The Heart Has Reasons (36 page)

Indeed, even those who know their history will probably misread current events if they are not prepared to broadly interpret the lessons of the past and to expect the unexpected. When the rescuers’ generation was facing a possible Second World War, the Netherlands had historically been a neutral country—how did it serve the Dutch to remember that? Never before had genocide occurred on the scale of the Holocaust—what use was their knowledge of history in facing it? Furthermore, they had been raised to mistrust the fabricated atrocity tales of the First World War—how did that help them to recognize the real horrors of World War II?

The Nazi occupation required the Dutch to find their bearings on a new set of historical coordinates, and most were not up to the task. Faced with uncertainty, they did their jobs and kept on in other ways as before, clinging to the familiar and trying ineffectually to maintain some semblance of a normal life. To some of these people, Nazism had an appeal, for it offered definite answers and a master plan in which the Dutch, as “Aryans,” came out on top.

The rescuers’ approach was dynamic, even creative: they were able to think outside the historical box, as well as the Nazi propaganda box. Underlying this was the ability to
see
the reality unfolding before them. Though one might think that such awareness would come easily to all Dutch under Nazi occupation, it did not.

Many were too preoccupied with their own problems to notice what was being done to others more vulnerable than themselves. Many decided, consciously or unconsciously,
not
to see, for seeing would necessitate action. Then there were those who were trying to be optimistic, but their optimism blocked their view of reality. Those who did act were able to admit what was going on without being overtaken by a need to believe that “things can’t really be that bad.”

Initially, I was dazzled by the extraordinary positive thinking of people like Gisela and Hetty, whose buoyant attitudes enabled them to cheer up others, even after they were in a concentration camp. Gradually, however, I became aware of another, subtler, aspect to the rescuers’ narratives: that while hoping for the best, they were often, as William Sloane Coffin puts it, “taking a long, full, look at the worst.”

Human beings will often substitute illusion and rationalization for the simple awareness of a painful truth. In occupied Holland, such tendencies were intensified by the sheer enormity of the Nazi crimes, and the smokescreen of prevarication behind which they were taking place. To see the painful truth, one had to want to look. Even then, it was more a matter of intuition than reason, for few solid facts were available.

Unlike the naïve optimism of those who were ready to believe that the Germans were resettling Jews or sending them to labor camps, the hardheaded optimism of the rescuers allowed for the possibility that the Jews were being destroyed. But even as the rescuers considered this painful truth, they were also looking beyond it. Hoping against hope, they would imagine an eventual victory, a restoration of justice, a return to freedom. It was on that nexus of optimistic and realistic thinking that the rescuers rode out the war.
Many of the rescuers’ core values are conveyed through their statements about our present society, and some of those values were no doubt shaped during the difficult Nazi years. When my discussion with Clara Dijkstra led into the subject of parenting, she had some strong words:

With so many mothers and fathers working, the children get out from school and come home to an empty house . . . no one is there for them, and then they become angry and get into trouble. But where is the love for the children? No, you’re working for another car, a better house. . . . You can have your cars and your luxurious homes, or you have a close, loving relationship with your children. But you can’t have it both ways.

Clara places an either/or choice squarely before today’s upwardly mobile parents. Her penetrating recognition that one cannot “have it all” echoes the unflinching way that she observed the world around her during the Nazi occupation. And if you think back to what Piet Meerburg and Kees Veenstra said regarding those who helped—that people with assets and position didn’t want to take the risk, while common people were more likely to say yes—it can be heard as a variation on the same theme. When asked, “Would you be willing to take in a Jewish child?” a hard choice had to be made.
They
could not have it both ways. Those who said yes took a leap into radical altruism, and perhaps the kind of people they would become was determined at that decisive moment. As the occupation continued and they daily risked everything to save the lives of others, those altruistic values grew deeper and stronger, like roots that take hold in ravaged soil.

Unlike the callow idealism that many of us have as young people, including that expressed by Anne Frank in her famous saying about people really being good at heart, the idealism of the rescuers was forged in the crucible of their confrontation with evil and tempered over a lifetime of righteous living. It’s a moral achievement that, sad to say, Anne Frank never had the opportunity to reach. Inured to evil, the rescuers yet affirm the good.

When I asked Ted Leenders how we can educate our children to keep something like the Holocaust from recurring, he replied, “First, we should teach them how bad people can be. Don’t fool them into believing that everybody is nice. The evil in people is awful. It’s tremendous. But, also, we must teach them to be active, involved citizens. Don’t wait for someone else to do it—you be the leader!” Ted’s prescription is also a description of
the rescuers: people able to face the worst about the world while laboring to repair it.

Do the rescuers have any regrets? They regret the pain, suffering, and, sometimes, the loss of their friends and loved ones. They regret that more lives were not saved. They regret that they didn’t do more, even though they were the ones who did the most. There is a vulnerable quality about the rescuers that caused me to go beyond seeing them as heroes to be celebrated. Over time, I came to realize the obvious: that their choices were in no way inevitable, that their burdens could have been made much lighter had more people helped, and that they still regret that more people didn’t.

We have seen how the vast majority of human beings at that time played it safe and didn’t want to involve themselves with other people’s problems. Perhaps we should join with the rescuers in not condemning them for that, and, while we’re at it, in not condemning ourselves if we suspect that we would have acted the same way. However, the inaction of the bystanders allowed for the torture, murder, and destruction of vast numbers of innocent people. Can we really let the bystanders—and ourselves—off the hook so easily?

The rescuers’ generous attitude says more about who
they
are than about those they have forgiven. And, ultimately, rather than speculating about the past, it is up to us today to show by our actions who
we
are. I have seen people fret about what they would have done had they been in the rescuers’ position. After spending time with the rescuers, I realize that the more relevant and vital question is “What am I doing now?” While many of us are content to visit a Holocaust museum and leave with a “Never Again” button, the rescuers’ deepest wish for us is that we take up their mission and carry it on.

Indeed, most of the rescuers continue to help victims of injustice and urge others to do the same. Mieke Vermeer is active in Amnesty International, especially the Freedom Writers Network, through which she writes letters on behalf of people who have been unjustly imprisoned and sometimes tortured because of their political or religious beliefs. She explained to me that such letters can lead to the prisoner receiving better treatment and even to his or her release. “It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness,” she said, quoting an Amnesty slogan. Rescuer Cornelis Termaat said, “We have tried to support organizations all over the world that take care of victims.” His wife Dory added, “And through our church we have become part of the sanctuary movement, helping to resettle people who fled political
persecution in the Congo. . . . In a way it’s a continuation of what we did during the war, but without the same risk.”

We are all, in one way or another, in a position to continue the work of the rescuers, and what a privilege to be able to do so without putting ourselves in mortal danger. It’s an opportunity we can’t afford to pass up, for to be content to admire the rescuers from a geographical and historical distance puts us in
moral
danger of being passive in our own life and times. Miep Gies declares, “we cannot wait for our leaders to make this world a better place,” but that we must take action in our own sphere of influence. In the United States, diverse voices have put out the call for citizen leaders willing to respond to the suffering of groups towards whom society is indifferent. While government may be encumbered with bureaucracy and politicians constrained by their need to get reelected, there is nothing to stop such self-appointed citizen leaders from fully expressing their highest altruistic impulses. And, as the example of the rescuers has shown us, being responsive to the plight of others in times of peace increases the likelihood that one will act heroically in times of danger.

How, though, does one keep from falling into despair? Seemingly insurmountable obstacles stand in the way of anyone who dares try to stand up for the dispossessed or in other ways right society’s wrongs. The rescuers, too, felt helpless and overwhelmed when confronted with the enormity of what they were up against. Yet they did what they could, and later they looked back at the war as a special, almost halcyon period. As Kees Veenstra put it, “Often I think the war was the best part of my life. You could be useful, you could save people, you could do things.” Like us, they doubted whether an individual could make a difference, but we, looking back at them, can see that the answer is yes.

TWELVE
REFLECTIONS

To write history is not merely to
recover the lost content of the past; it is to perform
metaphorically a work of personal restoration.

—
John Paul Eakin

What is the point of trying to do good at all? That was the question that haunted me after hearing Ted’s tale of Vos, the man who had been broken by the Nazis, attacked by the Resistance people he’d made great sacrifices to help, and then brutalized by Dutch prison guards. I knew, of course, that heroes aren’t indestructible and that good deeds often go unrecognized, but I guess that somewhere in my mind the comic book heroes and fairy-tale endings I’d absorbed in childhood—the ones I had relied on to ease my Holocaust fears—were still exerting their influence. Or perhaps I was still in L.A. mode, thinking that everything one does, even if it appears to be for others, should finally yield some personal reward.

The rescuers, however, didn’t think about personal rewards. They simply recognized a desperate need and took action. It’s a bit like the Talmudic tale of how the Jews came to be the “chosen people”: every other nation was offered the responsibility, but only the Jews accepted. And like the Israelites at Mt. Sinai, the rescuers accepted first and only later fully understood what would be involved.

On the other hand, by doing what they deeply believed to be right and just, there
was
a reward, one that blurs the distinction between the “altruistic” and the “selfish” gesture: by acting on behalf of others, they were safeguarding their own humanity.
During those months in Holland of getting up early every morning, taking the train, ringing the rescuers’ doorbells, and being warmly welcomed into their homes, something passed between us that was more than words. William James may have described it best when he wrote about “those invisible, molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual.” The love that permeated my time with the rescuers made it clear to me that the path they have taken in life is far superior to the crowded superhighways of ambition and consumption that many people in the United States imagine will make them happy. Though most of the rescuers live modestly, they are rich in
chesed
, a Hebrew word meaning lovingkindness. This quality of
chesed
, so tangible in their presence, convinced me that the choices they’ve made in their lives are impeccable; that success can mean a state of contentment and self-respect which has nothing to do with outer circumstances, but rather is a sense of satisfaction at having done the right thing, at having stood up for what one believes, at enjoying a good reputation with the people who most matter, especially oneself.