… in the flavour of 2026 so far. A part of me wants to make dark January jokes, but I recently don’t wish for easy escape routes anymore, so let’s get real. This new year has made me reflect on a notion about history that in the past I have sometimes struggled with.
Born and raised in Germany in the 1990s, there’s a rather individualistic view on history that I was exposed to quite a lot.
I remember my history teacher telling us about a secretary preventing the third world war from breaking loose by simply not connecting a call to Stalin in time (does this ring a bell to you? I never found a source on this specific one). When learning about the horrors of the holocaust, we explicitly read about those that refused to follow orders without serious consequences to sensibilize us for the choices one might have to make. You might lose position and be paid less, but at least didn’t murder people personally. Not so long ago, I watched the film “Bornholmerstraß”, which features the first border policeman of the GDR who decided not to shoot people trying to get through in 1989 anymore – you see a pattern here.
It’s about individuals making the right choice and thus probably not following orders.
Of course there are layers to his. While the secretary (if she ever existed) sounds badass, refusing to kill people while genocide is already fully taking place is probably a bit late – but still. This was a view on history, a narrative, that we got used to. And I sometimes found it oddly individualistic.
I wondered whether it made sense to view history as this individualistic endeavour. Because seriously, if I decided not to murder someone already imprisoned, the next person will do it, so nobody was saved. The secretary catching that one phone call (presumably), still did not stop mass deportations and labour camps. And the border policeman had been ready to shoot the previous 28 years.
A narrative centered around a single individual felt oddly frustrating to me back then, but by now my perspective has changed. I think that this is important! I think that a human being making a choice sometimes can be the only hope there is. A human being choosing to refuse an order in the hope to not kill someone else may as well be the last hope there is. Of course, this decision can come very late, and feel futile even. But it weighs even more in those dark moments, where everything feels lost, because it’s a glimpse of hope. There might be a chance of escape, a spark of inspiration other’s might follow. This feels terrifyingly unimportant, but I think it’s a start to find a way out of the dark.
So, what I want to say after 26 days of the year 2026 is that you are never just doing a job. You can never hide behind a uniform, following orders, and escaping your responsibility as a human being to respect each other’s dignity and having empathy. And yes, this goes out for anyone applauding policemen for just doing their job. No, they are not. Just as soldiers fighting for Russia aren’t. They are also making individual decisions as human beings, and they can be wrong. Recently, I think, they have been wrong many times more than we would wish for. In times that see mass deportations become fashionable again (and here in Germany we are oddly inspired by the USA these days), and police force being used against civilians to build a better, tidier, cleaner, and greater world, we need this narrative more than ever.
“Being human is such a struggle”, my witch sighs deeply.
Cheers to that.
Mistress witch writes 