“I am not a hero. I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more—much more—during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.

More than twenty thousand Dutch people helped to hide Jews and others in need of hiding during those years. I willingly did what I could to help. My husband did as well. It was not enough.” (from the prologue of from the prologue of Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies.)

Gies’ book is not new, but it is one of those to which I return. I even like holding it in my hands and looking at the name of the woman whose journey it reveals: Miep Gies.

Miep is the woman who, with her husband Jan Gies, helped hide Anne Frank from the Nazis. Like so many young Jewish girls growing up, I was more than a little obsessed with stories from the Holocaust, especially The Diary of Anne Frank.

When she wrote in her diary, she was only a bit older than I was when I read the book, so I walked in her shoes. It certainly didn’t seem long enough ago to not think about her as me and me as her.

Was there a Jewish child growing up anywhere in the world who didn’t think what if? Some, I imagine, averted their thoughts from the events of WWII and pretended it was all as far away as the Roman Empire. Others went through life compulsively reading about it, breathing the lives of those who’d lived through it and those who had lost their lives.

On top of the apparent victims, there were the other victims—those forced to witness the atrocity, those who participated. They, too, were victims. After visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and paraphrasing here, I remembered most deeply the audio-taped words of a survivor. In speaking about his experience in a concentration camp, he related a story of being berated by a fellow internee for praying.

“Why are you thanking God?” he was asked.

“I am thanking him for not making me him,” the man said, pointing to a guard.

It is a horror without relief to have been an enslaved person, a concentration camp internee, and a victim in Darfur. To be a Palestinian today. So many places where hate reigns.

It is another horror to have been the victimizer.

Books like this always make me wonder, given the circumstances, which side I would end up on. We read the books, watch the movies, and assume we’d have the courage of the righteous, but I believe it bears remembering how beyond brave people like Miep Gies had to be and if there are Mieps and Jans out there today.

God forbid we need them. Given the circumstances, would we follow their path?

Today, reading about Project 2025 and listening to all those vowing to make the United States into a stronghold of Christian Nationalism, I worry for us all. This is why I post repeatedly, far beyond what some might want me to do about the election and more (and yes, I’d rather be posting garden pictures, skin tips, and about my upcoming novel and novels I’d read).

We’re not shouting into an echo chamber.

We’re giving each other strength, courage, and fortitude.

We’re building a bulwark against evil.

Because we should worry about what Trump learned from Hitler.

I worry if we give in to the temptation (and strong it is) to think, “This too shall pass,” we could find ourselves in the company of other good people in countries led by bad people. We’ve heard it so much we risk ignoring it; no one would have believed that Germans would end up building ovens to burn us.

I worry we will become inured to hearing politicians talking about “immigrants taking Black and Hispanic jobs,” banning books, and taking hard-won civil rights from groups not straight, white, and Christian. I worry not so much about being Jewish (though I do—I fear for my family, who are gay and trans, who are not White, who believe in rights for all, and who want nothing more than the freedom to love as they love, be as they are, and worship as they see fit.

I think of Miep Gies.

And pray that we all have enough Miep Gies to vote in a way that protects the fewer within the many.

Who among us can afford nit-picking at a time when one of the presidential candidates should make all of us shudder at the prospect of losing our rights—the rights of our neighbors?

Let us hope that we will not have a future museum with one saying, “I am thanking God for not making me him,”

Let’s not think of it as an echo chamber but as a line of good people forming a circle of Mieps and Jans.

This could be our moment; let’s not take a chance on finding out the cost if we don’t form that circle.