"They Were Our Neighbors"
A few years ago, Dan and I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, where there was a special exhibit entitled, "They Were Our Neighbors." Holocaust survivors voices told their stories of how their Christian neighbors, people with whom they shared meals, the highs and lows of life, whose children went to school and played together, turned them over to the Nazis with a ring of the doorbell. "Are the people who live next door to you Jewish?" "Yes, they are." This story has haunted me for years. I have long wondered how I might have reacted if I was the Catholic Pole living next door to the Jewish Pole, and had heard from friends and family that if I didn't give up my Jewish neighbor, me and mine would be taken into custody by the Nazis along with the neighborhood Jewish families. Could I have stood strong by their side? Would it have been considered caving in if my choice was to protect my family in lieu of theirs? I'm writing about this...