Using ‘In Memoriam’ page to honor standing up for convictions

On New Year’s Day, Dave Jensen spotted a Chronicle In Memoriam notice he forwarded to me. It was for Hans von Dohnanyi, born on New Year’s Day 1902, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.

“Dohnanyi grew up in Berlin and became a government lawyer shortly before the beginning of the Third Reich,” said the notice. “In response to extrajudicial killings carried out by the Nazis in 1934, he joined the resistance within Germany and made records of the Reich’s crimes to have as evidence should the regime fall. After his involvement in the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt against Hitler became known, Dohnanyi was condemned to death on Hitler’s orders on April 6, 1945. He was hanged two or three days later.

“To honor Dohnanyi and resistance fighters everywhere: Be brave. Stay strong. Live your values.”

Googling Dohnanyi, I learned he was the brother-in-law of the well-known resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that he saved numbers of Jews and that he is honored for his righteousness at Yad Vashem in Israel. Anyone who Googles him can learn more of his inspiring story. And that’s just what J.A., the person who placed the notice, would like you to do.

I contacted her through this newspaper’s Life Tributes desk. “My plan is to run a similar notice every month,” emailed J.A. — she would have liked to do it weekly, but for the cost, she wrote — “to honor otherwise ordinary and mostly forgotten individuals who stood up to wrongs in the face of overwhelming power. I hope to find a diverse range of people from a variety of time periods to commemorate in this way.” Dohnanyi’s actions cost him his life; this won’t always be true.

J.A. had not heard of him until an online search for “resistance 1 January” turned up his name. She was particularly moved at what she learned because her ancestors’ roots were in Austria-Hungary and many had died in the Holocaust. “So this seemed like a good place to start,” she e-mailed.

“A big challenge during this political upheaval,” she observed of the current era, “is knowing — and owning — our values and taking meaningful action when we see they are compromised or threatened. I’m trying to remind myself (and whoever reads the Sunday obituaries) that history can make men and women as well as the other way around. We appear to be on the verge of an opportunity to resist regressive changes, and not necessarily in a noisy or public way.”

J.A. said she also wants her ad fee to help support “newspapers and real journalism. ... and hopefully to reinforce that facts (and history) still matter at a time when technology and media are often deployed to conceal the truth.”

•In London on New Year’s Eve, Firat Yener was browsing in Harrods when he overheard a customer ask for the 100 percent off sale. That’s an optimistic shopper.

•Tom Ammiano says Jed York is the Mariah Carey of the Niners. And Lee Houskeeper says that Joe Cotchett couldn’t find anyone who would accept a gift of two seats in a luxury box at Sunday’s Niners game.

•At “Beach Blanket Babylon,” Leslie Gordon heard a Millennial male ask his pal, “Who’s Barbra Streisand?” The reply: “She was in ‘Meet the Fockers.’”

•On the way to Guerneville, Julian Grant and his husband, Billy Cook, noticed a new restaurant, Russia House No. 1. It should have been called Russia House No. 2, says Grant, reserving Russia House No. 1 for the Trump White House.

•At the Strand theater on Jan. 23, San Francisco Giants announcer Renel Brooks-Moon will host what’s being called an “Inaugural Benefit” for BaseBallet, dancer Weston Krukow and Ben Needham-Wood’s work “promoting the athleticism of dance.” The two dancers perform and film their work at AT&T Park. An onstage conversation will be part of the evening, as will a showing of a BaseBallet feature. Krukow, as has been mentioned here before, is the son of Giants announcer and former pitcher Mike Krukow.

This event makes me wistful for the annual fundraiser/competition between ODC dancers and UC Berkeley athletes, an idea dreamed up by the late Warren Hellman. In games involving flexibility, balance, speed and all kinds of dexterity, the dancers usually won.

“It was random spurts of violence mixed in with brotherly love.”

Customer describing New Year’s Eve at Union Square to proprietor of Phill’s Barber Shop, overheard in Pacific Grove by Bix Whitcomb