Memorial to the Jesuit Righteous Among the Nations


Fifteen Jesuits have been recognized as Righteous among the Nations by Yad Vashem, the Israeli national memorial for the victims of the Shoah.


About twenty-five-thousand individuals constitute this group of courageous men and women, who, risked their lives to save Jews from the hands of the Nazis during the Shoah.

Sister Eliam Ricciarelli is an Italian artist living in Jerusalem and working among children of the migrant community. Father David, the superior of the Jesuit community, shared with her his desire to create a memorial for the fifteen Jesuits and Sister Eliam worked on the project for months. She sculpted and modeled a large piece of olive wood, fashioning an olive tree. Underneath the tree, she inscribed the first words of Psalm 1 in Hebrew, “Happy the man”.

Under the tree hang images she prepared of the fifteen Jesuits:

  • Jean-Baptiste De Coster (1896–1968),
  • Emile Gessler (1891–1958),
  • Jean-Baptiste Janssens (1889–1964),
  • Alphonse Lambrette (1884–1970),
  • Henri Van Oostayen (1906–1945),
  • Roger Braun (1910–1981),
  • Pierre Chaillet (1900–1972),
  • Jean Fleury (1905–1982),
  • Emile Planckaert (1906–2006),
  • Henri Revol (1904– 1992),
  • Adam Sztark (1907–1942),
  • Jacob Raile (1894–1949),
  • Ioannis Marangos (1900–1989),
  • Pietro Boetto (1871–1946),
  • Raffaele de Ghantuz Cubbe (1904–1983).


Brief biographies of these fifteen can be found here.


The memorial, placed near the entry to the residence, not only honors our Jesuit brothers, whose acts of courage and love inspire us, but also remind us of our own duty to bear witness with courage to the teaching of our Lord.


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