Idols of white supremacy are today heading into the twilight, as the dark side of long-vaunted “heroes” finally comes under scrutiny. This goes not just for the United States’ founding fathers, but also some of those who joined the fight against Nazism and the Holocaust. Men like Churchill, Stauffenberg, and Schindler did eventually turn against fascism — but they were themselves implicated in imperial conquest and rapacious exploitation.

Hollywood has in recent years served up all manner of fantastical exploits portraying resistance to Nazism, from Inglourious Basterds to Jojo Rabbit. Yet such movies are perversely untroubled by the concern to spread awareness of real-world examples. The other side doesn’t seem to share this memory loss: around the world, monuments to the Nazis and their collaborators still number in the thousands. When establishment press does turn to overlooked accounts of resistance fighters to fascism, they are too often cloaked in identitarianism and voided of the participants’ real politics.

These politically conscious anti-fascist fighters fought for future generations. But they remain buried under the weight of Cold War narratives writing them out of history — and often overlapping with fascist anti-communism. The actual historical record is filled not with opportunistic and compromised imperialists of the likes of Churchill, but the courage and bravery of women, children, disabled people, and ethnic minorities. Marked for either total subjugation or murder by the Nazis and their allies, they joined the struggle against fascism. True paragons of virtue really are there to be found — if only the lingering Cold War shadows had not prevented light from being shone in the right places.