Let’s review from the last couple of posts. Acts of resistance, and especially acts of violent resistance, did not happen in a vacuum in the Second World War. Occupation and resistance were a political and community struggle. Anything resisters did could have a negative impact on the community because of the occupation policy of holding the community responsible for all members, specifically any resisters.

Resisters, therefore, had to think not only of the blow they wanted to make against the German occupier but of how the occupier would retaliate against the community. In the starkest terms, they had to decide if killing a certain officer would make a big enough impact to justify the predictable execution of 50 local men in reprisal.

Of course, most resistance was non-violent and for the most part it was the resisters themselves who paid the price. Dutch-Paris, for example, did not cause any collateral damage to anyone. Almost 70 members of Dutch-Paris were arrested. Most of those were tortured. Many of them were deported to the concentration camps and 14 died in German custody. So I’m not saying that it wasn’t dangerous to rescue the persecuted from the Nazis. I’m only saying that the men and women who chose to rescue the persecuted were not risking bringing reprisals down on the community.

That’s how it turned out in the end. But they didn’t know for sure that they wouldn’t be causing trouble to others during the occupation. For example, think back two posts to the hospital in the Pyrenees. The resisters kidnapped a patient (with the full cooperation of the patient, who wanted to get out of there). They had no way of knowing for sure that the Germans wouldn’t get angry enough to decide to arrest and deport the hospital staff for allowing it to happen. It was impossible for civilians to know what the Germans would do and it was entirely within the realm of possibility that they would arrest the doctors and administrators.

Every single time that resisters, even the non-violent humanitarian sort who were rescuing the persecuted, asked anybody to cooperate in any way, they were putting that person in danger. Unless that person charged a high price to cooperate. Then that person took all the responsibility for themselves.

There was a fine mental and moral balancing act to resistance. You had to consider the task at hand. What might happen to you were caught or left behind a clue. But you also had to consider what might happen in the community because of what you did.