Normal people perhaps don’t grow up thinking what they would have done had they lived in Nazi Germany, but I did. The answer was simple: good people helped hide Jews, or otherwise volunteered their skills to the Resistance. Bad people looked the other way and did nothing, or worse: reported their neighbors who did those things.
Words like “fascism” and “Nazis” should not be used lightly, but they have become throwaway terms used to describe this current presidential administration. They are read as hyperbolic by many people; a sign of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Is fascism where the United States is currently headed? I can’t be the only person who feels gaslit by the media, when both right and left-leaning sources earn their clicks through sensationalist headlines. There’s a profit to be made by keeping people afraid.
That said, taking people off the street who, by all accounts, immigrated legally, seems like fascist behavior to me. The absence of due process before being shipped to what basically amounts to a labor camp is alarming.
Christians should know more than anyone that a person’s inherent dignity is not dependent on their legal status. We can support legal immigration and sensible border policy without subjecting people to cruelty. Our homegrown rapists, murderers, and drug dealers are treated better than this.
I can’t help but think back on history, and revisit the question that shaped much of my childhood: what do the “good” people do in this scenario?
***
I have a much different answer to this question as a mother than I did as a child. Of course I would like to think that I’d be brave enough to defy a corrupt government and put righteousness above personal comfort. That sense of righteousness, I believe, comes from God.
But I’ve realized something important: that desire to save lives may have been genuine, but also had a great deal to do with flaunting my personal valor and wanting to be remembered as a hero. Even as a Jewish child, I had daydreams about sainthood. I wanted the notoriety reserved for the Joan of Arcs and Maximilian Kolbes. But could I endure the suffering that earned them that fame?
I really don’t know.
I’ve realized something else about many “good” people who lived in Nazi Germany: they were ordinary people like me. Wives and mothers, raising children and cooking dinner and wiping noses and looking forward to the future. It wasn’t just their own comfort that mattered, but keeping their families safe.
After all, people who resisted often got killed. The Catholic Church is taking steps to canonize a Polish family who hid Jews on their farm, and paid the ultimate price for it. The Nazis weren’t above murdering gentile children who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents.
Could you choose that fate?
I don’t think it makes you a bigot to say no.
***
Having dealt with postpartum anxiety for the better part of a year, nothing terrifies me more than not being able to protect my daughter. Keeping my head down and not making waves may keep her safe, which would make me a good mother, but a bad citizen. These are such impossible choices, and I honestly cannot judge anyone who prioritizes their family above strangers.
I sat with that realization for a long time. I had to let God pry my inflated sense of righteousness from a closed fist. I wanted clean, easy, obvious villains and heroes. But people aren’t like that. For the most part, most of us want to help, but we are limited.
I have no solutions here. Nothing but continual prayer and effort to keep raising my tiny disciple, teaching her to see others as image bearers, regardless of how and why they entered this country.
Photo by Chris Boese on Unsplash
