A few weeks ago, there was a video of Richard Spencer, a self-proclaimed white supremacist*, being interviewed on his views when someone comes up and cold-cocks him in the head. Many liberals gleefully passed it along on social media, crowing over this asshole getting his. Predictably, conservatives denounced the action, and even some liberals tsk-tsked, saying that violence was not the answer. A debate raged on Twitter whether it was OK to punch a Nazi in the face or not.
Around the same time, the story of two Dutch sisters who were part of the resistance as teenagers was also circulating around the interwebs. They were recruited to be part of the resistance because it was believed that no one would think teenage girls were part of the resistance. Truus and Freddie Oversteegen were 16 and 14 respectively when they joined the resistance. Can you imagine doing such a thing at that age? If they were caught, they would most certainly have been imprisoned or killed. Their family had been hiding Jews before this, and their mother readily agreed to let them join the resistance. Truus, the older girl, would flirt with Nazi collaborators and invite them for a stroll in the woods while Freddie, the younger sister, would keep an eye out on her sister. Once Truus and the collaborator went into the woods, one of men of the resistance would fabricate an excuse to shoo Truus away before shooting the Nazis. There was no push back to this story, and rightly so. These girls were very brave and heroes, and they should be remembered as such.
The thing is, though, we have the luxury of knowing the outcome to the second story. We know the Nazis were horrible people and did terrible things, so any story of ordinary people resisting them is something to be celebrated. However, I’m sure there were plenty of people at the time who would have been horrified and/or scared if they’d known. It’s not as clear in the moment what is the right or wrong thing to do. I bring it up because all the people right now who are saying violence is not the answer and that we should talk to white supremacists in hope of changing their minds probably would have been saying the same thing back then.
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