The Nazis had a strict anti-Jew policy for their POW camps; earlier in the war captured Jewish soldiers would be separated from the other POWs and sent to extermination camps. At this late stage in the war, though, the death camps were no longer fully operational so Jewish prisoners were being sent to slave labour camps where most perished. Jewish Allied soldiers were advised to, if captured, destroy their dog tags and anything else that might identify them as being Jews.
In January it was announced over the camp loudspeaker that, the following morning, only the Jewish POWs were to fall out. Roddie Edmonds knew what that meant and immediately said to his fellow prisoners, "We are not going to do that." He sent orders through the camp barracks that all of the men were to fall out in the morning, as usual. And so, early the following day, all 1275 men were out standing in front of their barracks in defiance of the Nazi order. The German camp commandant Major Siegmann, furious, stalked up to Edmonds and said, "They cannot all be Jews." Edmonds- a devout Methodist- replied, "We are all Jews here." Siegmann demanded that Edmonds order his Jewish men to step forward, to which Edmonds responded, "According to the Geneva Convention all that is required is name, rank and serial number." At this, Siegmann drew his pistol and pressed it against Roddie Edmond's head and told the 25 year old sergeant that, if he didn't order the Jews to step forward, he would shoot him in the head. Edmonds didn't waver: "If you are going to shoot, you are going to have to shoot all of us because we know who you are and you’ll be tried for war crimes when we win this war." The two men stared each other down then, after what seemed a long time, Siegmann re-holstered his gun and walked away. No Jews- and there were between 200-300 in the camp- were identified or removed.
After the war was over, Roderick Edmonds returned home and quietly resumed civilian life, later fighting in the Korean War. He never told anyone about the incident, not even his own family. His son Chris, a Baptist minister, only found out about it after Edmond's death when he happened to read a newspaper article about a Jewish man (Lester Tanner) who had been one of the POWs at Stalag IXA and had related the story to Richard Nixon, mentioning that the name of the young sergeant had been Roderick Edmonds. Chris had his father's war diaries, which mentioned the incident but not his part in it, and so he contacted Tanner and then another one of the other former POWs (Paul Stern); they both had the same account of his father's brave actions. Stern said that, even 70 years later, the events of that day were burned into his memory, especially the words spoken by Edmonds to the German commander: "We are all Jews here."
However we got here, this is where and what we are now. The question is, what are we going to do about it. There's no point in looking to political leaders of any stripe; they are not going to deal with the barbarians at the gate let alone the ones within it. Obviously, damage done to society over the course of decades is not going to be reversed or repaired overnight, or even over the course of a few years. We must resolve to see it done, though, and institutions- like public schools and universities- must be abandoned if they cannot be reformed.
These are long term goals, however; what do we do here and now when our fellow citizens are under attack? The obvious answer is that we must support them and stand with them, and be seen to do so. Almost everyone I know is disgusted by what is happening, but most are quietly so. It's past time for that. We must adopt the attitude of Roddie Edmonds that, in the face of these terrible events, we are all Jews now and will act accordingly. We should do this because it is the moral thing to do, but also because it is in our own best interests as well because I guarantee you, those who come for the Jews will not restrict themselves to only the Jews. The Hamas butchers killed Israeli Arabs and foreign workers with as much savagery and blood lust as they did Jews. They will not hesitate to do the same to anyone standing opposed to them, Christian or atheist, or any other religion or creed; they will eventually treat us similarly, so we might as well stand with Jews now as later.