Nachum Remba stood tall, always calm, always smiling. He had a jokester personality and a dry sense of humor that he used to make people laugh. Both talents he developed as a child growing up in a theatrical family. He was also thoughtful, kind, and a stubborn optimist who wanted to help others.
Because he was Jewish, Nachum lived in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust, where he watched men, women, and children marched to the Umschlagplatz, a holding area where they awaited deportation to concentration camps and almost certain death.
He grew tired of just watching. Working with others, he set up a fake hospital, even donning a long white doctor's coat. He would walk into the Umschlagplat, where bullets whizzed by from snipers above, and face Nazi soldiers to convince them that some Jewish people were unfit for transport. He would then take these rescued people to his "hospital," where he and his nurses would "bandage" them and, by "ambulance," return them to the ghetto.
Sadly, this makeshift hospital operated for just a few weeks. But, during that time, Nachum and his collaborators saved two to three hundred people.
In 1943, Nachum was captured during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and sent to the Majdanek concentration camp. There, he was killed on November 3rd, 1943.
Sources:
Holocaust Education & Archive Research Team, http://www.holocaustresearchproject.org/revolt/remba.html
Mazzeo, Tilar J.. Irena's Children: A True Story of Courage. United Kingdom, Gallery Books, 2016.
“Nachum Remba.” Holocaust Historical Society, https://www.holocausthistoricalsociety.org.uk/contents/jewishbiographies/nachumremba.html