One was a cousin of my grandmother. She was a very autonomous woman, raising her two daughters alone like a general. One of her daughters had a Jewish friend, and the friendship lasted even in the yellow Star of David on clothes times. And it happened that the Jewish friend's family and the mother came together, and the naive Jewish husband was murmuring something about how they will survive this somehow. Which my autocratic relative countered by declaring that 'f*ck no, you idiot, you will hide here in my house!' - and so it happened, the family was successfully hidden for a year, and survived (unlike the house - it was bombed out at the end when luckily everyone was downstairs, my relatives turned wealthless overnight).

I only learnt of this story a year ago.

The other small hero I will briefly tell about was a Polish Jew who joined the Red Army and helped a Russian squad as guide/translator. The most tragic part of my family's WWII history, which I will not detail here, was when the front washed over my family's homeland, and the female and child members of the family unsuccessfully sought a hiding in the woods. The squad of said Pole was the first Russians my family saw in this sorry story, and it happened that the squad leader - who was totally drunk - started shooting in the kitchen of the forestry house. It was this Polish Jew who tore the weapon from his hands (we don't know if this 'insubordination' had any result). He later also had valuable advice about how best to behave vis-a-vis the Russians, when they occupied the house under German fire.

I learnt of this only a few years ago, when we discovered a diary book my grandmother wrote to two relatives orphaned during these events, a book she wrote just after the events for handover when they grow up, but in the end decided against it.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}