From Refuser.org

Mattan Helman is Executive Director of Refuser Solidarity Network. He was imprisoned in 2018 for refusing to serve in the Israeli military. Last week was Holocaust Remembrance Day so he republished this piece that he wrote for +972 Magazine during his imprisonment seven years ago.

When I was in grade 11, I traveled to Poland with Hashomer Hatzair [a socialist-Zionist youth movement]. Before the orientation before the trip, my mother told me her family’s story during World War II for the first time. On the fourth day of the trip to Poland, I read my family’s story at a ceremony commemorating the Righteous Among the Nations [non-Jews who saved Jews during the war].

My father’s family is Jewish, from Eastern Europe. My mother is Dutch. When the Germans invaded the Netherlands in 1940, my great-grandfather Richte Taklenbroch was 28, married with three children. The Germans conquered the Netherlands in three days and quickly forced all Dutch young men to enlist in work camps to serve the German army.

Richte, my great-grandfather, refused to enlist, and joined the underground resistance. He hid in the family’s house in their village. At the same time, he attempted to join the resistance, to look for other ways to fight back against the Germans. Through the resistance, he met an old, Jewish couple and a Jewish woman. The three spent the last two years of the war hiding in Richte’s house. They would hide in a large closet, along with my great-grandfather. They could only leave the house at night to get fresh air. The resistance provided food rations for Richte’s guests. His wife would purchase food at different places in the area to avoid arousing any suspicion.

During the war, Richte’s family hid other Jews who would come to the house for one or two nights. Richte’s daughter, who was 10 at the time, was angry at her parents because she feared the punishment that awaited them if they were discovered hiding Jews. My grandmother was young then and didn’t understand the danger.

When the German occupation ended in May 1945, the old Jewish couple returned to the city of Groningen. They stayed in touch with the family until they died a few years after the war’s end. To this day, my family in the Netherlands still has a landscape drawn by the old Jewish man who hid in their house; he gave it to the family as a token of gratitude.

After I decided to refuse to enlist in the IDF, I still had occasional doubts about my decision. I asked myself what my great-grandfather would have done in my place. What would he have done were he required to serve in an army that occupies and oppresses another nation?

He wouldn’t enlist, his consciousness wouldn’t allow it. Richte would resist, he would refuse to enlist and he would face the consequences — time in prison.

I am not here to compare the horrors of the Israeli occupation and the Holocaust. However, oppression is oppression is oppression. Saving Jews and resisting Nazism and refusing to serve and resisting the Israeli occupation are different ways, in different times, of fighting the same struggle: the struggle against occupation and terror, against slavery, oppression and bondage. The struggle for a world of peace, justice, and equality for everyone.

My family’s story made a strong impression on me. It inspires me. Richte taught me a lot. He taught me that the majority is not necessarily right, that morality and conscience are greater than the law. Most of all, he taught me that the answer to injustice is resistance. My great-grandfather is an exemplar, and I feel proud to follow his example. In the face of injustice, conscientious objection is a moral obligation.

Mattan added the following to bring the article up-to-date:

One week after the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we continue to fight for an end to Israel’s wars of aggression in the shadow of its ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. With the news of Trump’s plans to ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip – and the completion of a riviera on the ashes of those killed in Israel’s murderous war – we continue forward with our struggle. Our refusal to serve genocide is not new, part of a much longer story. Never again is now, for everyone. In the face of the genocide in Gaza and Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan, conscientious objection is a moral obligation and resistance is our duty.