In Buddhism they have a concept of antidotes.

Klaus Barbie, was truly a Satan walking amongst us. But he had an antidote. Marcel Marceau. The Butcher of Lyon and a butcher’s son from Strasbourg who went on to be a world famous mime artist.

Marcel Marceau ended up in Lyon where Barbie carried out his horrific deeds. Marceau helped Jewish children escape to Switzerland, using his mime and entertainment skills to keep them calm. Klaus Barbie sent children to the concentration camps. There was a film Resistance released during corona times dramatising some of the work that Marcel Marceau did in Lyon. It’s hard to tell how much is true and I’m quite sure Barbie and Marceau never met each other.

Barbie did far more damage than Marceau could ever repair, but the world remembers Marceau. When you take the inspiration of Marceau and expand on it, then you can reach a level where there’s so much antidote in the system that Barbie would never find a place to employ his form of evil.

Marceau helped in a further, small, way through the modification of French children’s passports to make them appear younger that 18 at which age they would be sent to work camps. This is a truly beautiful way of helping. It doesn’t require on-the-spot bravery, it is one simple artist doing what he can to help. It doesn’t make him a hero, but it shows that we can all do something to help in our own way.

Resistance is one of the finest movements that came out of WWII. For if Anne Frank was betrayed, there were many more that risked their lives in helping them, and yet more that knew about them but kept quiet.

These small acts of kindness are what I hope work their way through each and every country. Like Marceau’s modification of passports, the acts of resistance can be so small that the risks of being caught are tiny. It’s turning a blind eye, not listening to a conversation talking about someone in hiding. Loving thy neighbour, even when that neighbour is of a different religion, colour, class and not even that nice.

This art of love is the antidote to hatred.

You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time, toward the same object, the same person, want to harm and want to do good. You cannot, in the same gesture, shake hand and give a blow.
– Matthieu Ricard’s TED Talk @12:01 in the video

He clarifies some of these antidotes:

• Benevolence, loving kindness against hatred.
• Rejoicing compared to jealousy.
• A kind of sense of inner freedom as opposite to intense grasping and obsession.

These are small acts, and each time you practice one you reduce the other. These acts also directly impact those around us. You are the father or mother of your family. You can’t save the world, but you can practice loving kindness, rejoicing and the sense of inner freedom and see how your family respond.