The person who turned in Anne Frank and her family may have believed himself a hero, a person doing the right thing. We forget that Anne Frank wasn’t known then as the famous girl writing a diary on the Holocaust, a diary that would become one of the best-selling books in history.

Anne Frank was an unknown Jewish girl hiding from the Nazis with her family in a Dutch home. As Anne wrote the pages of her diary, her family hid for several months until someone reported the hiding Franks to the Nazis.

The identity of that person remains unknown. It is a mystery that has involved amateur and professional detectives for decades. Yet, one can figure that the man or woman who reported the Franks had no idea that history would view them as the “Betrayer of Anne Frank.”

Likely, save for a few people, possibly only him or herself, this person didn’t believe history would judge one way or the other. This person may have believed he was doing his duty under the Nazi regime of reporting suspicious activity and turning in Jews. How could this person know that Anne Frank would become one of the world’s most famous names; the image of the little girl hiding in a Dutch apartment, one of the world’s most recognized faces?

How could this individual, who may have believed that reporting the Franks showed him as a loyal citizen of the Nazi regime or even a hero, know that he would be labeled the “Betrayer,” considered a vile villain by most of the world, even if his identity is never discovered.

No doubt, he thought what he did was right. The rest of the world disagreed. Notice, however, that the “Betrayer,” whether he believed himself right or wrong, never came forward to reveal his identity.

History is pockmarked with people who did what they thought was right but, instead of heroes, history has marked them as villains. Pontius Pilate likely believed washing his hands of the situation absolved him of any guilt. In the eyes of history, however, it has not. Pilate is one of history’s most marked villains.

In both situations, Pilate and the “Betrayer” acquiesced to popular opinion or the popular law of the era. While their decisions made them right within the mobs and governments of their particular moments, the long lens of history has heaped scorn upon their heads.

In both cases, too, Pilate and the “Betrayer” likely had no idea their actions on each of these particular days in their lives — dealing with either a little-known prophet from Nazareth or some little girl in hiding — would lead to worldwide infamy for the ages.

They merely believed they were being loyal to the laws of their particular governments, while ignoring the horrendous consequences of those regimes, and their own personal actions within those regimes. They did not know they were committing acts upon people the world would come to know as Anne Frank and Jesus Christ. Same as the people who refused to help a stranger alongside a road had no idea they would be immortalized as the apathetic souls in the tale of the Good Samaritan.

Still, they did know that they perpetrated these acts of apathy or betrayal on people, on a person. Our actions, even the ones we consider small, have consequences.

We may believe ourselves the heroes of our own stories, but if we do not weigh what we do, our actions make us villains in someone else’s story.

Dean Poling writes for The Valdosta (Ga.) Daily Times.