A Little Story About Human Ingenuity In The Face of Terror

My father used to say something along these lines:

The worst people talk about people. The best people talk about ideas.

Was there a third strata? I wish I could remember.

We’ve all been induced to constantly talk about people. That does not mean we are the “worst,” it’s just a Zeitgeist of late. A mimetic thing, that tells people if they expose this one and that one, tyranny will soon dissolve. Rooting out the impure, rooting out the impure, rooting out the impure.

My father, greatly traumatized, liked speaking of heroic acts, large and small. They could also be labeled “manners,” in some instances. Small things or huge things people did that reflected the best in human ingenuity and/or kindness.

My all time favorite: The Greek family and the Estonian family who pretended to speak the same language on a train platform somewhere in USSR, possibly 1940s.

I always used to ask my father to re-tell this story because my dyslexia won’t allow me to remember it right, and I still don’t. But I’ll try.

There were deportations, forced population transfers, of Baltic peoples and of Greeks, under Stalin, but for the purposes of this story, let’s assume there came a moment when Estonians wanted to pass as Greek, based on where they might wind up. As I look up these deportations, I can’t quite make sense of it but just pretend then, that it’s a saga. In other words, take the story for its human exchange story not Celia’s grasp of Soviet history.

So: Stalin was deporting all the Greeks, in waves.

An Estonian family said: “Let’s make a go of it. Let’s pretend to be Greek, and leave with them. If we get caught, we will all be sent to prison camps. But let’s try.” The whole family agreed to risk it. At the train station, on the platform, the family was confronted by a Soviet soldier, my father always called this figure a thug. He came over and shouted at the family, who stood in proximity of a Greek family. The father in the Estonian family said said as calmly as he could that they were Greek. “Oh yeah?” said the soldier sarcastically. “Then talk to him!” pointing to the father of a Greek family. The man said something in Estonian. The man replied in Greek. The Estonian replied in Estonian, adding some smiles. The Greek spoke louder, and smiled, pretending to find humor in what the Estonian had said. Soon they were slapping backs and laughing together.

The soldier was thus persuaded. Harrumphed, and walked on to harass somebody else.

An ordinary mind-your-own-business human today might well turn to the soldier and say: “That’s not Greek!” And condemn a family to death.

Stories of ingenuity fooling tyrants are wanted and needed right now.

Don’t think I didn’t take all kinds of bait these past 4 years.

I did.

One of the traps was not talking enough about humanity’s goodness, and thereby becoming dull.