The taz,Germany’s left-wing daily newspaper, reports from a high-profile conference in honor of those who either refused to follow orders to murder Jews or otherwise supported them when they went into hiding in the Third Reich. These people constituted a tiny minority:
Eighteen million Germans faught for the Wehrmacht during the Second World War, but only about one hundred of them are known to have actively helped the persecuted Jews… Among the civilian population things did not look much better. It is estimated that twenty to thirty thousand people stood up for the persecuted by providing them with food, shelter or false identification. More than sixty million did not.
The activities of this small minority were long ignored, in part because they inconveniently troubled the foundational myth of the German successor states that nothing much could be done against the nazis, so don’t you go blaming us. Now researchers are taking a look at these personal stories of resistance—and are troubled once more! This time, in seeking out models of Zivilcourage—a somewhat annoying concept that roughly translates as “civic virtue”—the researchers are finding that the resisters rarely embodied the kinds of virtues they seek. “Many of the helpers came from socially marginalized groups, for instance prostitutes or petty criminals,” and their motives were often “immoral.” Often they were not selfless but rather derived questionable pleasures from the help they provided. The conference participants concluded that today’s youth should not be taught to emulate these “bad” people; rather, they should learn “fundamental values” so they could “find themselves” (seriously!).
The article made me think of Thad Russell’s wonderful book A Renegade History of the United States, in which he argues that the people that did the most to advance what freedoms contemporary Americans enjoy were “bad” people—”drunkards, prostitutes, ‘shiftless’ slaves and white slackers, criminals, juvenile delinquents, brazen homosexuals, and others who operated beneath American society.” These people did not embody the esteemed virtues of good democratic citizens or what Russell calls an “ethic of sacrifice,” and as a consequence, they did more than anybody to enlarge the realm of freedom. Russell gives a quick overview of his revisionist argument in this video.
Clearly, more if this kind of revisionism is needed. It’s time for a renegade history of the resistance movement.
