How to take down a nazi.
Maria is the kind of person you want to be around. I first met her when she was just stepping into her 90’s, right before I stepped out of medicine and into the Great Unknown… my ever shifting life as an artist. I can still see her smile. Perfectly put together, sitting upright on the exam room table with her legs crossed at her ankles and hands folded like rose petals on her lap, she was definitely the sunniest thing in the room. And she oozed peace. Being in her presence was refreshing, calming, and humbling. Any physician or physician extender who is doing their job right knows that, most days, we are learning more from our patients than we are teaching them in return. For me, Maria was no exception to this rule.
I met her during Trump 1.0. I’m not sure what clued her into the fact that I was not pleased with the state of the union with Trump at the helm. I did not talk about politics with my patients unless they asked, and Maria is the kind of polite, wise matriarch who would not offer an unsolicited opinion, either. I do believe, however, that among kind souls there is a knowing that comes with experiencing life, an internal barometer that tells us who is safe and who is not. It’s no surprise, then, that Maria and I began discussing the political climate during one of her check ups.
“He reminds me of Hitler,” Maria said. Her face did not screw up in disgust or redden with anger. She spoke that sentence with a quiet certainty… a knowing. Maria had an accent that I could not place before this conversation, but once those words left her mouth I knew she was speaking from experience.
Maria was 16 years old and living in Holland with her family when the Nazi’s occupied her village. Her dad made mattresses for a living, and every day he would load them up on a cart and take them to the larger town to sell. Maria went with him. During the Nazi occupation, the main bridge Maria and her father had to cross was controlled by Nazi soldiers who inspected every car, buggy, and person traveling the bridge to make sure that they were not smuggling contraband (read: Jews). They were heavily armed. If you disobeyed, your fate was pretty abysmal.
Maria is telling me this story, and we are eye to eye. So I can really SEE her. I can see the inflections on her face and the way the light dances in her eyes with each word. She does not shy away from my gaze (even with my jaw on the floor at this point). And she does not get overly emotional. She is calm. Peaceful. I, on the other hand, am a ball of emotions. I can’t believe that I am actually talking to someone who experienced this part of human history. I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum in DC, I’ve read Anne Frank’s diary and Night by Elie Wiesel. I was mildly obsessed with the horrors of the holocaust as a child. But all of those things were just experiences documented by people I had never met and cameras I had never held. Maria was real. I could touch her. I WAS touching her. And she was sharing her story with ME.
During Trump 2.0, I have read a lot… and I mean A LOT… of articles about what is happening in our country. The parallels to Mein Kampfand Hitler’s agenda playing out with the current regime are hard to ignore, and yet still I wonder if this is really happening. Am I just making this up? No, I don’t think so. Is this fascist coup (let’s call it what it is folks) intentionally crafted out of Nazi Germany’s playbook? Possibly. And the most important question of all… what the *insert f word* can I do about it? The past few weeks have been a swirling cesspool of shock, disbelief, primal rage, more shock, and paralyzing apathy. I want to stop it, but how? I want to charge forward with my sword drawn, but where? I want to help folks at risk, but who? There are so many and I am just one person. And I’m really TIRED. Meanwhile the blitzkrieg from Washington continues at a dizzying pace. Am I even cut out to be an activist? And if so, where do I start? I’m really not a “front lines” type of gal, and I don’t believe in fighting anger and fear with more anger and fear. I ask myself again and again, “who do I want to be and how do I want to show up?” The answer is slow to come.
Then, I remember Maria… the sweet, unassuming, perfectly and humbly put together Dutch woman who sat on my exam table a few years ago. When faced with actual Nazi’s and their guns every single day as a teenage girl, while her Jewish neighbors starved, Maria smuggled potatoes. And carrots. And anything else she could fit in her oversized coat while she crossed over that bridge with her dad and his mattresses. A quiet, under-the-radar resistance that was way more effective than going toe-to-toe with Joe Nazi. She risked her life to feed her family and her neighbors, and the Nazi’s were none the wiser.
Let us not underestimate the power of a quiet rebellion. Sometimes flying under the radar is more powerful than coming out with guns ablaze. Perhaps the way to truly take down a Nazi is with focused love and acts of quiet bravery, like playing dumb with a coat full of carrots. Maria survived and helped others survive too in a way that worked for her. And ultimately I think this is where I am landing. I am taking action in ways that help others while honoring and protecting myself, too. I am cleaning up my personal and professional space and aligning with businesses who value integrity, diversity, equality, inclusion, and creativity. I am quietly supporting individuals and groups who need it. I am smuggling potatoes (and the occasional middle finger) under my coat. And I am carrying Maria’s smile in my back pocket for the days when I cannot make it off the couch, as a reminder that rest is important and rebellions can happen in the quiet moments, too. One carrot at a time.
