Yesterday, Y.B. wrote a remembrance of Lothar Kreyssig, a German judge who defied the Nazis. Kreyssig didn’t succeed in halting their genocidal plans, but he lived — and lived a good, meaningful life.
Unconsciously, it seems to have become part of modern myth that nobody, but nobody, in Germany openly defied the Nazis. Sure, people all over Europe covertly defied them in ways large and small. And partisans outside of Germany took up arms against them, attacking and fading into the woods. Finally, even the most downtrodden captives in Sobibor and Warsaw openly defended themselves against their monstrous tormentors.
But ordinary “Aryan” Germans? We’re so unaccustomed to thinking of them defying their rulers that “good German” remains a term of contempt 70 years after the fact.
But defy they did, even if it was rare and dangerous. Another example, besides Kreyssig’s refusal to give an official stamp to deadly eugenics, was the Rosenstrasse protest, in which “Aryan” wives laid their lives on the line to save their Jewish husbands.
The wives won. Some 1800 Jewish men were saved. Today, there’s a monument at the site of the protest that carries this inscription: “The strength of civil disobedience, the vigor of love overcomes the violence of dictatorship; Give us our men back; Women were standing here, defeating death; Jewish men were free.”
The wives not only saved their husbands. They revealed a weakness in the Nazi regime (that also applies to many tyrants in our day): even the worst brutes on earth squirm and cringe when the light of bad publicity shines on them.
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Germans also committed more acts of covert defiance than we give them credit for. A great example is a story that got quite a bit of coverage last year (two good versions here and here).
A German photographer, asked to submit entries for a Nazi-sponsored “perfect Aryan baby” contest, submitted the photo of a child he knew to be Jewish. Her adorable picture beat the rest of the competition and was printed on magazine covers and postcards.
The photographer didn’t ask the family’s permission and his act potentially put both them and himself in danger. At the time, the child’s parents were horrified. But today that baby (now known as Hessy Taft and a professor of chemistry in New York) says she’s quite proud to have been part of the deception.
The photographer wanted to prove that the Nazis were fools — and he succeeded wildly, even though he had to keep his victory and his laughter to himself.
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Just think how different, and how much less deadly, 20th century history might have been had even more “good Germans” showed their courage, anger, contempt, and love of decency and refused to be so “good.”
