If it takes a village to raise a child, then may take a village to protect one, too. And that's just what thousands of the residents of Billings, Montana, did: They took a page from what the King of Denmark did during World War II and stood as one against Aryan supremacists.

 

It was Hanukkah-December 1993. Tammie and Brian Schnitzer had decorated their window with Star of David decals as well as a menorah, the nine-branched candelabra that's the symbol of the Jewish holiday. But not everyone was celebrating that holiday. Someone threw a cinder block through the window, sending shards of glass into the bedroom of the Schnitzer's five-year-old son. Luckily, he was in another room, along with his two-year-old sister and a babysitter. 

 

That wasn't the beginning of such actions. In the previous year, Billings-a town of about 80,000, only seven percent of whom are minorities, including about 50 Jewish families-had seen Ku Klux Klan newspapers and flyers attacking Jews and homosexuals. There were also appearances of the Northwest United Skinheads and the Aryan Nation. Headstones in the Jewish cemetery had been overturned. The synagogue had received a bomb threat. Swastikas and racial slurs were spray-painted on synagogues as well as on  the home of a mixed-race couple. The month before, a beer bottle was thrown through the window of a Jewish home. 

 

Tammie Schnitzer was afraid. "It was my sense of being so helpless," she said. "It was my fear of what would come next. I kept thinking, ˜They know where we live; where can we go?' . . . Maybe it sounds naive, but I grew up believing nothing like this could ever happen in America." But she experienced more than fear: "During that long night, my fear turned to outrage. What kind of life would my children have if they had to cower before bigots?" 

As it turns out, others felt the same way, but not before the police officer who responded to the Schnitzers' call suggested that they take down their Hanukkah decorations. The Schnitzers didn't feel good about that. "Maybe it's not wise to keep these symbols up," she acknowledged. "But how do you explain that to a child?"

That particular quote appeared in the next day's Billings Gazette, and it spoke to Margaret Macdonald, who, with Tammie and others, had formed the Billings Coalition for Human Rights the previous spring. Macdonald couldn't imagine having to tell her young children that they couldn't have a Christmas tree, or that they had to take a wreath off the door because it wasn't safe to display it. "I had tears in my eyes," she said. "The idea of a family right in my own community being unable to celebrate their religious holiday made me sad and angry."

Macdonald had an idea. She remembered the story of the King of Denmark during World War II. As the story goes, after the German occupiers ordered Danish Jews to wear the Star of David in order to identify themselves, so they could be banned from public places, forbidden to work, and deported to concentration camps. The King himself donned the Star and asked every other Dane to do the same. The SS weren't able to tell who was really a Jew.

Macdonald went to pastor Keith Torney of the First Congregational Church and suggested that they mimeograph pictures of menorahs and ask people to put them up in their windows. Torney thought it was a great idea, and that week hundreds of Christian homes in Billings had menorahs in their windows. "It wasn't an easy decision," said Macdonald. "With two young children, I had to think hard about it myself."

The next important player was Police Chief Wayne Inman. "Isn't this risky?" asked some of the congregants who hesitated putting up the menorahs. "Yes," he said, "there's a risk. But there's a greater risk in not doing it." He fully supported the effort.

Macdonald knew the town had a history of ignoring racism. "There'd been an emphatic hard-line stance in the town, like a brick wall, that the less said about the skinheads and other racists, the better."

For his part, Chief Inman was initially pressured by local businesses and politicians to let the matter lie, not to "make a big deal of it." He was mercilessly criticized for supporting the Schnitzers. But the way Inman puts it, there really wasn't much of a choice at all: "Silence is acceptance. [The hate groups] are testing us. And if we do nothing, there's going to be more trouble."

The idea did begin to gather support. The Gazette published a full-page picture of a menorah. Local businesses distributed photocopies of menorahs. And a local billboard pronounced "Not in Our Town! No Hate, No Violence. Peace on Earth."

At first, the supremacists responded with typical violence: They smashed panes on the doors of the Evangelical United Methodist Church that displayed menorahs. They fired shots into a Catholic school that had joined the resistance. They vandalized cars and made threatening phone calls.

But the resistance grew: Schools and churches facilitated discussions about bigotry. Dozens of Christians came to synagogues to worship with their Jewish neighbors. Thousands of homes in Billings now displayed menorahs-and kept them up until the end of the year. Inman said, "The haters could attack a couple of Jewish homes. They could make a second wave of attacks on Christian homes and churches. But they could not target thousands of menorahs."

And the Klan backed off.

Sarah Anthony, a student with the Human Rights Coalition, said, "We did something right here, and we will do it again if we have to. If we don't, there are people who would break every window in Billings, and we would look in those windows and see ourselves."

Perhaps the wisest comment came from a fourth-grader: "You just have to show people that you care. If you don't stand up to bullies, they'll just keep pushing you around."

Update: Janice Cohn wrote a children's book about the goings-on in Billings, The Christmas Menorahs: How a Town Fought Hate. Later, with lyricist Barry James, she created the elementary-school musical, "Paper Candles: How Courage and Goodness Triumphed in an AmericanTown." It was first performed in Billings on the 12th anniversary of the rock-throwing incident. A film based on the Billings occurrences, entitled "Not in Our Town," was also made and shown on PBS; it spawned "Not in Our Town" groups in towns across the country, all dedicated to resisting hate-mongering.