What the Dutch Teach Us About Resistance

For a long time I had eagerly looked forward to visiting the Anne Frank House, to see “the secret annex” where young Anne, her family and several others hid from the Nazis for two long, frightening years until they were discovered and taken to death camps.

But I hadn’t realized, until I finally made it to Amsterdam last week, that brave heroes such as the people who hid the Franks teach us an important lesson about resistance today in Trump’s repressive America.

Anne’s father Otto, who unlike his wife Edith and his daughters Anne and Margot, survived the camps and oversaw publication of Anne’s poignant diary, said something that still resonates. His words are featured prominently on a wall outside the house that is now a museum: “We cannot change what happened anymore. The only thing we can do is to learn from the past and realize what discrimination and persecution of innocent people means. I believe that it’s everyone’s responsibility to fight prejudice.”

Indeed, the young tour guide who introduced us to the historical background of the Anne Frank story before we began the tour concluded his presentation by reminding us we all have a duty to fight the injustice and prejudice we see around us today.

During our week in Holland my wife and I also went to the Resistance Museum in Amsterdam. We learned about the many non-Jewish citizens who were strong and courageous in challenging the oppressive Nazi occupiers of the Netherlands. But we also were told about the many residents who were weak and afraid. They did nothing to resist Hitler’s murderous madness.

Our friends who are living in Amsterdam this year took us to another former hiding place for Jewish people, a site that is not nearly as famous as the Anne Frank House but is equally inspiring. In the town of Haarlem sits the Corrie ten Boom House. She worked with her father, Casper ten Boom and other family members to hide rotating groups of Jews and non-Jewish members of the resistance movement in a small space behind a false wall in an upstairs bedroom. The ten Boom family saved nearly 800 lives.

Eventually the ten Boom family members were arrested by the Nazis, who learned the family was helping Jews. But those in the attic were not discovered. Corrie survived the concentration camp and went on to be a famous public speaker and writer.

A sign near the end of the house tour asks: “Peace and freedom — what is it worth?”

I had not intended to buy anything at the gift shop in the Anne Frank House; somehow I thought it would be tacky to buy a souvenir there. (I do of course own “Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl.”) But as I perused the books section I came across the graphic (illustrated) version of “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century.” The original book was published in 2017, and the graphic edition, with illustrations by Nora Krug, followed four years later.

The author is Timothy Snyder. He is a professor of history and public affairs at Yale University and lives in my neighborhood in New Haven. The coincidence of finding my neighbor’s book at the Anne Frank House moved me to buy it, especially since it’s so clearly relevant to America today and I have not read the original “On Tyranny.” But of course I’ve been hearing it cited more and more often. You know why.

“This book presents twenty lessons from the twentieth century, adopted to the circumstances of today,” Snyder wrote in his prologue.

Lesson number one: “Do not obey in advance.” Snyder uses the example of how Germans in the 1930s allowed Hitler to seize more and more power. And then Hitler took advantage of limited resistance in the countries he invaded, such as Austria. When Austrian Jews were forced to scrub the streets, ”crucially, people who were not Nazis looked on with interest and amusement.”

Lesson number two: “Defend institutions.” Snyder notes institutions “fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about — a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union — and take its side.”

Lesson number three: “Beware the one-party state.” Doesn’t it feel now that we are living in one? Snyder: “American democracy must be defended from Americans who would exploit its freedoms to bring about its end.”

Lesson number eight: “Stand out.” Snyder: “It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.”

Lesson number ten: “Believe in truth.” Snyder: “To abandon facts it to abandon freedom.” Of course Trump is working to make this happen every day.

Lesson number fifteen: “Contribute to good causes.”

Lesson number sixteen: “Learn from peers in other countries.” Snyder: “Make sure you and your family have passports…It is liberating, since it creates the possibility of new experiences. It allows us to see how other people, sometimes wiser than we, react to similar problems. We must observe and listen.”

Lesson number seventeen: “Listen for dangerous words.” Yes — listen to what Trump and his backers are saying. Snyder notes that in 2020 Trump told an average of 27 lies every day. And his lies continue to pile up, often unchallenged.

The final lesson, number twenty: “Be as courageous as you can.” Snyder’s warning: “If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.”

We New Haveners have been so proud to have Timothy Snyder living in our city. But on the day I returned to New Haven from Amsterdam I learned Snyder had just announced he is leaving Yale to teach at the University of Toronto and to speak out there, in a safer place, against fascism and threats to free speech.

Accompanying Snyder to the University of Toronto will be his wife, Marci Shore, and Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley.

“I love Yale,” Stanley told his anguished students. “But Marci, Tim and I, we’re gonna go defend democracy somewhere else.”

What a loss to New Haven, to Yale and to America. But we know they won’t be silenced. Neither should we who remain here to join the resistance.