11/25/2016
Heroes Part I

Not superheroes, but everyday heroes. Like this guy. Check him out. He looks totally ordinary, right?  But he’s not. I don’t even know who he is, but I know he’s not ordinary.  He might even be a hero.

I’ve been obsessed with heroes for a long time, probably since Air Florida flight 90 crashed into the Potomac River one icy January in 1982. The incidents of heroism mentioned in the immediate and retrospective coverage of that accident fascinated me. 

That fascination has expanded to focus on all kinds of everyday heroes: the people who run into burning buildings to rescue strangers, the people who stand up to tyranny, the people who take risks just to serve their communities, the people who risk their health to donate an organ to a stranger.  While I respect and admire professional heroes, like fire fighters and police officers and our military, it’s the amateurs who intrigue me.

What I’ve found in studying altruism is that these different types of heroes seem to have different motivations, different dynamics that drive their behavior.  Let’s begin with the guy above.  Here’s a little context.  

This is a Nazi rally in Hamburg in 1936. See our guy in the yellow circle?  He’s having none of it.  A dangerous and heroic statement of opinion in that time and place.

The photo above is one of the opening shots in Yoav Shamir’s appealing but sometimes disturbing cinematic exploration of “10%: What Makes a Hero”.  While we don’t know anything more about the man in the crowd, we know quite a bit about others like him.

The appalling history of the Holocaust is leavened by tales of individual heroism by ordinary people who had nothing to win and everything to lose, people who risked their lives for Jewish friends and even strangers. There is a special place at the Holocaust Memorial in Israel, the Garden of the Righteous Among Nations, that honors these people.

You probably know some of their names, people like Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg.  Schindler was able to save over 1,200 Jews from certain extermination by employing them in his factories. Wallenberg, a diplomat from Sweden, was able to save tens of thousands of Jews by writing exit visas for them.  Less well known are people like Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, Portuguese consul Aristides de Souse Mendes, and Chinese consul general Ho Feng-Shan, all of whom wrote thousands of exit visas for people they didn’t know and possibly didn’t even understand.  They only knew that people were in danger and that they could help.

Shanghai Jewish Refugees Museum

Side note: The history of the Jews who managed to escape to China, particularly to Shanghai, is fascinating in and of itself. Check it out. 
http://www.gluckman.com/ShanghaiJewsChina.html

But there were many more ordinary people who stepped up to hide Jews, to spirit them away, to keep them safe.  Why would they do this when the risks were so great?

Here’s a few seconds with Arlette Michaelis-de Monceau from Shamir's film. She, along with her parents and sister, aided in the rescue of many Jews. 

Another rescuer said almost the same thing: ''It is something you cannot plan, this horrible adventure with the devil. They came like a tidal wave. When a wave comes over a village, you are lucky to be alive and be able to save people. You do it! You don't sit down and ask, 'Can I do it?' It is part of your body - the will is part of your body - you feel it and you do it.''

Another story:

The people of Le Chambon (located in the southeastern part of France), led by their pastor Andre Trocme, refused to accept the invincibility of evil and brute power. These farmers, peasants and housewives took in Jewish refugees from all over Europe, risking their lives, and the lives of their families, to give protection to thousands of Jews fleeing the Nazis. This is a place where goodness happened.

Pastor Andre Trocme wrote the following in February, 1943:...in the course of the summer we have been able to help about sixty Jewish refugees in our own home; we have hidden them, fed them, plucked them out of deportation groups, and often we have taken them to a safe country You can imagine what struggles—with the authorities—what real dangers this means for us: threats of arrest, submitting to long interrogations...

Magda Trocme, the pastor’s wife, explained why the people of her community risked their lives to protect the Jews: Those of us who received the first Jews did what we thought had to be done—nothing more complicated... How could we refuse them?... The issue was. Do you think we are all brothers or not? Do you think it is unjust to turn in the Jews or not? Then let us try to help!

In the 1980s, two social psychologist, Samuel and Pearl Oliner, determined to uncover what made Holocaust rescuers different from others who were merely bystanders.  They interviewed rescuers, bystanders, and rescued survivors, looking specifically for things that distinguished the rescuers from bystanders.  Some of them are obvious – the rescuers were more likely to have friends who were Jews, for example.  But the overarching finding had to do with religion.

Rescuers were 12 times less likely to practice an authoritarian, paternalistic religion that required Old Testament obedience in the house.  Where religion was practiced, it was a democratic version that stressed the family-of-man rather than holy exclusivity.

This was notable in rescuers different definitions of “us” and “them”. Their “us” was extensive and included lots of people of different religions and beliefs.  And because they were all “us”, it made sense to work to rescue them.

Holocaust rescuers were also equally likely to be men as well as women.  The decision to step up often seemed to be spontaneous, but the long term, highly dangerous act of hiding Jews required a kind of uncommon moral endurance. As the Oliners say in their book,  ''Rescuers point the way. They were and are 'ordinary people.' ''

Doing extraordinary things.