During these dark days filled with resentment and blame, I find myself thinking frequently of Harry Mulish’s book “The Assault.”
For those who don’t know, this is the basic plot of the book:
In the dead of night during WW2 in the occupied Netherlands, the Dutch resistance executes a particularly cruel Nazi collaborator in one of the streets of Haarlem. This happens to be the street of 12-year-old Anton Steenwijk. Alarmed by the shots, Anton and his family can see the dead body of the collaborator right in front of their neighbors’ house. In panic, these neighbors run out of the house and, after some hesitation about which direction to choose, carry the collaborator’s body to the front of Anton’s house.
When the Nazis arrive, their reprisal is swift and brutal. Anton is thrown into a truck. His house is set on fire. Anton hears some screaming and machine gun fire. Later, he learns that his brother and parents were executed on the spot. Anton is taken into custody and ends up in a cell with Truus, a wounded resistance fighter who is actually the person who shot the collaborator.
For the rest of the book, adult Anton wrestles with questions of guilt. He looks up the other survivors involved in the tragic episode to try to find some closure. Who is to blame for his parents and brother’s death? Who should be the object of his rightful contempt? Is it Truus, who shot a Nazi collaborator in cold calculation without any regard for the consequences it might have on others? Or perhaps the neighbors, who cowardly shifted the bullseye to Anton’s house?
Today, whenever I consume one of those leopards-ate-our-face memes, I’m immediately reminded of this book—memes that seem to offer only false relief, providing scapegoats for the pain I’m feeling as our world is burned down by callous, selfish men.
And they make me think of the words a bleeding Truus speaks to Anton when he is crying in a dark cell after the Nazis burned his house down and murdered his family: “Whoever did it, did it, and not anyone else.”
by Yourstruly75