Remembering the Resistance

Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA) died today. Aside from the fact that he was the representative of my hometown of San Mateo since I was, like, eleven, he had the distinction of being the only member of Congress who was a Holocaust survivor. He also was (after escaping twice from German camps) part of the Hungarian resistance. The Nazi resistance movements have been underdocumented, so I'm dedicating my blog today to the people who knowingly and actively made the right choices.

I recently ordered an out-of-print Dutch film starring Rutger Hauer called "Soldier of Orange" (1979). It was $70 and only available on VHS and had poor sound quality at that. Why sit through a 2 1/2 hour epic of the Dutch students/Nazi resisters? In fact, my late father was a member of the Dutch resistance. He was a undergraduate, in fact, the student body president, and later a law student, at the University of Leiden, as was the protagonist of SOO. Based on the autobiography of Erik Hazelhoff, the film has details which I only knew by virtue of stories my father told us. If only now, I could ask if they knew each other. It's kind of wierd that Rutger Hauer looks a little bit like my grandfather, too.

So, I'm documenting the resistance. My grandmother Ella, shown here resting on the deck of a ship, was on a trip with my great-grandmother Jenny from the Dutch East Indies (later Indonesia) to Germany, as it was 1935, and Hitler was calling all Germans back to the homeland. (Nazi culture and means of enforcement were quickly crystallizing.) Ella and Jenny decided that they didn't want any part of what was happening in Germany and returned to their family back in southeast Asia. Phew!

There are many more resistance stories in my family. And I'm sure this would surprise none of my close friends. Thank goodness my dad was a record-keeper and storyteller.