Suzanne Spaak Selflessness Essay Example

Holocaust survivor Primo Levi once said: “Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions.” Too often it is the silence of the bystander and not the power of the oppressor that wounds the oppressed. Of the 2,300,000,000 people alive during WWII, we are able to recognize the minuscule number of 27,712 brave men and women who put their lives on the line to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Today, we remember Suzanne Spaak and her overwhelming selflessness.

Spaaks' story interested me for one reason, and one reason only. She didn’t have to offer her assistance; her money and status were her safeguard against the Nazis. Born into a wealthy Catholic family and married to the brother of the Belgian foreign minister, Suzanne spent her days collecting art and was spotted at the parties of many Parisian elites. That was until Paris was occupied by the Germans in 1941. As a mother of two, Suzanne couldn’t sit back and watch Jewish children be sought out and banished to the monstrosity that was Auschwitz. She refused to use her luxurious status as a ticket to being a bystander and joined the National Movement Against Racism (NMAR) in 1942. Doubted and completely misjudged by her male colleagues who assumed that she wouldn’t last long under pressure, Spaak refused to back down from a single assignment. Suzanne wandered the streets of Paris looking for help from physicians, clerics, judges, and authors, often using her high social status to receive help from those who were clearly hesitant. She had put her entire, easy-going, family life on hold to help in any way possible. Spaak eventually received a position in the Red Orchestra, an anti-nazi resistance network, where she focused on saving and protecting Jewish children at risk of deportation. Spaak sheltered children in her own home and provided ration cards and clothing. As her final attempt to protect Jewish children, Spaak gave a list of hidden Jewish children and their addresses to an underground comrade. Suzanne Spaak was arrested by the Gestapo in October of 1943.

While Spaak did hold a high status, she was still only a wife and mother, omitted from historical archives. From the sidelines, Spaak could be presented as a charming, well-to-do wife, who kept to herself. However, that was only skin deep. Her overwhelming beauty lied deeper in her heart. Quoted from a Yiddish newspaper, “Spaak belonged to those idealists who jettison their private lives, personal wishes, and material concerns as soon as a great ideal enters their hearts'' (Aronson). Spaak displayed her selflessness night and day. Her private life was always second to her life as a “Righteous Among the Nations”. She was completely devoted to her work and the cause it served. Spaak said, “Tell me what to do… so I’ll know that I am serving in the struggle against Nazism”. She was compassionate about every task she was assigned whether it be distributing pamphlets, shopping for goods, or directly helping children by keeping them in her own home as “maids'' and “tutors”. Spaaks’ acts of bravery, kindness, selflessness, and compassion were visible with every risk she took, endangering herself and her family every step of the way. She had one goal in mind, “To save those – the Jewish people – [whom] the Nazis meant to destroy” (The Fellowship).

I could have sat here and written about the abundance of traits I have that would help me step forward and intervene in such injustice because that would have been the easy thing to do. What any bystander would do. Instead, I choose to admit that maybe I wouldn’t intervene, that instead I would sit back and hope that someone braver and stronger would step forward. I know I’m not the only one who would crack under pressure and question their strength, bravery, and selflessness if tested as Suzanne Spaak was. Spaak was given two options, watch from the sidelines and continue to enjoy her life of luxury or give up everything and battle against an oppressor who had millions on his side and wasn’t even out to get her. I was also given two options, take the easy way out and describe an unrealistic version of myself to fit and answer the prompt perfectly, or, tell the honest truth that even I didn’t want to accept. What do Spaak and I have in common? We both chose the road less traveled. Upon reflection, I find myself envying Spaaks' selflessness, kindness, bravery, and compassion but I do admire myself for having the courage, to tell the truth, and that in itself proves that maybe I would be an upstander, but one can never be too sure. 

After being arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, Suzanne Spaak was tortured and then executed only thirteen days before the liberation of Paris. During her years of assistance, Spaak helped to save over 60 children from the ages of three to eighteen. Without her overwhelming support in underground movements as well as her selflessness, compassion, strength, bravery, and kindness, hundreds of Jewish children would not have made it to August 25th, 1944 when the Germans surrendered the French capital. Suzanne Spaak devoted her entire life to helping Jewish children and was recognized as a Righteous Among the Nations in 1985. Spaak was a heroine who while restoring my faith in humanity, drew the line between the bystander and the brave.