Over the weekend, the New York Times ran a story about how Ayn Rand's works were formative for a lot of people. It wasn't for me. But the story got me thinking of which book did I read early in my teenage years that I would consider formative.
That book was "Mila 18," Leon Uris's novel about the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. I haven't read the book in probably 30 years or more, but I remember it to be a work about endurance, suffering, how people can tolerate the unthinkable, and, finally, people rising up against overwhelming odds.
(You can read about the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in a lot of different places, from short entries in Wickipedia to lengthy discourses of a scholarly nature. I won't get into it here.)
What struck me, most of all, was that the Jews in the Ghetto took on the German Army and the SS with very few weapons at the beginning. Some handguns, a few rifles and mainly Molotov cocktails. With that and what they could capture, they held off the Germans for about six weeks, with little if any support from anyone. At one point, they raised their flag and the flag of pre-war Poland high over the Ghetto and those flags flew for days, despite the efforts of the Germans to take them down and much to the displeasure of Himmler.
Six weeks. How long did France last against the Germans? How long did Poland, Denmark, Belgium, or Norway last against the Germans? It wasn’t six weeks. Days, a few weeks at best. Not a month and a half.
The lesson I took away: Having an education is a good thing. Having an education and weapons is better.
And never go quietly.
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I remember reading Mila 18 back in 1961, right after it came out; it was quite an inspiring novel, showing just what people can accomplish when they must.
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