Sean, age 16

There are many stories of hardships during World War II, and they often include people who rebelled against the regime or occupation in their country. Most of these stories end in the character getting sent to a concentration camp, which is usually the hardest part. All these multitudes of people – both those whose stories we have and those whose stories we don’t have – had one important attribute in common: Courage.

It takes courage to do what the Ten Booms did, for example, when they harbored and sheltered the Jews that the Nazis were trying to round up and exterminate. It takes even more courage to do what they did when they were found out and sent to a concentration camp themselves. They continued to love and serve people, even in the hardest of times.

Another of my favorite WWII stories is the story of Jacques Lusseyran, the seventeen-year-old French resistance leader who was also found out and sent to a concentration camp. Blinded at the age of seven, he led a difficult, but extraordinary life. Throughout his life, he was always fighting for liberty, and continued to do so even in the Germans’ horrific concentration camps.

There are so many other stories like this, but they are only a small fraction of the people who lived through WWII. Most of them, and most of us, don’t have the opportunity to sacrifice for our country in such a way as those few did. In other words, most of us don’t have to face impossibly hard circumstances. However, that doesn’t mean courage isn’t required of us.

We each get to exhibit a different species of courage. As Dumbledore said at the end of The Sorcerer’s Stone, “There are all kinds of courage, … It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.” Likewise, most of us don’t have physical enemies to fight against, but we do have our own personal “enemies” in the form of trials like disease and depression.

There is another great story that illustrates this point. Louie Zamperini was in the U.S. Air Force during WWII, whose plane crashed into the ocean. He survived on a life raft for months with extraordinarily little food and water. Eventually he was picked up by a Japanese plane, which took him to – you guessed it – a concentration camp. He was released at the end of the war and subsequently suffered from intense depression and PTSD. He became an alcoholic and drug addict in an attempt to alleviate the pain and horror. However, he eventually discovered that the only way to truly get rid of the trauma was to take courage and face it.

He wasn’t trying to fight the regime (although he was in the military); instead, he had to fight his own past. One thing that made this especially difficult was, paradoxically, the absence of a physical enemy. On the ocean and in the camp, there was a tangible thing to fight for: his survival. Without a cause back at home, there was nothing to push against. There were no Japanese to give consequences for “bad” behavior. There was no one to rebel against. There were only memories. That is why he fell into addiction in the first place. Eventually, once he realized that he didn’t have to relive the experience over and over – that he could give it away (in his case, to God) – the need for outside help to bury the pain (namely, drugs and alcohol) disappeared, and he was able to give them up almost overnight.

While there are many stories of people rebelling in WWII, there are more – many more – such as Viktor Frankl and later Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who, like Zamperini, had to have exceptional courage to survive the horrors of war and totalitarianism. One of these was an Indonesian girl of only eight years named Kitty de Ruyter-Bon, whose father was a rebellion leader in their country. Consequently, he was put into a concentration camp by the Japanese. This alone was difficult for Kitty and her family, but later they were also arrested and taken to a different camp than her father. In her case, it was not actually her fault (it was mostly because of her Dutch heritage), but she still had to face the consequences. Just like all the others, she and her family had to have the courage to continue on.

All of these stories exemplify the importance of courage, but how do you and I actually develop courage? How can we become courageous like these incredible people from WWII? First, Hope. Hope is an essential part of courage. Without hope that it can work out, the struggle is pointless. If we do not believe that the outcome will be good, we will not try, for we cannot have courage for something hopeless. Another important aspect of courage is faith. We must have faith that it will work out, for again, even if we hope that it might possibly be able to, if we do not firmly believe that it will then we will feel hopeless, and the struggle will seem futile. The most important of the three, however, is love. As Cinderella’s mother said at the end of her life, “Have courage, and be kind.” Courage and love (or kindness) go hand in hand.

Kitty’s mother is a great example of this. In the midst of hard times, she would always love people. She loved her fellow prisoners, she loved her family (from which she gained most of her hope for release), and most importantly, she even loved her captors. That love kept her faith in humanity, and in a very real way, kept her alive. Similarly, Corrie Ten Boom and her sister Betsie loved everyone while in their concentration camp. They were able to teach their fellow prisoners about God, and again, this helped them survive and not succumb to the oppression.

It is important to note that courage is not immunity to fear. On the contrary. It is the ability to act in the face of fear. It does not mean doing things recklessly, rather it means standing up and fighting for our cause when it is hard or dangerous, and depression is certainly hard.

While our circumstances are different than most of the people I have mentioned here, we should all take a lesson from their strong courage, and from their hope, faith, and love. We must battle our trials with hope that there is a way out, and faith that the way will work. We cannot get rid of depression without those. Throughout the process, it will require love for ourselves and others, which, in the context of depression, is one of the best remedies as it connects us with something besides ourselves.

We each have our own enemies to fight, so let us do so bravely. It will be hard, and in some cases it will likely be terrifying, but as we do so it will bless our lives in obvious ways as well as ways we may never have dreamed of.

References

Ten Boom, C., Sherrill, E., & Sherrill, J. L. (2023). The Hiding Place. Chosen Books. 

Rowling, J. K. (1997). Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (Ser. Harry Potter). Scholastic. 

Hillenbrand, L. (2015). Unbroken. Kosmos Uitgevers. 

De Ruyter Bon, K. (2003). As I Have Loved You: A true story. Covenant Communications. 

Kinberg, S., Shearmur, A., Barron, D., & Weitz, C. (2015). Cinderella. United States; Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Covey, S. (1998). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Simon &