Just before his death Szmul Zygielbojm confessed, ‘With my death I wish to express the strongest protest against the passivity with which the world is watching and allowing the extermination of the Jewish people. (…) Since I was unable to do anything during my lifetime, perhaps by my death I shall help to break down the indifference of those who have the possibility now, at the last moment, to save those Polish Jews still alive from certain annihilation’.