08 Aug Standing Firm in the Face of Slander

I have a distinct memory from my childhood that has always stayed with me. I was only in the first grade, and for the first time in my life, I learned about the history of slavery in the United States. Soon after, I also learned about the Holocaust. Heavy subject matter for first grade, I know, but even in the brief and perfunctory manner in which we learned about these subjects, a question arose in my spirit. “How could anyone have allowed these things to happen?” I asked myself. The answer, I felt, came in the fact that few people had the courage to truly stand for truth and righteousness at a time when an inhuman evil was being perpetrated in their midst. The silence of the majority has always empowered the minority of evildoers.