| Show 1 - — 13It:'' 0 )) r 47-11'--' Ir‘ o'-'7-1 IT"1 - L ' 1' :-'s ! embarrassed but it's true" Below: A photo from 1949 Casting a shadow on young Richard Is stepmother Anne—"as remorselessly cruel as the mod monstrous stepmother of i 1 I I ::''' -- :- I4N 11(1 iiii t lti1711r I folklore" Next to Richard are father Arthur - 4 4-- 4 i -- I 7 i''' : v' " -- 4rWARP‘ a -- - li 4 tv - :4 410 20 40 AA' ''''--' 7 t 35Li c14 4k 14 'sI 4 ' 1 '' IgilfS A-- - 10 ' t N t 4 '-7- i I)"' irt 411414C1 -''- 'I41' ‘0-- I- Alz - 14:1‘i-f''- ' ----ic-:--z - ":-Ii- i Agos-- brought our lunches from home in brown paper bags Lunch consisted of a halfdollar-sized spot of grainy homemade grape jelly sandwiched between two slices of stale white bread and our stepmother supervised its preparation carefully to make sure we used not one drop more jelly than she considered we deserved Miss MacFarland noticed our meager lunches Several times a week she would call me to her desk at the beginning of the lunch period— just as she had done with Stanley the year before—and ask me to run to the comer grocery to buy her a half-piof milk "Oh" she would add as fin afterthought "here's another dime Buy some milk for yourself" No fairy godmother could have offered me anything more precious I ran to the store bought my teacher's milk and nt PARADE MAGAZINE -- ON OCTOBER 144990 PAGES -- - tr--: itt----l'k''C- - 1g '4711 - 4 - 7:: - - :-- rr r - ry se ‘ Maaarland supdiets out of her own our plemented now Miss pocket on a teacher's modest salary She worried about our ragged clothes and grimy bodies as well "Miss MacFar land was Very very kind to us" Stanley recalls "I think that got me through a lot of bad stuff I can remember her straightening my shirt and trying to make me presentable She would fmd ways to clean me up She'd take a washcloth and go over my head 'You have such pretty hair I just Stanley imitates her lilt She didn't love my hair at all She wanted to clean it up She was pretending to stroke my hair while she cleaned me up" Other teachers other strangers re c kcomplex y vr1 i ' ' ir l - 4e'll' it:4 Milk was expensive in those days a dime then would certainly be at least a 1 71 E t - : ' ' v4:fit1-- f It my own and enjoyed a nourishing lunch half-doll- ar - t 1 1 7 'l iIiI:ts-441-41- t A14Y'- 414 n - 4 e-- '73 ' 4' t: I understand how people who call themselves civi- -- lized can justify mass killing and how such convul- of terrible might be Many factors 0 t ) t :"Al jr' t :Acto -e- - 4 - -- ott-- 4 I 1 li ' 1 '4161L 'V44 41t ' ' t 44g: 1 '''''' 4i 01"L'Il't - 44444 F oof '' ''' l'41:4 7 cide trying to 111— z!1 1"00-4kt- ' :): ' 4 I) it s 261 :: '' ' - and Stanley - - '' 1 41- -r' - fd c" It: 4 7 t 7101 -qIL- t r 1 - sponded to our evident need as well A woman working a doughnut machine at a drugstore risked her job to pass us warm yeasty doughnuts one bitter winter day after we had stood staring at the machine for an hour transfixed by the doughnuts browning in fat and the heavenly smell An impoverished widow who lived with her dog in a small trailer at the edge of a vacant lot rolled us cigarettes of aromatic Prince Albert tobacco when she rolled her own Supplying an 11- - and a with cigarettes may not sound like a kindness but we smoked to numb our htmgerpangs and kindness it was A greater kindness might have been to report our abuse to the authorities but in those days-1-948 1949—children had even fewer rights than they do today Family authority was accorded more respect than it sometimes deserved and except in extreme circumstances the courts were reluctant to intervene Recently I've been studying geno- - Left: Brothers Stanley (I) and Richard Rhodes who says "Stanley acted deciskly to save us Today when I tell him he's a hero he's I CI ep 001': Vr o vt t :''Iti 4 i 11'10 1 5 4' 1 k-- Fortwo p f0I N ptt" - the evo- lution of mass kill- - ing but scholars em- phasize the impor- tant role bystand- ers play "By- standers can exert a powerful influ- - of genocide ence" writes the University of Mas- sachusetts psy- - chologist Ervin Staub "They can move others toward empathy or indifference They can promote values and norms of caring or by their passivity or participation in the system they can affirm the perpetrators" A celebrated example of the good that bystanders can do if they choose 4 — and a half years my older brother Stanley and I were slapped love' kicked and beaten VVorst of all we were deliberately starved to become involved is the Danish resist- ance during World War II to the Nazi decision to transport the entire Jewish population of Denmark to the death camps I looked into the story of that 1943 event when! was researching my book The Making of the Atomic Bomb 1 continued I |
