When I was in college, I enrolled in the class, "Rescue and Resistance" with my mentor, Dr. Debórah Dwork, who co-taught the seminar with a woman named Marion Pritchard. Pritchard was a Dutch teenager when the Nazis invaded Holland, and throughout the course of the class, we began to learn her story. She was not Jewish, but she rescued hundreds of Jews during the Nazi occupation of Holland.
Pritchard's entrance into this line of work began when she witnessed Nazi soldiers loading Jewish children into the back of a truck. Appalled by the scene unfolding, several women ran to the aid of the children, beating the Nazi soldiers to try and do something in the face of this moral horror. Pritchard looked on as the Nazis picked up the women and loaded them onto the truck, as well. This would be the only time she was paralyzed in the face of Nazi barbarism. Though she was only a teenager, she knew that she couldn't ever stand idly by again. Throughout the war, Pritchard registered Jewish infants as her own children, helped falsify papers so that Jews could flee Nazi-occupied Europe, found homes for people to hide in, obtained ration cards for Jews, and she even shot dead a Dutch collaborator who sought to expose a family who she had been hiding. By her estimate, she helped rescue 150 Jews. She risked her life and put herself in harm's way on countless occasions, because she felt that it was her responsibility to help others in need.
Pritchard's story has always stuck with me. Her lesson, and the lesson that we all should take away from the Holocaust is one about how we act when the world around us cries out for help. I thought of Mrs. Pritchard this past week when I read an appalling article in The New York Times. "The Road to Auschwitz WASN'T Paved with Indifference," read the headline, a negation of the aphorism coined by the historian, Ian Kershaw. The author, Rivka Weinberg, argued that Auschwitz wasn't paved with indifference, it was paved with collaboration. That is, if only the gentile communities of Europe hadn't collaborated with the Nazis, if only Jewish leadership hadn't been a part of the Nazi machine, the Holocaust would have been less horrific. In the article, she argued:
"It's hard to be a hero, to risk your safety and personal commitments in order to help a stranger. That's a big ask. And by asking people too much, we make being moral too hard."
"Heroism is exceptional, saintly; that's not who most of us are, nor who most of us can be, so we're kind of off the hook."
"Heroism is aspirational and worthy of admiration, but it is a pedagogical, moral and historical error to spend our moral capital insisting on it."
"What history teaches us is: Don't perpetrate; don't collaborate. If you can be heroic, that is laudable."
"Next time the murderers come, it's understandable if it's too much to ask for us to risk our lives, our children, or even our jobs, to save others."
And if you read this article and nodded in agreement with Mrs. Weinberg, then perhaps I can shake you out of the comforting notion that our responsibility in the wake of Auschwitz is simply "don't collaborate." On the 75th Anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, our takeaway from all that we have reflected on over the last three quarters of a century, should instead be a reminder of the very morals that Judaism teaches when we face tyranny, peril, and suffering.
לא תוכל להתעלם
You cannot abdicate your responsibility, even if it's inconvenient for you, even if it's a burden, even if it puts you at risk. (Deuteronomy 22:3)
לא תעמוד על דם רעך
Don't stand idly by the blood of your neighbor. (Leviticus 19:16)
These two laws from the Torah are the basis for a law the rabbis later established in the Talmud called, the Din Rodef, the Law of the Pursuer (Sanhedrin 73a). If you see a person pursuing another to kill him or her, you are responsible to put yourself in harms way in order to save the life of the victim. Your responsibility includes killing the pursuer, if necessary, before he or she is able to commit murder. "Don't stand idly by," the rabbis emphasize. This includes rescuing someone from drowning, from being attacked by a wild animal, or from being robbed by bandits. You must intervene to save a life. It's not enough to simply "not collaborate." Your moral mandate is to help, no matter what.
If you thought being Jewish was a piece of cake, then you thought wrong. It's not! Being Jewish requires an enormous amount of responsibility. Helping others almost always requires making self-sacrifice. Sometimes, it's putting yourself in danger, at other times, it may be a commitment of time. And there will be times where helping others means putting ourselves and those we care about at risk. The obligation is nonetheless to help.
Think for example of Moses who sees an Egyptian striking down a Hebrew slave
ויְהִ֣י ׀ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיִּגְדַּ֤ל מֹשֶׁה֙ וַיֵּצֵ֣א אֶל־אֶחָ֔יו וַיַּ֖רְא בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם וַיַּרְא֙ אִ֣ישׁ מִצְרִ֔י מַכֶּ֥ה אִישׁ־עִבְרִ֖י מֵאֶחָֽיו׃
Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian striking down a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen (Exodus 2:11)
It would have been easy for Moses not to care. He had a comfortable social status; after-all, he grew up in Pharaoh's house. Why would he intervene to help this Hebrew?
וַיִּ֤פֶן כֹּה֙ וָכֹ֔ה וַיַּ֖רְא כִּ֣י אֵ֣ין אִ֑ישׁ וַיַּךְ֙ אֶת־הַמִּצְרִ֔י
Moses turns this way, and then the other way, and sees that no one is going to help, and so he strikes the Egyptian, and kills him (Exodus 2:12).
When Pharaoh hears what Moses has done, Moses needs to flee to Midian. In his leaving Egypt, he loses his home, his family, and his status. People often say that the reason Moses wasn't allowed to enter the Promised Land was because he had killed someone. That's false! Moses wasn't allowed to enter because he later disobeyed God and struck a rock to bring out water, when he was supposed to speak to it.
The killing sounds like a much more problematic sin, but Moses was actually fulfilling the obligation of Din Rodef, interceding when a pursuer is seeking to kill another. This incident demonstrates the character that enables Moses to be qualified to lead the Jewish people. Moses does not stand idly by.
The big takeaway from Moses's behavior is not that he is an exceptional hero. Rather, Moses is our example of required moral behavior in such a situation. To be a Jew, is to be like Moses. To be a Jew is to take on the obligation of helping others even when it's not in our own best interest. That's what you sign on for when you choose a Jewish life. And it's not just for Jews. Marion Pritchard was the most Moses women that I've ever met!
The best way to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, is not to simply remember. If you want to remember the liberation, then play the role of the liberator. If you want to commemorate the Holocaust, do so by making sure that it doesn't happen again. Being a bystander isn't morally normative, as Weinberg argues, it's morally unacceptable. The maxim, "Never Again" sounds nice, but it's meaningless without the pledge to intercede in injustice. And Never Again, doesn't just mean "Never Again to us," it means "Never Again to Anyone."