In the introduction to his book, Legacy of Silence: Encounters with Children of the Third Reich*,
Dan Bar-On tells of Andre, a 12-year-old boy in a small German town. One day in 1938 Andre comes home from a youth meeting and tells his father that the next day the children are supposed to throw stones at the shops owned by Jews. He is in a dilemma. Everyone else is going to throw stones. What should he do?
Even though his decision will affect his parents as well as himself, Andre’s father wants the boy to make up his own mind. So Andre goes out for a walk, and when he returns he tells his parents that he has decided not to throw stones. The father is obviously proud of his son, but lets him know that he and his mother discussed the situation, and they came to the conclusion that if Andre’s decision was not to throw stones, the family would leave Germany right away. And so they do leave the very next day.
The question is why so many others just went along with the persecution. Fear, of course, is the most obvious reason. Andre’s parents knew his decision not to participate was dangerous.
But what about situations that carry less risk, in which the danger is not loss of life but perhaps loss of a job or even simply disapproval? Why do we ourselves so often rationalize injustice or turn a blind eye to conditions that exclude or that do violence to others? It is crucial to put a halt to oppression when it is small — if oppression can ever be called small. How tempting it is to say, “I can’t allow myself to get involved,” or “This one incident isn’t important. It won’t go any farther.”
But oppression tends not to stop on its own. On the contrary, it tends to escalate.
At some point each of us is faced with the decision to say Yes or No to oppression and injustice. How we do it in our own context is a matter for prayer and discernment. But it is important to remember that to refuse the No is to assent.
“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?”
[God] has told you. . . what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?Micah 6:6,8
__________
(*Harvard University Press, 1989)
Photograph: Jewish shop in Berlin, April 1, 1933
Source: Yad Vashem (Item ID 30312; Archival signature 4613/224); Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Hebrew Edition 1990
Photographer unknown.