The First Barcode Is All Too Human

"You must understand that I did not become a resistance fighter, a smuggler of Jews, a defier of the SS and the Nazis all at once. One's first steps are always small: I had begun by hiding food under a fence."
 --Irene Gut


I'm helping the Farmington city libarary staff switch over to a new bar-code system for their books. This complements their change-over to an open-source cataloguing system.

Today we actually placed the new bar-code labels for the first time. And I thought it highly appropriate how fate or chance dictated the very first book was In My Hands by Irene Gut Opdike. The new bar-code label is the one at the upper left with the yellow stripe.

The book tells the story of a young Polish woman, Irene Gut, who found she could take advantage of her harsh fate to help the victims of fascist oppression and persecution. In all these concerns we have of politics and religion, this example of quiet heroism tells me--puts in my face--how human needs and aspirations are far more important. We must build, not destroy. We must help, not harm. We must liberate, not oppress.