Would I have been a Nazi?

The immediate response to this question is an emphatic and resounding, "No!" when most of us ask it of ourselves. We would not have participated in the wholesale extermination of our neighbors. We would not have stood by and done nothing while those around us were deported and murdered in a systematic and highly efficient process. We would have been Schindler (of Schindler's List) or members of the resistance. We would not have been Nazis; we would not have been collaborators. In short, we are able to convince ourselves that we are different from the Germans of the 1930s.

But how different are we, really? The Holocaust took place in ostensibly Christian nations, and the everyday acts of taking away privileges from Jews and others were committed not by Hitler personally, but by ordinary citizens. As Hitler's reach spread to other countries outside of Germany, there were always those citizens willing to co-operate with the German plan to rid Europe of Jews and those it deemed "undesirable." An even greater number of people were willing to take no action; these individuals neither actively co-operated with the Nazi plan, nor did they actively resist it. By their inaction, Hitler's reign of terror was able to spread into the countries that the Germans occupied.

In The Hiding Place, the reader is introduced to the ten Boom family, and particularly to the two maiden daughters and their elderly father. The ten Booms lived in Haarlem where the f

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re, which he demonstrated in the way that he conducted business, and in the way that he viewed his competitors, whom he called colleagues. For him to make the sacrifice that he made in order to help those around him was not a significant departure from the way he had lived his life. But the courage of the family passed well beyond the time when the family lived above the watch shop. The trials of the concentration camp tested and probably destroyed the faith of a number of individuals who were imprisoned there. The sisters were able to maintain their faith despite the atrocities that surrounded them, but this was faith that they had throughout their lives. These were not idealistic young women who were intent on becoming martyrs without understanding what was actually at hand. Instead, these were mature women who understood the horrors that surrounded them, and who maintained their faith not only in God, but also in the ultimate good that is the essence of human beings. Surrounded by death, torture and loss, Betsie and Corrie managed to maintain their dignity and even pray for the forgiveness of their tormentors. Within the confines of the prison camp, Corrie and Betsie maintained the ethical core which had produced the

Category: History - W