“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” — Reverend Charles F. Aked, 1916
My mother-in-law, Edna Stefania Brill, didn’t watch fascism arrive. She lived it. A Jewish child trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto, starving. She escaped to the Aryan side and lived disguised as a Polish Catholic orphan. At nine years old, she joined the Polish Home Army resistance. She carried a weapon and fought Nazis.
She didn’t survive so we could forget. She survived to warn us.
Because by the time people were fighting for their lives, the slide was already over.
What Is Fascism?
Most people can’t define it. They know it’s bad. They know the Nazis were fascists. But ask them what fascism actually is, and they’ll struggle to explain.
Fascism is a form of government that concentrates power in a single leader or party, suppresses opposition, controls information, and scapegoats specific groups as enemies of the nation. It doesn’t announce itself as evil. It presents itself as strength, order, and national renewal. It promises to make the country great again by eliminating the “threats” within.
It rises through legal means. Through democratic mechanisms. Through ordinary people convinced that extraordinary measures are necessary.
And it always follows the same pattern.
The Warning Signs
History has taught us what to watch for. These are the steps fascism takes, regardless of country, regardless of era:
- Labeling minorities as enemies
- Using fear to gain power
- Denying reality with constant lies
- Controlling media
- Suppressing the vote
- Ignoring due process
- Normalizing political violence
- Accusing others of your crimes
- Appointing incompetent loyalists
- Normalizing corruption
- Controlling education
- Replacing science with ideology
- Erasing and faking government data
- Using secret police
- Rejecting election results
- Using military on civilians
- Rewriting history
- Pardoning criminal loyalists
Not every authoritarian regime displays all of these. But when you see multiple signs appearing together, when you see them escalating, when you see them being normalized, you’re watching the slide happen in real time.
It Doesn’t Arrive in Jackboots
Fascism doesn’t announce itself. It seeps in slowly, wrapped in promises of greatness and simple solutions to complex problems. It happened in Germany through legal means, through democratic mechanisms that ordinary people convinced themselves were necessary.
It started with words.
Jews weren’t real Germans. They were outsiders who threatened national prosperity. Economic problems? Blame the Jews. Cultural anxieties? Blame the Jews. The rhetoric normalized hatred. Made it acceptable dinner table conversation.
Then came the laws.
The Nuremberg Laws stripped citizenship. Jews couldn’t marry non-Jews, couldn’t hold certain jobs, couldn’t own businesses. Each restriction seemed reasonable to those who believed the lies. “It’s just paperwork,” people told themselves. “It’s for the greater good.”
Then the violence became policy.
Kristallnacht wasn’t condemned. It was tolerated. Synagogues burned while neighbors watched. When the deportations began, people convinced themselves they didn’t know where the trains were going.
And at every step, ordinary people chose indifference.
The Comfortable Lie
They weren’t monsters. They were teachers, shopkeepers, clerks. People like you.
They told themselves: “I’m not political.” “What can one person do?” “It doesn’t affect me.” “Things will settle down.”
They looked away when their Jewish neighbors disappeared. They accepted jobs and apartments that had been confiscated. They stayed silent because speaking up seemed too costly, too uncomfortable, too risky.
That indifference built the infrastructure of genocide.
By the time the consequences were undeniable, the mechanisms were unstoppable. Democracy had been dismantled one law at a time, while people who could have resisted chose comfort over courage.
What Edna Saw
Edna watched her father’s Polish worker steal her mother’s last zloty, then turn them into the Gestapo. She watched neighbors collapse from starvation in the streets while other neighbors looked away. She watched the Nazi psychopath “Frankenstein” hunt Jewish children for sport while ordinary Poles went about their business.
She also watched some people resist. Not many. But some.
The difference between those who resisted and those who didn’t wasn’t goodness or badness. It was choice. Made again and again, when looking away would have been easier.
The Warning
Here’s what Edna understood that most people don’t want to face: it can happen anywhere. To anyone. At any time.
The Germans weren’t uniquely evil. The Poles who collaborated weren’t uniquely cruel. They were ordinary people who made ordinary choices that led to extraordinary horror.
And those same choices are available to us. Right now.
When somebody is different from you, it doesn’t mean they are worse or better. They are only different. That’s the lesson. That’s what Edna fought to survive long enough to teach us.
But we’re not listening.
We’re watching rhetoric that dehumanizes entire groups of people become normal. We’re seeing scapegoating dressed up as policy. We’re hearing the same old lies about outsiders threatening our prosperity, our culture, our children.
And too many of us are choosing the same comfortable indifference that built the camps.
The Question
Would you recognize these patterns in your own time?
Would you speak up when it still matters?
Or would you choose comfort over courage, convincing yourself that it’s not your problem, it doesn’t affect you, things will settle down?
Edna was nine years old when she decided which kind of person she would be. She was a child who had to possess courage that most adults never find.
My mother-in-law fought fascism at age nine.
What are you going to do?
Because fascism doesn’t wait for you to be ready. It doesn’t announce itself with sirens and warnings. It slides in quietly, legally, wrapped in promises and excuses, counting on your indifference to build its infrastructure one law, one scapegoat, one silence at a time.
Edna didn’t survive so we could watch it happen again.
From the memoir “Little Edna’s War” by Janet Bond Brill, PhD, releasing January 27, 2026, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
