“I don’t like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others. Even an ordinary secretary, housewife, or teenager can turn on a small light in a dark room.”
These were the words of Miep Gies after she was described as a hero because she hid the Otto Frank family from the Nazis for two years until their arrest in Amsterdam in August, 1944.
Miep and her husband, Jan, with help from others, hid the four Frank family members, the van Pels family of three, and a Jewish dentist, Dr. Fritz Pfeffer, putting themselves in grave danger. But Miep would later describe what they did as simply turning on a small light in Nazi darkness, and that was the name the makers of the National Geographic gave the series, “A Small Light.”
It is a series that seems to be flying under the radar, but a story I urge everyone to see. It is incredible on so many levels.
The world knows Anne Frank’s story, and that is good. Now we know how we know Anne’s story. It was Miep who discovered Anne’s diary after the family was arrested, thought it would be inappropriate to read it, but saved it and later gave it to Otto Frank when he, the lone family survivor, showed up in Amsterdam after the Netherlands was liberated.
The Jews in Amsterdam and across Europe were forced to hide, to live their lives in secret, for one reason and one reason only, because of who they were. Hitler hated Jews because they were Jews. Nazi sympathizers hated Jews because they were Jews. And the same kind of hatred can be seen today, right here in the United States.
As it turns out, people are people regardless of time and place, capable of good and capable of evil regardless of nationality. We are often warned not to compare what the Nazis did with anything else. Hitler was utterly unique, they say, as was the Holocaust, and they would be right, except not completely. Let me explain.
When comparing events, the difference between them is two-fold, One is in degree. The other is in kind. This distinction helps us to understand why events are more similar than we might at first think.
The degree of inhumanity perpetrated by the Nazis was simply unimaginable, but the kind of cruelty it represents is common even in American history – the displacement and wanton killing of native Americans, slavery and segregation, the oppression of women, putting children in cages on the southern border, separating them from their parents, some 998 of them still separated, the shaming of gay and transgender kids.
None of these compare with what Hitler did to the Jews in degree, but they do represent the same kind of inhumane behavior.
“A Small Light” calls for sober reflection on the stories of cruel and inhumane treatment of people simply because of who they are. At this very moment American gay and transgender kids are being singled out based solely on who they are by the “anti-woke” movement that feeds on fear, ignorance, political propaganda, uniformed religious teaching, and moral insensitivity that is evoking the worst instincts of which human beings are capable. It’s the same kind of inhumane behavior the Nazis showed, not in the same degree, but without question of the same kind.
Inhumane treatment of others is always the same, only different in degree, and is common in all generations and in all countries, including ours. Human beings treating other human beings inhumanely is the dark room that needs a small light to be turned on, just as Miep Gies said any of us can do.
Turning on a small light is not, as Miep said, about being a hero. It is about helping someone in need, especially when they are being persecuted for being who they are.
I am sure the darkness Miep and Jan and others confronted felt overwhelming, too vast to fight against and certainly too powerful to defeat, but they still turned on a small light in that dark room, and, surprisingly, stunningly, the darkness was not able to overcome it.
I am trying to remember that. After all, my faith tradition teaches that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not put it out” (Jn.1:5).
Some days it feels like darkness born of prejudice, hatred, cruelty, ignorance, every bad instinct of which humans are capable has already overtaken the entire country. Then someone turns on a small light of justice, love, kindness, knowledge, every good instinct of which humans are capable, and my spirit is lifted and my hope rises again.
The great Jewish writer, Eli Wiesel, said of the Holocaust over and again that we must never forget what happened.
The darkness is not all we should remember, but also how powerful a small light in that awful darkness actually was, and still can be.
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