The Loneliness in Doing Right

Eyal Press's book Beautiful Souls was reviewed in the New York Times.

Paul Grüninger was a state police officer in St. Gallen, in northeast Switzerland, who voted conservative and sang in the church choir. He was not a worldly man, nor given to fits of moral introspection. But before World War II he saved hundreds of Jewish refugees he met at the border. He stamped their arrival papers with dates just before Aug. 19, 1938, when tighter immigration restrictions had gone into effect. In 1939 he was caught and fired.

Unemployed and broke, Grüninger — one of the four brave men and women whom Eyal Press profiles in Beautiful Souls, his inquiry into what sort of person does the right thing when everyone else is doing evil — was refused a permit to open a pawn shop. Dogged by false rumors of sexual corruption, he peddled raincoats, greeting cards, even animal feed. Some Swiss Jews lent him money, but they needed to distance themselves from the disgraced Grüninger. Eventually he and his wife moved in with her parents.