Who is ordinary and who is extraordinary?
Is a farmer ordinary? Is a soldier extraordinary? Is a shepherd a hero? And a Pharoah average?
Today, on International Holocaust Memorial Day, we take note of the ordinary people–some of whom became murderers, and some who became saviours.
Take railway workers for example. Average railway workers, who had followed in their fathers’ footsteps and fixed tracks, and drove trains in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s, were transformed during the war. Who did they become?
Dr. Martin Stern MBE, a Holocaust survivor, recalls the railway workers who loaded people into trucks. He said, ‘And the people loading them in – they were railway men, they didn’t look terribly different from the railway men who check my tickets these days – they looked like ordinary people.’
These railway workers, who looked so ordinary, were indeed simply people from all across Nazi-occupied Europe, working as train drivers, conductors, signal men. Some of these ordinary people were perpetrators, driving Jewish people to concentration camps; some were rescuers, hiding Jews.
Two hundred Lithuanian railway workers murdered more than 60 Jewish men on a farm in August 1941, shooting them into a pit that had been dug by Russian prisoners of war.
Henryk Gawkowski was a conductor who gave testimony to Claude Lanzmann for his film, Shoah. Henryk estimated that he transported approximately 18,000 Jews to Treblinka extermination camp. It is estimated that 800,000 people were murdered at Treblinka. Henryk said that he drank vodka all the time because it was the only way to make his job bearable.
Léon Bronchart was a French railway worker who was made a Righteous Amongst the Nations for helping his Jewish neighbours, hiding a Jew and for refusing to drive a train containing political prisoners.
Marcel Hoffman was one of 24 French railway workers who helped save Jewish children from deportation in September 1942.
Ordinary people sink to their basest selves by forgetting their humanity. Ordinary people become heroes because their humanity overcomes fear or self-interest. These average, run of the mill, people become heroic because they do extraordinary life saving acts of generosity.
Moses started life as just another Hebrew baby wrapped in a dirty cloth. Pharoah was a giant of a man known throughout the empire. Moses became a prince, then fell in status to become a simple shepherd. And there he stayed, until God found him and made him choose to become something more–a leader. The higher in moral stature Moses rose, the more base Pharoah became. Eventually, in this week’s parasha, we see the ordinary Moses rise to be a hero, and Pharoah lose all his power because of his inhumanity to others.
We are all ordinary, simple human beings. Hannah Arendt reminded us that we all have within us the choice to be lesser and baser, or extraordinary. We can turn a blind eye to suffering around us, or we can step up for good. Which will we choose to be this week?
This Shabbat, may all our acts be for the good. May we each be reminded of our power to be extraordinary.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Marcia Plumb
