Most of us like to think that, when faced with evil, we would stand up. We imagine using our words or through heroic acts, like the man who tackled a gunman accused of murdering 15 people during a Hanukkah celebration in Australia on Sunday.
But would we? It’s a question I’ve often pondered over the years. Just hours after the Sydney massacre, as I sat in the Colony Theatre on Miami Beach to watch the play “Here There are Blueberries”, I found myself wondering if I’d have the courage to act.
The play is based on real events and tells the story of a mysterious Nazi-era photo album that arrives at the desk of a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum archivist in 2007. The photos show daily life at the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, except there are no pictures of inmates. Depicted are the lives of camp officers, staff and their families as they carried on, tasting fresh blueberries, socializing and enjoying an SS vacation hut a few miles from where more than 1 millions Jews and others were killed…