I think it can be very complicated when judging "cowardice" or "betrayal." It is one thing to sacrifice oneself to save another - but quite another to sacrifice one's children and family to save others.
In another context, I just saw the movie Till and Emmit's mother confronts the man who was housing her son and demands to know why - when he had a shotgun, he didn't shoot the two men to save her son. In the depths of his agonizing guilt, he says if he had done that, his own children and many other blacks would have been killed. She then says - so you sacrificed mine to save yours. But wouldn't she have done the same - isn't that, in fact, what she thought he should have done - saved hers at the expense of his? Again, it is one thing to sacrifice oneself - and I have absolutely no doubt that she would have done that to save him - even temporarily, but to sacrifice other children?
It is so easy to judge from a distance. Oh I would have hidden Jews and I would have confronted Nazis etc. But would you really - when it meant your children and your family would be tortured and killed?