretly authorized a medically administered program of “mercy death” code-named “Operation T4,” in reference to the address of the program’s Berlin headquarters at Tiergartenstrasse 4. Between 1940 and 1941 approximately 70,000 Austrian and German disabled people were killed under the T4 program, most via large-scale killing operations using poison gas. (This methodology served as the precursor to the streamlined extermination methods of the “Final Solution.”) Although Hitler formally ordered a halt to the program in late August 1941, the killings secretly continued until the war’s end, resulting in the murder of an estimated 275,000 people with disabilities.”

Born in Brooklyn, New York City on May 9, 1930 to May (nee Weinberger) and Gustave M. Levine, Vancouverite Sally Rogow came to Canada in 1966 to teach at Simon Fraser University. She is both a Canadian and U.S. citizen who obtained a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, an M.A. in Anthropology from Columbia University, an M.A. in Special Education from Michigan State and an Ph.D in Education from University of British Columbia (in 1971). At UBC, having taught at the Michigan School for the Blind, she was hired to develop a normal school program for teachers of those with multiple handicaps or visual impairment, directing the program she created from from 1971 until 1995. After her retirement from UBC, Rogow became project director of 'The Person Within,' a program to prevent abuse and neglect of children and young people with disabilities. Sally Rogow's uncle was the first Jewish man to be a Lieutenant Colonel in the Canadian Army. Her charitable works were recognized by Jewish Women International and the American Printing House for the Blind inducted her into its Hall of Fame for Leaders and Legends of the Blindness Field in 2011. Her final years were lived at the Weinberg Residence, a Vancouver facility for Jewish seniors, until her death on December 21, 2012.

BOOKS:

Language, Literacy and Children with Special Needs (Toronto: Pippin Publishing, 1997),.

Helping the Visually Impaired Child with Developmental Problems (New York: Columbia University, New York Teachers College Press, 1988).

Exceptional Children in Canada (Toronto: Prentice Hall, 1986). With M. Winzer and C. David.

Lillian Wald: The Nurse In Blue (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1966)

(For young people)

Rosa Minoka Hill (Native Woman Physician, 1970)

Faces of Courage: Young Heroes of World War II (Granville Island, 2003, reprint 2008)

They Must Not Be Forgotten: Heroic Catholic Priests and Nuns Who Saved People From The Holocaust (Holy Fire Publishing / Granville Island, 2005)

[BCBW 2020] Alan Twigg / HolocaustLit

 

Nazi physician Karl Brandt, director of the Euthanasia Program. [LCID: 09539]

Hitler's physician Karl Brandt doubled as a director of the T4 euthansia program.