Entrance to the Secret Annex
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Matthew 5: 14-16 NRSVue
Yesterday was the anniversary of the Frank family going into hiding from the Nazis in the Netherlands in1942. They wore many layers of clothing and took a bag each with family items. The movable bookcase hid the entrance to the Annex where several other Jews hid with them. Eventually all were discovered and Anne and her sister, Margot, both teens, died not long before the end of World War II in a concentration camp.
I wrote about the exceptional series, A Small Light, which is now on Disney. It is a multi-episode drama about the heroic Miep Gies, one of Otto Frank's employees, who worked with her husband, Jan, and others to supply this hidden group and keep them safe for more than two years. She also retrieved Anne's diary after they were arrested and eventually returned it to her father.
At no point in the series is there any real mention of religion or faith, even though the Franks and those with them were Jewish. Yet along the way Miep Gies, who died just short of her 101st birthday, gave her perspective on what they did:
“I don't like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others.” “I am afraid that if people feel that I am a very special person, a sort of heroine, they may doubt whether they will do the same I once did.” “But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room.” “We did our duty as human beings: helping people in need.”
As I wrote before, this brought to mind the words of Jesus, the Jew, as he spoke to a group of peasants about how we can be salt and light wherever we are. We watched the series, week by week, knowing what the outcome would be but wanting it be different. We were moved by the final episode -- all of them, really.
Thank God, for all the "small light" people during the war, including many Christians. Their bravery and witness is a call to courage for all of us.
2 comments:
I have just finished reading "The Dressmakers of Auschwitz", the true story of Jewish women who managed to stay alive at that dark place, by using their sewing skills, to make clothing for the wives and children of the Nazi leaders - often using the materials from clothing taken from the Jews who were sent to the gas chambers. The little things they did to encourage each other, to stay alive and be ready to tell the true stories of the Nazi cruelties, were examples of being salt and light for each other. The details in the stories make you realize just how horrific the treatment of the Jews was in Nazi Germany. I had to read it in the daytime often, because bedtime reading would result in nightmares !
It was and is a horror story, Judy, and one we can't forget, as painful as it is to be reminded.
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