Have you heard of Corrie ten Boom? During WWII, she and her family worked with the resistance and hid Jews from the Nazis in the Netherlands. A fellow Dutch turned them in and were arrested for it. Her father and sister died in the camps. Their heroism saved at least 800 Jewish lives.
I was recently visiting family, and my niece was excited to show me a video she owned about Corrie and her family. Her parents are evangelical Christians, and they have bought multiple animated films about historical Christian figures. These films have a heavy-handed moral in each one, though the overarching theme is to lay your life in God’s hands and He will provide.
She slid the film into the DVD/Blu-ray player and three generations of family watched. Yes, this video is for children, so the horror of WWII and concentration camps was muted, but the sense of helplessness abounded, even when the characters extolled one another to put their faith in God, which was supposed to make them feel less impotent and abandoned. Towards the end, the horror was especially glossed over, when Corrie was set free and the Jewish women loaded onto trucks headed towards death. The focus became Corrie gathering her things and walking out the door to the camp, not what was going to happen to the other people she had been captives with for several years. The ending, where a Dutch man who helped the Germans was forgiven for his role in the torture and death of others, was very unsatisfying. It is a children’s film, however, one that promotes God’s forgiveness, so it did not surprise me they had a tidy ending to wrap things up.
Three generations of our family watched a story about German atrocities and how those in other countries abetted them and willingly harmed others because of hate. The adults in the room murmured how horrible, how devastating. How could the German people have supported such things? How could Dutch people have supported the Nazis? How could ANYONE support such things?
Then Fox News was turned on. And the older generation began to talk. They talked about the border, and the thousands of dirty brown men who cross it, how they infested barns and sheds of hapless landowners, sniffing around for something to steal and sell, so they could get money to flee further into the country. They talked about how our concentration camps are not concentration camps, and our treatment of the vulnerable is just fine because they don’t believe the cages are cages. They know the scary brown men are locked up, and that is good. They deserve their cages. They shouldn’t be here. They are drug dealers and rapists, and need to be sent back to their God-forsaken countries so they don’t contaminate the pristine shores of America.
Children in cages? Women in cages? The sickness, the dying? Nonexistent.
My question? And what, pray tell, would they have done if they had lived in the Netherlands during WWII? Would they have followed the German sympathizers in the Netherlands and helped send Jews to torture and death? Would they have helped hide Jews, as the ten Booms did, even if it meant incarceration and death? Would they have shaken their heads and moved on, unwilling to see, unwilling to hear?
The older generation had, just minutes before, bemoaned how the German people did not know about the atrocities conducted in their name. How could they not know? They should have done something!
And these same people don’t believe in Border Patrol cages and American concentration camps.