An old friend of mine said something profound this summer. The lock down had been lifted here in Michigan, so it was possible to move about, although many public gathering spaces were still closed, including theaters, gyms, bowling alleys and banquet halls. Restaurants and cafes were allowed to be open with tables spread far apart, preferably outside. Everyone was required to wear a mask inside any public place as well as outside if the place was crowded.

My friend and I were sitting outside talking, a good 50 yards from the nearest other human being. She said: “I know this isn’t as bad as a war. But at least during a war you could go to a show or have dinner with friends.” Meaning that during a war you didn’t have to be alone in the face of disaster. You could be with other people, even if it was the anonymous togetherness of an audience experiencing the same show together.

And of course it would be much, much worse to be a civilian in a war zone. How about for a civilian not in a war zone but in a quiet, backwater occupation zone during a war? You would have to be very specific about time and place, but you could probably make an argument either way.

I can tell you for certain, though, that Dutch-Paris could not have done their rescue work in 2020’s conditions of social distancing and isolation. They relied on face to face communication in crowded cafes or sidewalks.  They bought downed Allied aviators tickets to the movies to hide them in public while waiting for the next train on the route.  They relied on being able to hide themselves and the fugitives they were helping in the crowds in train stations. They relied on there being a lot of other people around so that the presence of any particular person, let alone a stranger, was not cause for remark.

Of course my friend was thinking that the social isolation of the pandemic makes a difficult situation harder to bear. She wasn’t thinking about how that same social isolation makes resistance to an authoritarian regime much more difficult because it severs the opportunities for the like-minded to find each other and to act. But she was right about both.