I was a nerdy child, and history interested me more than anything. I remember watching a documentary series when I was very small (a history of WW2, called The World at War) that really changed my thinking about what history was. Instead of being a “top-down” history full of politicians and Generals and dates of battles, it was full of interviews with ordinary people who lived through the events of the war. And out of the everyday experiences – sometimes apparently small and insignificant – of ordinary people, it told the story of WWII from the “bottom-up”.
Probably I was too young to understand a lot of what I was watching, and I’ve certainly forgotten a lot more in the 30+ years since the series aired. But I’ve always remembered one interview in particular from the series, and I’ve been thinking a lot about it in the last few days.
The interview was from the episode describing life in the Netherlands under German occupation. It presented the reminiscences of a Dutch factory foreman who had always been appalled by the Nazis’ racial thinking, and went back to work after the occupation began with some trepidation about how life would change now they were in charge. He recalled how the first test he faced came when he was presented with a form to fill in, requiring him to list how many of his colleagues were Jewish.
As the foreman looked at the paper and wondered what to do with it, it dawned on him that actually – as far as he knew – none of his colleagues were Jewish. You could tell what a relief that realization had been for him, and how glad he had been to be able to write “zero” in the “how many Jews” column and return the form without having gotten anybody into trouble. But at that point in the interview, the foreman suddenly stopped. He said “of course, I shouldn’t have done it…”. He was overcome with emotion, and struggled to get out the next words, “I shouldn’t have filled out the form at all”.
I remember that at that point in the program, I didn’t have a clue what was going on. As a child, this all seemed really odd; first, because it was unusual to see a grownup crying, and second because it seemed to me that he hadn’t harmed anybody because he hadn’t ratted anybody out. I think I understood that he was saying something important – otherwise why would the memory of that interview have stayed with me all this time – but it must have been years before I really understood what that something was.
That Dutch foreman was saying that the only principled answer when the occupation authorities asked him “How many Jews work here?” was: “It’s none of your business how many Jews work here.” To provide a number in answer to the question – even when that number was zero – was to accept the premise upon which the question was based, i.e. that it was legitimate to differentiate between his workers on ethnic/religious grounds. For someone who claimed he rejected the Nazis’ racial categories, writing “zero” in the “How many Jews?” column was no less a moral failure than writing “One”, or “Ten”, or “One hundred”.
The foreman didn’t offer any excuses for what he’d done. He could have said “at least no-one got hurt”, or “I had no choice”, or that it was just a small thing that didn’t really matter in the wider context of what was going on around him. But he didn’t claim that. He knew this was not a small thing. He had been confident of his moral principles, but as soon as they were tested, he’d immediately chosen the path of least resistance. He knew he’d failed to live up to what he’d said were his fundamental beliefs, and 30 years later he was still tortured by the completeness of his failure.
I’m sure the reason I’ve been thinking about this lately is that we have seen so much of the same kind of failure in the way that people have responded to the use of racism in the current election campaign, culminating most blatantly in the defaming of Rashid Khalidi. We talk all the time about America the melting pot, where all men are created equal, etc etc, but time and again over the last few weeks we have – with a few notable exceptions – shown how empty our rhetoric is. Time and again some nutjob has screeched of Obama, “He’s a Muslim!” or “He’s an Arab!”, and the ensuing hysteria has focused on whether he’s really an Arab or Muslim, rather than challenging the underlying premise of the accusation, i.e. that being Muslim or Arab is some kind of defect that naturally disqualifies someone from holding office.
When Obama was accused of being Muslim, we insisted "No no, it’s OK, he’s a Christian", when the correct answer is, "In fact, he’s a Christian; but if he were a Muslim, so what?"
When Obama was accused of being an Arab, the response was: "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen..."; when the correct answer should have been, “Actually, he’s not Arab-American; but if he were, why shouldn’t he run for President?”
And when Obama was accused of consorting with terrorists because of his acquaintance with Rashid Khalidi, people defended him by saying that "McCain does it too" or complained that the accusation was "guilt by association". And that's the worst answer of all, because it reinforces rather than challenges the underlying premise that there is some guilt in being associated with an Arab or a Muslim or a Palestinian.
That Dutch foreman could have offered all sorts of excuses for his behavior, though he had the decency not to try. What excuse do Americans – living in an incomparably easier setting - have? Nothing’s going to happen to us that could have happened to him. Nobody’s going to arrest us, deport us or kill us for doing the right thing, but time and again we’re being tested in small ways over whether we believe in our alleged principles, and we happily jettison them quicker than you can say E pluribus unum.
Photo: Protestor at a campaign stop in Toledo Ohio, by Brett Marty (via Crooks and Liars).