Five Men, one revolver
Was there anything else in the 20th century so noble, romantic and august as fighting the Nazis as part of an underground resistance? Does anything more perfectly embody defiance to totalitarianism than individuals rising out of principled rebellion, after their governments had kneeled, and carrying out the fight of man against inhuman fascist machine? Of course it was the Allied forces and the Soviets who actually won the war, but their achievements have calcified into the polished monument of historical record without the mythic charm of insurrection. Just picture the famous Thelonious Monk album cover with the jazz giant playing a piano, a dead stuffed Nazi in the background-a treasure from someone else's days fighting in the underground.
Who were the resisters? In Belgium they were those who rejected fascism (not all of them did-the socialist leader Henri de Mann pulled a Vidkun Quisling and joined the Nazis), those who refused to capitulate in spite of the defeatism of King Leopold and those who could not be seduced by the give-your-seat-to-a-lady policy of charm practiced by the Nazis to mollify the conquered population. United not by any single organization, ethnic or religious affiliation, they were a necessarily scattered operation working clandestinely through small overlapping networks in occupied Belgium. And they achieved far more than symbolic resistance.
Seventeen thousand Belgians died in the resistance, but before the war was won, they had saved more than half of Belgium's Jews, hidden and sheltered Allied airmen, conducted sabotage missions and printed and distributed underground newspapers, among other heroic accomplishments. Belgians carried out the war's only attack on a rail convoy heading toward a concentration camp, saving 231 people from Auschwitz.
The stories and faces of the resisters are now being shown in an exhibit at the Cooper Union's Houghton gallery, Images of Resistance Past and Present. The recorded voices of the fighters tell their stories in French over a speaker in the background, while placards give background on the war in Belgium and the origins and achievements of its native resistance. My favorite photograph pictures a young Belgian woman with a rifle in her right hand and a long knife hanging through her belt escorting a group of captured German soldiers east for deportation at the war's end. The effect of her beaming victor's smile is undiminished by the blurriness of the image and enhanced by contrast with the dour, defeated visages of the German men trudging along in the background.
Most of the wall space is filled with interviews of surviving members of the resistance, accompanied by both a contemporary photograph of the subject and another from their time in the movement. Pierre Clerdent had been a lawyer in the cabinet of the communications minister before joining the resistance. "It was a risk, it was practically insane, in late September 1940," he says. "Five men and one revolver, we declared war on Germany."