Still Small

My mother was just 6-years-old when World War II came to an end. She lived in Berlin. She was living through history.

Unlike most 6-year-olds, my mother didn’t have the luxury of ignoring current events. Current events were happening to her daily. And nightly, as darkness brought bombing raids and a race for the shelters. She was aware of other things happening, too.

“Why don’t I see the people with the star anymore?” she asked her parents. She meant, of course, Jewish people who had been compelled to wear a yellow star on their outer clothing. She used to see several of them when she took walks with her father along the city streets. By 1944, the people with the stars had disappeared.

Do not turn away

If a 6-year-old could notice people were disappearing, then adults must have seen, too. But the adults around her didn’t want to see. So they pretended not to. “Don’t ask such questions,” she was told.

Her parents wanted her silence. They wanted her compliance. Because that’s how people who allow terrible things to happen get through their days: they ignore that anything is wrong.

I am warning you: don’t be like that. This is no time to ignore what is happening all around.

People are being snatched off the street by masked men who won’t identify themselves. Citizen or noncitizen alike — and why not? The Supreme Court just gave its blessing to racial profiling. Priests have been targeted with nonlethal weapons. Elderly people in their 80s are being beaten. People who show up in lighthearted costumes are being targeted with chemical weapons.

What will you do?

The moment may come when you witness ICE tearing a mother away from her child, beating a peaceful protestor or trying to kidnap someone off the street. What will you do?

This is a game I have been playing since childhood, when my mother began to teach me my family legacy. It went like this: If I I lived in Germany at that time, would I have resisted? Would I have risked my life to help others? Would I even have the courage to say what could be plainly seen? Or would I be a coward, like my grandparents, like most everyone else of their generation?

I’ll save the discussion on generational trauma for another time. I’ll also note that this was a warning sign that I was well on my way to developing an anxiety disorder. But the game served a purpose, too. Each thought experiment was a practice run. I imagined all sorts of scenarios, and how I might react. If you want to say that’s a bit much, I get it. But I’ll tell you this: it also made me resolute about what I will do when the time comes.

I’m definitely not telling you to do anything that would put yourself in danger or hurt others. You don’t have to break a law. Sometimes small acts have big impacts. If you see someone being detained and you can speak with them, ask if they want to give you their name so you can inform them what happened. Families sometimes search for weeks to find their loved ones who have been detained by ICE. If you have a phone on you (who doesn’t), you can try to video what is happening. Maybe you could be able to alert others about what is happening. There are many ways to resist.

Decide today what you will do when you see fascism tomorrow. Run through the though experiment until the reaction feels like a reflex.

Whatever you do, do not turn away.

The lesson of feigned ignorance

The moment we’re in won’t last forever. There will come a day when people will ask you what you did during this time, as we’re living through history.

You don’t want to be like my grandparents, pretending you never noticed what was going on all around you. My mother could never respect them after that. She tells me her friends struggled with the same dilemma, too.

You don’t have to be like that. You can be like my mother, a witness. As young as she was, she did all a 6-year-old could do. She witnessed, and she asked. If a little girl can do that much, I promise, you can, too.

Do not turn away from what you see. Bear witness — it is the bare least you can do.