If you know me at all, you know my obsession with genocide, particularly what we call The Holocaust, but also Cambodia (I had friends in college who lived through it.) Rwanda. Serbia. I have read more about The Holocaust because there is just more to read. I bet I've read more than you. If you think you've read more than I, we need to talk.
When injustice presents itself, it is pretty easy to see myself, and I bet it is for you as well to see yourself NOT as an active perpetrator. For example, there was the story out of Rwanda of the Seventh Day Adventist bishop. A group of Tutsi pastors and their families was holding up in a hospital. They sent a letter to their bishop whom I will not give the honor of naming. The pastors sent him a letter that said in part, "We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families." They were begging for him to intervene. What they didn't realize is that he was actually the mastermind planning their murders. [You can read the book by Philip Gourevitch]
Yeah, most of us know we aren't that person. We aren't going to plan any murders nor are we going to actively set out to hurt a people or a person.
But what about walking down the street in early 1930s Germany and seeing thugs mistreating an orthodox Jewish man, pulling out his beard or ear locks or pushing him into the muddy, streets, at that time still filled with horse shit? What would you do? Early on, it didn't appear to get someone into too much trouble for telling the thugs to stop. They were in the early stages of thugness. What would have happened if the public had just let it be known that they wouldn't put up with it?
What are we doing?
What about when they painted "Jude" on the front window on the shop where you went every day. When the brown shirts asked people to boycott them, most appear to have obeyed. But I've read quite a number of stories where people went right on shopping in these stores and suffered nothing.
Which would you be? Which would I be?
What would have happened on Kristallnacht if neighbors had flooded the streets to resist. It appears most stayed in their homes peeking through the slit in the curtains. What if? When it happens, and it will, if you are there, will you risk it? Will I?
What about when it gets more intense? What about when the stakes are higher? When the mother and father come to you and ask you to take in their child before they are deported, it sounds reasonable enough. How could you not? But what do you do when you find out that if you are caught, you will be killed. "Fair enough," maybe you you think, "It is he right thing to do." But that's not all. They will not only kill you but your entire family and sometimes even your entire village? What then? I don't know.
Certainly more people in occupied Europe turned their backs. There are great stories of those who risked their lives to save people. Often when they are asked why they did it, it is like they don't understand the question. Because it was the right thing to do. Oh I hope I could be those people.
What if you are a soldier? What if you're supposed to obey orders and the order today is to shoot innocent civilians into a mass grave and not to waste a bullet on the children, just throw them in. You know it is wrong. Everything you've ever known tells you this is wrong. But if you disobey, you end up in the pit too.
All of these genocides are mass murders, or course. But at the same time each murder was an individual murder. At some point individuals made decisions. It was a human being deciding to do the wrong thing.
To pass by on the other side of the street when someone is being mistreated. To choose not to get involved. To close the door when the refugee comes knocking, and you can year the wolves at their heals. When a hand with a tin cup reaches through the cattle car slats and asks for water, the SS man says "No!" Will you risk it? Will I?
Millions of decisions were made in the moment. Most chose to obey. Most chose to do that which they knew was wrong.
How far are you willing to go? I ask myself this question. Am I willing to believe that there are things worse than my own death. I often wonder about those perpetrators that went on to live long lives. And I wonder if in their nightmares, if they thought their lives would have been better cut short by doing the right thing.
