Small Steps Can Lead to Big Steps: Wear a Mask

Today during a panel discussion of which I was a participant we talked about small steps that could lead to big steps. When asked for an example, I mentioned noticing the people around you so that, if someone is struggling with a door (and both that person and you are wearing a mask), you could open the door for that person. Such a small step!

As I continue to do research for my Holocaust projects, I am always amazed by small acts of kindness. In the book I just read — A LUCKY CHILD: A MEMOIR OF SURVIVING AUSCHWITZ AS A YOUNG BOY by Thomas Buergenthal, the “lucky child” and other survivors of the death camp Auschwitz are shipped for days with no food or water in open cattle cars in freezing winter weather (January 1945). When the train passes through Czechoslovakia — people on bridges throw loaves of bread down into the open cattle cars. A small step? Buergenthal credits this act for saving his life and the lives of many other starving prisoners.

Why am I thinking about small steps today? Because small steps such as always wearing masks to protect yourself and those around you can lead to big steps — such as slowing the rate of transmission of COVID. If we were each given a choice between wearing a mask and saving one life — or not wearing a mask and infecting one person who then dies — I would hope we would all wear masks. So what is needed today to convince everyone to wear a mask?

While I do not discuss politics, I cannot help being very upset when I see the photos of the Rose Garden ceremony to announce the Supreme Court nominee. How can all those supposedly important people be so callous as to sit close to each other and most not wear masks? What is the use of all our charitable giving and nonprofit organization support if we can’t perform the simplest health safety act for ourselves and others?

Here is a very short section from my free nonfiction play THIN EDGE OF THE WEDGE:

How many tiny acts of kindness saved Jews and others — tiny acts done by righteous individuals whose names we will never know?

I learned of a young Greek Jewish man saved by just such a small act of kindness. He was in a Nazi detention camp in Greece where the Jews awaited the cattle car transportation to their deaths in Auschwitz. He was taken outside the camp by a German guard to work, and a young non-Jewish Greek woman purposely distracted the German guard with flirting. The young Jewish man seized the moment to escape. The name of his savior will never be known.

While wearing a mask is a small step not designed to save people from the Nazi death jaws, our wearing a mask can encourage others to wear masks — and those small steps can lead to reducing the number of COVD-infected and COVID-deceased people. (The life you might save may could be your own!)

Let’s all commit to taking small steps whenever we can — and to WEARING A MASK!