Lisa Hoffman and Charles Atkins

Published December 29, 2005

As the New Year approaches Lisa and I think through things we find important. It’s a tricky time, often given in to resolutions that come and go with the holiday decorations. A desire to lose weight, to quit smoking to learn a foreign language, but Lisa raises something much more serious, her mantra-like need to get involved.

"Someone once asked me," she says, "What I’d like to have written on my tombstone. I told them, it should read: she got involved. We all have a responsibility that when we see a wrong we should try to make it right. Otherwise it’s a cop out, where you tell yourself, ‘oh, let the next person do it’. If more people would have gotten involved as the Nazis came into power, perhaps six million Jews wouldn’t have lost their lives.

"I probably get this from my mother, she was a wonderful role model for not sitting back when she saw injustice," she continues. "I remember my parents taking me for a walk one day; it was in the beginning of the Nazi terror. I was thirteen. There was a crowd gathered at a corner in Frankfurt where a man in S.A uniform.—the brown-shirted Nazis—was spewing venom against the Jews. People--our neighbors--listened in rapt attention. Suddenly, my mother went forward and tried to talk over him, ‘Don’t believe what you’re hearing’, she said, ‘it’s not true’. I recall my father pulling me away. Saying, half jokingly, ‘let’s pretend we don’t know her’. As I think about it, where this was at the beginning of the Nazis, I wonder what would have happened had she done the same thing a year later; they might have shot her on the spot."

As Lisa shares her vignette, I picture the scene, and easily imagine her father’s reaction, as he pulls his child out of harm’s way. "I think you’ve hit on one of the arguments for not getting involved," I say. "People are frightened of what will happen if they speak up. They try to keep the peace in the short term, hoping things will get better on their own, but that’s not what happens. The silence gives bullies their power. The more they go unchallenged, the stronger they become, which isn’t to discount the fear involved with standing up to them. History is filled with brave souls who spoke up for what they believed in and what they felt was right. The price for doing so can be quite awful, and provides one of the definitions for the word martyr."

"Yes, fear is one reason," she says, "but people don’t want to make enemies. They want to be "nice", they don’t want conflict. I recall two earlier incidents when I was a little girl and we were away on vacation. One involved a driver with a horse and buggy; he was beating his horse with a whip. My mother, who was a great animal lover, went berserk. She tore the whip from his hand and started to beat him. Another time we were coming home from a spa, it was dusk—I couldn’t have been more than five—and there were two men fighting in the street. One was lying on the ground and the other was kneeling on top of him with a raised knife. My mother went between the two men and separated them and scolded them, saying ‘how would your mothers feel if they saw you fighting in the street?’ They calmed down and went their separate ways."

"What about your father?" I ask.

"He was there, but he was more spiritual than physical."

"It’s interesting your parents, at least from what you recall, represent opposite ends of a spectrum. Your mom would jump right in, and your dad, seemed more cautious."

"My mother was a bit foolhardy in a way," Lisa says, "She took awful chances. Somehow, I think I’ve inherited her spirit. When I see something that can be remedied I will not stop until I have done everything I can to take care of it. One thing in particular is any mistreatment of animals. I see red, and have to get involved. I’ve removed dogs from abusive environments and found them good homes. Did I ever tell you how I single-handedly stopped the sale of live lobsters at a major super market?"

"You have, but it’s a good story."

"The lobsters were on sale that week and as I happened to pass their display I noticed they were individually packed in plastic bags and lying on their backs. I kept on turning them over but suddenly realized how ridiculous that was because it didn’t prevent them from suffocating. When I questioned the store manager, he told me that it was done so that they could stick the price tag on. I called several animal organizations to do something about it, until I finally succeeded in finding one that sent an inspector. Subsequently, that store was banned from selling live lobsters.

"Another time I observed a rather horrible looking man at a check-out line with a two-year old little girl. The child walked away and the man began to shout at her and grabbed her by the arm and started shaking her. She was crying bitterly. When they left the store, I followed at a distance. They got into an old car with the child still crying and I managed to jot down the license. I called the Department of Family and Youth Services in New York and told them what I had witnessed. Later on, I checked back with them and found out that the child had been removed from that home. They couldn’t tell me the specifics, but apparently what I’d witnessed was just the tip of the iceberg.

"It makes me so angry," she adds, "The attitude that so many have of, ‘it’s none of my business’. It’s all of our business. How can someone sleep at night having witnessed something wrong, and not tried to remedy it?"

"What about the risks in getting involved?" I ask.

"Well, all of life is about risk. This isn’t to say that people should be fool hardy and deliberately put themselves in harm’s way if it’s avoidable. But I believe that when we see injustice in the world if we don’t do something to combat it, we feed it. The situation only worsens and something bad that could have been nipped in the bud can grow into something quite monstrous, like Hitler and the Nazis."

"So if you had a New Year’s wish for us and our readers, what would it be?" I ask.

"To find your courage," she says "and to stand up for what you believe is right. Because far more important than the five or ten pounds you’d like to lose, speaking up will lighten your conscience and make the world a better place for all of us."

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