Carrying the Flame: An Act of Resistance

When the ground shakes beneath us, many face the same agonizing question: Do I stay and fight, or do I go to protect myself and those I love?

Leaving can feel like betrayal. Staying can feel like self-destruction. But seeking safety has never meant surrendering your values. Stepping away does not mean abandoning the struggle. Survival, too, has always been part of resistance.

The Burden of Guilt

Those who leave often carry a heavy guilt. They imagine neighbors whispering, you should have stayed. They wonder if those left behind see them as deserters. Yet history reminds us that exiles and refugees have often been the lifeline of resistance.

During the Second World War, entire governments operated in exile, broadcasting news and organizing aid when their homelands were under occupation. In the Cold War era, dissidents smuggled manuscripts across borders, their words typed in secret basements later reprinted in Paris or London for the world to read. These voices in exile did not weaken the struggles at home, they amplified them.

Movements survive because they are networks, not solitary acts. Some stand in the square. Some keep the presses hidden. Some carry the story across borders. All roles matter.

Carrying the Fire

Think of resistance as a fire. In some places it blazes openly, illuminating the streets. In others, it smolders quietly beneath ash. And sometimes, when flames risk being stamped out, someone must gather the embers, shield them from the wind, and carry them carefully to another hearth.

When writers fled fascist Italy, or when Jewish families escaped Nazi Germany, they did not abandon the fire. They carried it. Their survival meant that stories, music, memories, and traditions survived too. They rekindled those flames in new lands, ensuring they were not lost to silence.

To leave is not to extinguish the fire. It is to become its keeper.

Resistance in Exile

Safety creates a different kind of power. From a distance, you may hold tools those inside cannot use. You can speak when others are silenced. You can amplify stories, publish them, or send resources back. You can advocate to governments abroad, organize protests, or lobby for international attention.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s books—written in secret and smuggled out of the Soviet Union—shaped global awareness of the Gulag system. Vaclav Havel, before becoming president of a free Czech Republic, was supported by networks of people abroad who shared his writings and pressed Western governments to listen. Their impact came not because they risked their lives recklessly, but because they found ways to make resistance sustainable.

And in smaller, quieter ways, safety lets you create havens. Refugee families caring for one another, diaspora communities raising funds, exiles building networks that welcome the next arrivals, all of this sustains the struggle. A hearth abroad is not a retreat; it is part of survival.

Living With Disorientation

Of course, leaving does not dissolve the turmoil. At first, everything feels strange—new streets, new languages, unfamiliar rhythms. The doubt lingers: Was this the right choice? Am I still doing enough?

But disorientation fades as you begin to kindle your own hearth in a new place. The work you do from afar—writing, organizing, providing refuge—is not lesser work. It is what keeps the embers alive when they might otherwise burn out.

A Hearth That Travels

Your hearth is not bound to one country. It travels with you, wherever you tend the fire. Sometimes resistance is loud and blazing. Sometimes it is quiet, watching over coals in the night. And sometimes the most courageous act is to carry the flame across borders, to place it gently in another hearth, where it can burn again when the time is right.

Choosing safety is not stepping away from the home you care about. It is ensuring that the fire endures.

Sources and suggested reading

• Footitt, Hilary, and Simona Tobia. WarTalk: Foreign Languages and the British War Effort in Europe, 1940–47. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

• Kushner, Tony. The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination: A Social and Cultural History. Blackwell, 1994.

• Laqueur, Walter. The Terrible Secret: Suppression of the Truth about Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Boston: Little, Brown, 1980.

• Havel, Václav. Open Letters: Selected Writings, 1965–1990. Translated by Paul Wilson. New York: Vintage, 1992.

• Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.

• Stonor Saunders, Frances. The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters. New York: The New Press, 2000.

• Hirsch, Francine. Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal after World War II. Oxford University Press, 2020.

• Said, Edward W. Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.