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Most individuals believe they would be powerless in a crisis and think heroism is reserved for those with professional training. Maybe that’s wise, to prevent inexperienced would-be heroes from complicating the situation. However, in these stories, humanity is better off because these individuals rose to the occasion and took charge.
10. Bernard Kinvi
Since 2013, the Central African Republic has been torn apart by civil war, pitting the Muslim Seleka movement against the Christian anti-balaka ('anti-machete') militias. Both factions have committed horrific massacres and other crimes, resulting in thousands of deaths and forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes.
Father Bernard Kinvi took immense personal risk when he started offering refuge to both injured Christians and Muslims at his small mission hospital in Bossemptele. The danger escalated after the Seleka were driven out in January 2014, and the anti-balaka forces began to swarm his community as part of their violent mission to eradicate Muslims from the country.
For several months, Kinvi provided a safe haven to thousands of Muslim refugees at his mission, despite ongoing threats from the anti-balaka. At one point, he was safeguarding 1,500 Muslims. He also ventured out regularly to search for hidden refugees or bury the dead, even though he had no vehicle (his was taken by the Seleka as they left). Though occasional truck convoys managed to evacuate Muslims to safety, he had minimal official support and often had to use his own resources to feed the refugees.
By April 2014, most of the refugees in his care had been evacuated, and violence in the region had considerably diminished. However, as Kinvi pointed out in interviews, the ongoing tensions mean that conflict could erupt again at any time.
9. Yukio Shige
Though the phrase “Chotto Matte Man” (“Hold On, Wait Man”) might sound odd for a hero, Yukio Shige has made a tremendous impact with those simple words. In 2003, Shige, a soon-to-retire police officer from Tojinbo, Japan, was finishing his shift when he encountered a couple planning to end their lives by jumping off the Tojinbo cliffs due to severe financial hardship. Shige was able to convince them to reconsider, trying to find them help through the public welfare office. Unfortunately, the couple couldn't secure any financial assistance and tragically took their own lives. This loss motivated Shige to dedicate his retirement to preventing similar tragedies and offering help to those in crisis.
Leading a team of volunteers, Shige now patrols the Tojinbo cliffs, looking for people contemplating suicide. Rather than physically restraining them, the group’s strategy mainly focuses on engaging them in conversation, urging them to talk through their problems instead of choosing death. Since many suicide attempts are impulsive, this thoughtful approach has proven effective, saving around 500 lives by 2009. Sadly, Shige has mentioned that some of those saved later ended their lives elsewhere. Despite the difficult nature of the work, Shige remains committed to his mission.
8. Paxton Galvanek
On November 23, 2007, Paxton Galvanek and his wife were driving along I-40 in North Carolina when they witnessed an SUV roll over and catch fire. While his wife called 911, Galvanek rushed to the scene and pulled the passengers from the burning vehicle. Once everyone was safely away, Galvanek noticed the SUV’s driver was severely bleeding from two severed fingers.
Without any formal medical training, Galvanek recalled the medical simulators from the video game America’s Army, which demonstrated how to treat severe bleeding. The game, designed as a recruitment tool by the US Army, included realistic combat medic training, and Galvanek’s experience with it helped him prevent the driver from bleeding to death.
While many news stories focused on the video game angle, it’s important to remember the immense courage it took for Galvanek to run into a burning vehicle and rescue the critically injured passengers in the first place.
7. Didar Hossain
In May 2013, Didar Hossain was a line worker earning about $70 a month when the nine-story Rana Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapsed. The disaster claimed hundreds of lives and trapped many others. Hossain, who worked in a factory directly across from Rana Plaza, rushed to assist the survivors. Ignoring the warnings from others, he found a tunnel through the rubble and used it to enter the collapsed building in search of trapped workers. He managed to carry 17 people to safety before he found Aana Akhter, a young woman whose right hand had been crushed under the debris.
The only way to save Akhter was to amputate her hand, but a doctor refused to enter the collapsed building, leaving Hossain to perform the procedure himself. He managed to get an anesthetic injection, numbing her hand slightly, but the blade he had was dull, causing Akhter to scream in pain. Hossain, too, found himself in tears.
In the end, Hossain succeeded in saving Akhter’s life by amputating her hand. He then continued searching through the rubble, eventually rescuing 36 people in total. Afterward, the humble rescuer, who had no medical training, simply said that he was “an ordinary person” and was glad to have helped. When he met Akhter in the hospital, he apologized for the pain he caused her. She responded by saying that, if anything, she was sorry for the hardship he endured to save her.
6. The Muslim Heroes Of The Holocaust
During World War II, many Muslims found themselves under Axis control, and many of them risked their lives to protect their Jewish neighbors. In Yugoslavia, Ahmed Sadik, his daughter Zejneba (pictured above right), and his son-in-law Mustafa hid Jewish families in their homes until they could be smuggled to safety. Zejneba also delivered food to Jewish work gangs, while Ahmed managed to rescue Jewish friends from a train bound for a concentration camp, providing them with false papers that saved them. Tragically, Ahmed was captured and sent to the Jasenovac concentration camp, where he died. He was sent to the camp on the very same train from which he had saved his friends.
Albanian Muslims Lima and Destan Balla sheltered 18 Jews in their home for some time, even secretly delivering a baby for one of the refugees. The Grand Mosque of Paris is believed to have saved around 100 Jews by issuing false documents declaring them Muslims. In 2013, an Egyptian doctor named Mohamed Helmy became the first Arab to be honored at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial, for his role in hiding four Jews in his cabin near Berlin until the end of the war.
5. Lou Xiaoying
While many of the stories on this list involve a single, dramatic moment, the heroism of Lou Xiaoying took a different, quieter form. In China, where infant abandonment is a persistent issue, the impoverished Lou Xiaoying took it upon herself to care for every abandoned child she could find.
The story began in 1972 when Xiaoying and her husband discovered an abandoned child at a train station in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. Despite their own dire situation, scavenging through garbage on the station floor at the time, they decided to take the child in and raise it as their own. Over the years, the couple has rescued more than 30 abandoned babies, though tragically, 12 of them passed away in infancy.
It is heartbreaking that the Xiayongs had to save so many children from such desperate circumstances. By January 2013, official estimates suggested that there were approximately 615,000 orphans and abandoned children in China, with only around 109,000 receiving government assistance.
4. Minnie Vautrin
In December 1937, Japanese forces took control of the Chinese city of Nanking, leading to a tragic period known as the Rape of Nanking, during which hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians were killed or sexually assaulted. However, things might have been even worse had it not been for several foreigners in the city, including Minnie Vautrin, who worked tirelessly to protect the local population.
Vautrin, an American immigrant from Illinois, had been the president of Nanking’s Ginling College since 1919. As the violence erupted, she declared the college a safe zone for civilians, and more than 10,000 women sought refuge there. Time and again, Vautrin stood bravely between the soldiers and their intended victims, often facing threats, including guns pointed at her. Tragically, despite saving countless lives, the horrors she witnessed left a deep impact, and she later took her own life.
Minnie Vautrin’s heroism often goes unrecognized, overshadowed by the actions of one of her collaborators, the Nazi party member John Rabe, whose role in saving lives in Nanking has garnered more attention. Even the 2009 film about the Rape of Nanking opted to change Vautrin's character to a French woman and focus on Rabe's deeds, overlooking the contribution of the American woman who saved so many.
3. Lassana Bathily
On January 12, 2015, Amedy Coulibaly, a would-be member of Isis, attacked a kosher market in Paris, killing four people. His actions could have led to even more deaths were it not for Lassana Bathily, a Malian Muslim immigrant, who acted swiftly to hide more than a dozen customers in the basement freezer. They remained there for hours while Coulibaly engaged in a standoff with police, locking the door and closing the window shutters behind them.
Afterward, Bathily managed to sneak out of the building and inform the police. He escaped alone using a fire escape, as he knew that more people leaving would attract attention. Like Mohammad Hamdani, he was initially suspected of being involved in the attack, and he was detained for 90 minutes. During this time, he handed the police a shutter key, which allowed them to swiftly enter the building and neutralize Coulibaly before he could uncover the hidden customers.
2. Shail Devi
In January 2015, the body of a young Hindu man was discovered in the village of Azizpur, eastern India. It was believed that he had been murdered due to his alleged affair with a Muslim woman. This sparked an anti-Muslim riot, during which at least four Muslims were killed, three of them burned alive.
Shail Devi, a widow in her fifties, was approached by a group of Muslim neighbors who sought refuge in her home. Without hesitation, she welcomed them inside, hid them in a back room, and locked the front door from the outside, leaving herself vulnerable to a heavily armed mob searching for the Muslims. With remarkable courage, Devi convinced the mob that she was a Hindu, managing to bluff her way to safety. For her bravery in saving 10 Muslims, Devi was awarded 51,000 rupees (approximately $800) by the Indian government, and her daughters each received 20,000 rupees.
1. Mohammad Salman Hamdani
Hamdani, the son of Pakistani immigrants, was a former police cadet and an emergency medical technician. In 2001, he worked as a lab analyst at Rockefeller University’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute. On September 11, he was one of the first to respond to the World Trade Center attack, though not in an official capacity. Tragically, his act of bravery cost him his life, and it took months before his remains were recovered from the rubble. Sadly, his name immediately drew suspicion after his disappearance, with law enforcement circulating his photograph under the label 'hold and detain.'
It wasn’t until much later that Hamdani’s heroism was finally recognized after his confirmed death. The government acknowledged their earlier mistake, eventually listing him in the legislation for the Patriot Act as one of the individuals who had 'acted heroically' during the attacks. A street was even renamed in his honor. However, his family has struggled to have his name included on the 9/11 memorials, a reflection of the ongoing difficulty in fully acknowledging his sacrifice.
