Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 02 2005 @ 08:41 PM CDT

the choice to join the Hitler Youth was not very free. One of my friends' father was in school in Munich, Germany one day in the fall of 1939. He was 12 years old, and the UK and the Allies had just declared war on Germany, in response to the German invasion of Poland. Anyhow, three Nazis came to his class, who were representatives of the local Hitler Youth chapter. They were popular kids at the school, and one of them gave a little speech, and then said "All patriotic German youth must step forward and join the Hitler Youth!" So you can imagine what happened, if you'll recall what the US was like on the day after 9/11 ... All of the kids in the class stepped forward, all except for one little girl who was a Jehovah's Witness. The next day, the little girl was not in class, and in fact she was not seen for the next five years, until one day in 1944 she was seen walking in the streets in Munich. No one would talk to her, at least where they could be seen doing so. She had just returned from a five year stay in Dachau. Imagine that - she lived in the notorious concentration camp and survived, from the time she was 12 years old until she was 17. Of course, everybody in the class, everybody in the school knew exactly what had happened, but no one talked because they were afraid. And because of things like this, the great majority of people went along with the Nazis and very few resisted in any significant way.

If you or your child faced a similar choice, what, really would you do? Knowing the consequences of resistance and their immediacy, would you choose to resist or would you go along? If you knew that your decision would put your family and friends in grave danger, would you choose to resist? Knowing that 95% of people would call you a traitor (just like right after 9/11) and you would suffer for it, wouldn't you prefer to take the easier way out?

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