Racing Turtles

”[Denmark] is the only case we know of in which the Nazis met with open native resistance, [and] the result seems to have been that those exposed to it changed their minds. They themselves apparently no longer looked upon the extermination of a whole people as a matter of course. They had met resistance based on principle, and their ‘toughness’ had melted like butter in the sun; they had even been able to show a few timid beginnings of genuine courage.

That the ideal of ‘toughness’…was nothing but a myth of self-deception, concealing a ruthless desire for conformity at any price, was clearly revealed at the Nuremberg Trials, where the defendants accused and betrayed each other and assured the world that they ‘had always been against it’–or claimed, as Eichmann was to do, that their best qualities had been ‘abused’ by their superiors. (In Jerusalem, he accused ‘those in power’ of having abused his ‘obedience.’) …The atmosphere had changed, and although most of them must have known that they were doomed, not a single one of them had the guts to defend the Nazi ideology.”

I want everyone to go read that link about Danish resistance, please, because it’s a very good example of what to emphasize:

Yes, PLEASE read up on Denmark. the link is short & super basic, but gives a solid overview.

As a descendant of resistance members I do not want you all to get this twisted:

It came to blows. Often. There were shoot outs and people had guns. My family stored many of those guns. They sabotaged everything. And they bombed their offices, usually when no-one was in them. These were thousands of communists and anarchists and farmers and random working class folks and they had rifles. Publicly shaming people who associated with the Nazis was a big part of it too and just making life difficult for them on a day-to-day…

Denmark is the only country honored collectively at Yad Vashem as the “righteous among the nations.”