By Sandor Slomovits
Variants of the phrase, “Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow” occur regularly in ads and promotional materials for schools, businesses, the military, and other organizations. Whenever I come across it, I can’t help thinking, “What about the followers?”
Of course we need leaders, visionaries, people who see never-before-seen possibilities, who dare to take on apparently impossible tasks. But do we not equally need skilled followers, ones who support and help leaders bring their vision to life? Do we not need people who are willing to work, to struggle with others toward a worthy goal? Do we not need followers capable of choosing trustworthy leaders? Do we not need followers who can speak truth to power and, crucially, ones with the discernment and courage to not always follow? Who—in the extreme—recognize when they must disobey a leader’s immoral, unlawful orders, when they must instead follow a higher order?
Our history books include many names of leaders who inspired nations to momentous victories and historic achievements. But those books are also replete with cautionary, tragic tales of leaders who coerced, bullied, and strongarmed their way to power, led their countries to catastrophic disasters, in part because their nameless followers followed them blindly and unwisely.
There are familiar names on both sides of that coin; a partial list of ones from just the last century includes FDR, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandela, but also Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, and Hitler.
My family’s history—my mother was a survivor of the infamous Ravensbrück concentration camp for women in Germany, and my father spent two years in the “Munkaszolgálat,” literally “work service,” though in fact a forced labor unit attached to the Hungarian Army—has long predisposed me to wonder about the role of leaders and followers. How did Hitler manage to convince so many to accept—and then continue to condone—his deranged, hateful, and hate-filled leadership?
Because the Holocaust looms largest in my world view, I focus on Hitler, but the rest, and too many others throughout time and the world, have duly earned recognition on the hellish pedestal of tyranny. How did they all manage to divide their people, teach them to fear and hate each other, and terrorize them into doing their misguided, and ultimately homicidal and suicidal bidding? On the other hand, how did Roosevelt, Gandhi, MLK, and Mandela unite their followers—and even many of their opponents—and offer hope in the darkest times and help redress historic injustices?
Historians will argue for generations about the answers to those questions; I doubt they will ever come to a decisive conclusion.
But I find myself remembering and wondering the most about followers—ordinary people with very limited influence and power—who chose not to follow and, with their choices, changed the life trajectories of others… sometimes even saving their lives.
Both my parents’ families suffered enormous losses in the Holocaust. From a total of twenty-nine of my father and mother’s closest relatives, twenty-one adults and eight children ranging in age from five to fifteen, only eleven adults and three children—less than half of them—survived. Of those fourteen survivors, five of the eleven adults and one of the three children—almost half of them—owed their lives to help they received from non-Jewish Hungarians, Austrians, even German Nazis.
All of them had tales of the trauma and cruelties inflicted on them in those years, but they also talked with gratitude for people they encountered who did not buy into the zeitgeist of the times, who did not believe the vicious antisemitic lies and slurs, and instead went to considerable lengths and took significant risks to aid and shelter them.
My father recalled one commander of his forced labor unit who took sadistic pleasure in pairing short men with tall ones and amused himself watching as their height differential compounded their struggles as they unloaded heavy munitions. But my father also remembered another Austrian commander who always addressed the men with, “Meine Herren,” a respectful term meaning, “Gentlemen,” and even allowed them to recite their morning prayers. My father always referred to him as, “A real mensch,” and credited his humane treatment of the unit with saving lives.
My mother recollected how a guard, after shearing off most of her hair soon after she arrived in Ravensbrück, laughingly tormented her: “How do you like the stylish cut I gave you?” But my mother also spoke with affection of the elderly couple, who had worked for their family before the war, who secretly sheltered one of her sisters in their home on the outskirts of Budapest for several months in 1944 and 1945, thus helping that sister avoid deportation to Ravensbrück.
There were the two brothers, both policemen in Budapest, who fell in love with two of my father’s sisters early in the war, and who not only managed to prevent their deportations, but even helped hide another of my father’s sisters and her five-year-old daughter for the last months of the war.
There was the guard in Ravensbrück who so appreciated the haircuts and nail stylings one of my father’s sisters gave her, that she assigned my aunt to kitchen duty—the plum job in the concentration camp because it meant access to extra food. Sure, that was a transactional kindness, but that guard still deserves some credit for her humanity.
There is another slogan, often paired with “Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow.” It is, “If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes.” The line is not an inspirational quote by a politician, general, or business tycoon. It is from a 1946 Hollywood farce called, “Road to Utopia,” one of four “Road to…” musical comedies starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, and Dorothy Lamour. I’ve never seen the film, but given that it’s a farce, I’m going to guess there is a scene from the viewpoint of the dogs of the sled dog team whose only vista is the waggling butt of the leader dog ahead of them.
Both slogans, “Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow” and, “If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes,” elevate the role of leaders, and minimize the one of followers. And there are, have been, and—tragically—likely always will be some malevolent leaders and some lemming-like followers.
I choose instead to remember and honor the followers, like the ones who helped save a sizeable fraction of my family, who chose—and will always choose—not to blindly follow.
Sandor Slomovits is one of the two brothers in the Ann Arbor folk music duo, Gemini. Visit them at GeminiChildrensMusic.com. In addition to The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal, he also writes for The Ann Arbor Observer, The Washtenaw Jewish News, and a number of other local and national papers and magazines. His essays and other writings can be found at SandorSlomovits.com.
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Variants of the phrase, “Preparing the Leaders of Tomorrow” occur regularly in ads and promotional materials for schools, businesses, the military, and other organizations. Whenever I come across it, I can’t help thinking, “What about the followers?”