The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get accustomed and adjusted to these conditions. The one who adjusts ceases to discriminate between good and evil. He becomes a slave in body and soul. Whatever may happen to you, remember always: Don’t adjust! Revolt against the reality! The dream of my life has risen to become fact. Self-defense in the ghetto will have been a reality. Jewish armed resistance and revenge are facts. I have been a witness to the magnificent, heroic fighting of Jewish men in battle. – Mordechai Anielewicz, Leader of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
CHULA VISTA, California — Last week, we observed Yom HaShoah—Holocaust Memorial Day — which corresponds to the start of the famous Warsaw Ghetto uprising. On April 19, 1943, the Jews fought back and attempted to prevent the Nazis from deporting them to the concentration camps. This holiday helped the Jews realize that they cannot passively accept their fate.
Their heroism is all the more incredible when we consider how the Jews lived in the Warsaw Ghetto. The confines of the Warsaw ghetto were wholly unthinkable. About 400,000 people were crammed inside an area of 3.4 km. But they decided they would not passively walk to their deaths.
Brave people must fight for their freedom.
From the pages of the Bible, we read much about the power of civil-disobedience. In the early chapters of Exodus, two Egyptian women named Shiphra and Puah dared defy Pharaoh’s murderous decree and genocide of the Hebrew babies, ordering them to drown the infants in the Nile River (Exod. 1:8-22).
When David fled King Saul’s attempt to execute him, he fled to the priestly city of Nob. There, David was well-received with a meal; he left with the sword he used to kill the giant Goliath. Saul felt outraged that the High Priest Ahimelech assisted his enemy. The King orders his soldiers, “Make the rounds and kill the priests of the LORD, for they assisted David. They knew he was a fugitive and yet failed to inform me.” But the king’s servants refused to lift a hand to strike the priests of the LORD.[i]
Is it not any wonder why Jews have been leaders in a variety of social causes where we have defied the immoral policies of the State? Our tradition teaches us that moral people must decide to make a difference.
Consider the following illustration:
Snoopy, the lovable beagle in the Peanuts cartoon once broke his leg. He received hundreds of letters expressing sympathy. But Snoopy philosophized about his plight while he was perched on top of his doghouse. Looking at his huge white cast on his leg, he mused, “My body blames my foot for not being able to go places. My foot says it was my head’s fault, and my head blamed my eyes…My eyes say my feet are clumsy, and my right foot says not to blame him for what my left foot did…”
Snoopy then looks out at his reading audience and confesses, “I don’t say anything because I don’t want to get involved.”
This story ought to serve as a homily for the dangers of remaining indifferent or apathetic in the face of great danger. Totalitarian regimes cannot tolerate dissidents willing to challenge and defy their status quo. Beyond that, dictators do their best to spy and tattle on their neighbors or friends. In the perfect Orwellian world, the eye of Big Brother is everywhere. But not even George Orwell could have imagined the genesis of “Little Brothers,” i.e., ordinary citizens who serve the State and enforce its ruthless policies.
As we remember the Holocaust, let us celebrate the heroes and heroines—ordinary people—who decided to stand up and make a difference. The brave French and Dutch people wore the yellow Star of David and demonstrated their solidarity with the Jewish people. The Danish people, led by King Christian X, refused to cooperate with the Nazis and did not deport a single Jew living in their country.
Michael Bar Zohar’s excellent book, Beyond Hitler’s Grasp narrates perhaps the most amazing story of all about the righteous Gentiles of WWII. During World War II, hundreds of thousands of Jews were deported from the Balkan states to labor and extermination camps in Germany and Poland. Bulgaria, with a Jewish population of only 50,000, sided with Hitler’s government early on, its king having become convinced that only with German aid could he successfully press his territorial claims to land lost to Greece and Romania. Yet, in the face of constant German demands, Bulgaria’s government refused to deport the nation’s Jewish citizens. Instead, as the Bulgarian-born Israeli politician Michael Bar-Zohar writes in this fine contribution to Holocaust studies, “the Bulgarian Jews became the only Jewish community in the Nazi sphere of influence whose number increased during World War II.”
Standing up to totalitarian regimes is so vital today for the majority of people living on this planet are governed by dictators who have no respect for human rights. Amazingly, Communist China and Iran have both won seats on the Human Rights Council of the United Nations—where they will play a key role in picking the world body’s human rights investigators — including global monitors on freedom of speech, health, enforced disappearances, and arbitrary detention. Iran’s and China’s appointments to the Human Rights Council have sparked protests by international human rights activists.
To the Chinese people, l must urge them to look at the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as an inspiration. Although their country has no civil liberties to speak of, there are many heroes who dared to defy the Chinese dictatorship and regime.
Their stories need to be told.
A courageous Chinese physician named Dr. Li Wenliang tried to warn his fellow medical practitioners about the situation in Wuhan. One day before Dr Li’s death, lawyer Chen Qiushi released videos describing chaotic scenes in Wuhan hospitals with coronavirus victims lying in corridors. The videos were shared with an audience of more than 400,000 YouTube and 250,000 Twitter followers. He too went missing. His family was told the following day he was being held in medical quarantine at an undisclosed location. And not surprisingly, he was soon dead of the very plague he tried to warn about. Other physicians have also mysteriously disappeared or died because they tried to warn their people about the danger of this pandemic.
Consider the story of Fang Bin, a 40-year-old businessman who felt compelled to speak out against the government’s attempt to suppress what really happened. What did Fang Bin do? He had the audacity to expose the truth about the coronavirus outbreak but refused to remain silent. To get his message out to the Chinese people, he posted a video of people dying of the virus, along with scenes of body bags piling up outside the hospital. Over 200,000 saw this video before it was taken down. In another video he had posted, he urged the people, “Citizens resist, Hand back power to the people.”[ii]
And then Fang Bin received an unexpected visit from the state police, dressed in hazmat suits took him away to medical quarantine.
Voices of conscience exists in China, who fight valiantly against a rogue and totalitarian regime, determined to suppress the truth no matter what the cost. Normally, Fang Bin is a shy person, but he could not believe what was happening in his city. He felt compelled to do something and protest. It is believed he and other dissidents are being tortured and forced to sign a confession that they were guilty of making mischief.[iii]
Our media and politicians must hold the Communist government of China responsible. We cannot look the other way.
As we recall the bravery of people in the past who stood up against rogue regimes from the time of the Exodus and through the Holocaust, let us give support to the modern-day heroes of Communist China who continue to challenge its government by telling the truth of what really happened in China.
NOTES
[i] 1 Samuel 22:17–18.
[ii] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7961571/Whistleblower-arrested-China-secretly-filming-piles-body-bags-coronavirus-hospital.html
[iii] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8233203/Chinas-disappeared-happened-dared-speak-coronavirus.html?ito=facebook_share_article-top&fbclid=IwAR2Bl4wopeYz1uXD5pCCClCLt7wFYUjr5pEFHXpGyNTSrcLlEbEKRpw4SqE
*
Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel is spiritual leader of Temple Beth Shalom in Chula Vista, California. He may be contacted via michael.samuel@sdjewishworld.com