I honestly can't remember if I've told this story. So, forgive me if one of the versions of this post I remember deleting because it didn't feel right actually made it to posting.
Anyway, I have been thanked more than once by Jews who are glad I, a goy, stand with their right to exist and be treated like human beings. No matter if I personally agree with any of their politics or not. But to get ahead of a certain type of antisemite: I support Israel's right to exist, and I 100% support the right of Jews to self-determine their lives. AKA Zionism.
And the thing is, I do remember the exact moment I decided I would stand up and help Jews if I ever saw them persecuted. I was 13. I had just read Anne Frank's diary.
And that's one of the reasons I deleted the post more than once. Because that's what all the now-antisemites said. "I would TOTALLY project Jews! I would protect Anne Frank! I would hide Anne Frank!!"
So, to use her name to say "Hey, I actually am protecting Jews because I read Anne's diary" feels weirdly wrong to me because the antisemites have used her name to justify their terrible actions.
But you know what? Fuck those people. Fuck their lies. Fuck their abuse of her name in their mouths.
Because I didn't stop reading at Anne Frank. And that, really, is the point of this post, I think. I didn't stop reading at Anne Frank. Anne Frank started me down a path to answer a question. And the question was: How the fuck did this happen?
And so I read other books. And I watched documentaries, and as I got older, I kept reading and watching, and while I could understand from a point of academic curiosity that I had answered my question of how the fuck it happened, from a personal standpoint, I couldn't understand at all not only how it could happen but how could anyone survive hiding or the camps and build a life? How do you not collapse into a ball and cry yourself to death after that?
You're the only survivor of a shetel of 1000. You knew stealing a man's bowl would kill him, but you needed a bowl to live. You let a Nazi think you loved him to get enough food to keep you and your bunkmate alive. You hid underground for two years, only coming out at night. You hid in a series of caves and went back as an old man and saw your old cave carvings still there in the darkness of a flashlight that shined brighter than any candle you had. These are all true stories of Jews who survived.
And all that's being asked of me as the person taking in this history is to not let it happen again. The only thing ever requested of those of us who weren't there was to not become Nazis. Not to harm our fellow citizens. Not to call for the blood of our neighbors.
That's all that's ever been asked. To refuse to let Jews be harmed for no fucking reason. To refuse to let Jews become scapegoats whose lives will be seen as expendable. To refuse to let Jews be rounded up in public raids and taken away never to be seen again as the Nazis auctioned off their homes and other possessions to neighbors who didn't do sweet fuck all to stop the rise of the Nazis who promised loudly and repeatedly to murder their neighbors.
Would I have hidden Anne Frank? No, probably not. To do so, I'd need the ability to ignore years of Nazi propaganda and cultural pressure. Very, very few people were able to do that, and my actual efforts to understand how the Holocaust happened showed me how hard it is to NOT fall for the propaganda.
So, no, I probably wouldn't have hidden Anne Frank or any other Jews. But that's not what's being asked of me. That's never what's been asked of me. The single request is "Speak up before we need to hide." Speak up before your neighbors are rounded up. Speak up before they're banned from the parks. If you don't speak up when the yellow benches go in, speak up when they do.
All I have ever been asked is to treat Jews like human beings. And that's all I do. That is literally all I do. No one should have to thank me for that.
