"What hurts the victim is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander." Elie Wiesel
We are in the process of commemorating the wanton murder of Tutsis, for the crime of being Tutsis, in Rwanda by the Hutus. An event that should never have taken place because the world promised after Jews were murdered for being Jews: Never Again.
What would you have done if you had been a Hutu during the genocide? What would you have done if you had been alive during the Shoah-either in Europe, or here, in Canada?
In 1940, in the early onset of World War II, it took Germany a mere six weeks to conquer France. For two years the country was divided between the Northern occupied half and the Southern "Free Zone." Thousands of Jews who lived or made their way to the south survived in relative peace for two years. About 5000 Jews, mostly children, made their way to a small Protestant village, Chambon-sur-ligne, located in the mountains 350 miles south of Paris. In 1942 the Germans went into Southern France and began to round up the Jews to send them to concentration camps where they would be murdered.
There were approximately 5000 residents in the village of Chambon-sur-ligne,proud descendants of the first French Protestants, the Huguenots, who had been persecuted for their beliefs. The village, which became known as "that nest of Jews in Protestant Country," was also a place of convalescence for the Germans soldiers. The Nazis were their neighbours.Yet, the families of Chambon-sur-ligne sheltered every Jew that came to their village. They did this knowing full well that they were defying the French government which was collaborating with the Nazis. The villagers provided the Jewish refugees with food, an education, forged identification papers, and escorted many to Switzerland, to freedom.
When you read this story, can you see yourself in it? Do you see yourself sheltering someone for whom you will be killed if discovered? Think about it. You have no connection to these people. They were never your neighbours. You didn't interact with them, share food or holidays. They were complete strangers to whom you owed nothing. Can you envision yourself putting not only yourself in danger, but your children and anyone else living under your roof to save strangers? Do you see yourself as someone who could keep this deed a secret even form your next door neighbour? Would you deprive your own children of food in order to feed strangers in your midst?
Now, add to this the culture in which the residents of unoccupied France lived. They were well aware of the German attitude toward the Jews. In Germany of the late 19th century, the "Jewish conspiracy" was the explanation for everything that had gone wrong in the world. Jews were described as an alien people endangering the German citizens. These views carried forward into the 20th century. Anti-Semitic propaganda was everywhere. Hatred of Jews was in the water and the air. In October 1940, Marshall Petain, chief of state of Vichy France, the unoccupied south of France, the location of Chambon-sur-ligne, decreed that foreign Jews were to be rounded up and interned in special camps. Local prefects could send Jews to concentration camps for any reason at all. Could you rise above the culture in which you lived? How would you accomplish that? What would be your guiding force?
I have often asked myself what I would do in that position. Would I put myself in danger? I like to think that I would shelter a stranger in need of protection. I am not so sure that I would have the courage to shelter others if it meant putting my children in harm's way. I would like to think that I would. I would like to think of myself as that kind of person. But, I think my first animal instinct would be to save myself and my family. The residents of Chambon-sur-ligne didn't hesitate in their actions.
Were they just born that way? Did they come out of the womb filled with the milk of human kindness willing and able to put the needs of others ahead of their own, like a wolf stopping in the woods to care for a wounded deer? Are we by nature born generous and good, a secular view espoused since the time of Rousseau and the Enlightenment? Do we come into the world with Original Sin, or is it that we are neither kind nor unkind, but "The tendency of man's heart is towards evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21), so teach kindness to be on the safe side? Philosophy, biology, neurology, sociology, psychology and anthropology have all weighed in on defining human nature. There are those who believe that we are born a tabula rasa, a blank slate upon which others (culture) create a story, and those who believe that most of the story is already finished (genetics) before we take our first breath.
If it were true that we come into this world "good," all of us would behave like the villagers in Chambon-sur-ligne. But we don't.
Ethics is the system we choose to help us make moral decisions that answer the question, "What ought I do?" How we answer that question goes to the very soul of our society because ultimately as Rabbi Heschel said:
"The test of the humanity of a human being is the degree to which he is sensitive to other people's suffering."
AndréTrocmé, the pastor in Chambon-sur-ligne , led his flock by example, taking Jews into his home, protecting the stranger just as his ancestors had been protected from religious persecution. The citizens of Chambon-sur-ligne had no legal obligation to protect the Jews in their midst. Rather, they felt it was their duty to help people in need, and did not consider their actions as heroic or dangerous. This sense of duty came from somewhere. It came from the Judeo-Christian ethical system that promoted specific duties, responsibilities and obligations. It came from the stories in the Bible.
New atheists argue that ethics is obvious or natural. They aren't. Nietzsche, a well-known atheist, perhaps a symbol for atheism, knew that losing the morals of Christianity (brought forward from Judaism) would lead to the will to power over the care of the other, the strong dominating the weak. Secularism, the daughter of the Enlightenment led to the horrors of WWII, the inhumane treatment of multi-millions of human beings who were considered nothing more than fodder for their government's leaders.
