Support means a lot at this time

After my exercise class at the YMCA today, a woman in the class came up to me and asked, “How are you doing with the graffiti business?” Then she said, “This is not the way we are. If there are any activities for showing support, please let me know.”

I was surprised and moved; she was the first non-Jewish person to make such an offer to me.

The Ottawa defacing is small in the big picture, just as her reaching out was a small and gracious gesture. But it is significant.

This is Holocaust Education Month in Ottawa. Recently, I spoke to Louis-Philippe Mendes, the grandson of the hero portrayed in the movie Disobedience, showing in Ottawa Nov. 27 for Holocaust Education Month. Aristides de Sousa Mendes was the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France, in 1940, confronted with the reality of thousands of refugees outside the Portuguese consulate attempting to escape Nazi horrors.

They desperately needed visas to get out of France, and a Portuguese visa would allow them safe passage through Spain to Lisbon, where they would be free to travel to other parts of the globe.

Aristides de Sousa Mendes’s act of heroism was in choosing to defy Circular 14 denying safe haven to refugees, and to follow his conscience instead.

Sousa Mendes issued some 30,000 visas, including about 10,000 to Jews, over a few days. This heroic feat was characterized by Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer as “the largest rescue action by a single individual during the Holocaust.”

For his act of defiance Sousa Mendes was severely punished, stripped of his diplomatic position and forbidden from earning a living.

“Screening the movie, I wonder what would my grandparents say about what is going on in the world today,” Mendes said to me. “They would say ‘how can we help people?’ the same way my grandfather himself was able to emerge from all those barriers… Personally, I think we can turn our heads or we can look into these scary situations where you need to take a stand, and become an activist.”

A small gesture, an unturned head, means a lot. Louise Rachlis, Ottawa