By contrast, The Nazis’ greatest contempt was for those who did collaborate – the so-called Sonderkommandos, Jews who in return for a few months' extension of their own lives were willing to participate in the extermination of other Jews.

The deep moral dilemma addressed in The Sunflower is being raised once again, perhaps more dramatically than ever, in actor/director Tim Blake Nelson’s movie, “The Grey Zone” – possibly the most in-the-face film on the Holocaust yet made, with the arguable exception of Alain Resnais’ haunting documentary “Night and Fog” (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0780020227/002-4835802-5553610 ). Nelson’s film portrays the utter betrayal of kindred by the death-camp Jews who actively assisted the Nazis by themselves doing the daily chores of mass extermination in return for brief extensions of their own lives. 

This deep dilemma was put directly to Nelson on ABC-TV’s UpClose: “Would you assist the Nazis to spare yourself a sure and instant death?”  Nelson's answer: "I can only say that I am now better equipped, having gone through this process, to say 'no.'  I am not saying that I would act in a more heroic way now...all I can say is that I am more equipped emotionally, mentally, and morally, having spent years working through it." (For more on filmmaker Nelson see http://abcnews.go.com/sections/UpClose/DailyNews/Tim_Blake_Nelson_Email.html )

Plot summary: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0252480/plotsummary

10-minute NPR Radio interview of filmmaker: http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1152404
*****


Dear colleagues in forgiveness,

From your responses to Weisenthal's book thus far, it seems safe to say that most of us find it difficult to think of forgiveness in a situation that is so extreme as to be itself unthinkable.

However, I would like all of us to consider the extent to which, in the long run, situations - any situation - may be ultimately beside the point where forgiveness is concerned. While feelings of unforgiveness are unavoidable in the immediate situation of an injustice, betrayal, or atrocity, need these feelings ever be absolute in the long run?

I raise this question because if, as Dr. Luskin maintains, the purpose of forgiveness is to be at peace with ourselves, thereby being empowered to confront injustice with an open heart rather than a hardened one (which I would maintain Weisenthal did in his meeting with the Nazi officer's mother, and which is all the more remarkable when one considers that mothers are so often blamed for their children's faults), isn't forgiveness ultimately of value for the forgiver's own sake irrespective of situation?

To those who would say that forgiving for the sake of one's own well-being is selfish, I'm quite ready to be selfish on behalf of addressing injustice proactively with the emotional and mental clarity and well-being that comes with forgiveness rather than address it in an emotionally and mentally reactive state that jeopardizes my own well-being.

Given that forgiveness does not condone the act for which we forgive the person who committed it, nor does it exonerate forgiven persons of their injustices and rather empowers us to hold them accountable for their injustices more clear-headedly, what is redeeming about unforgiveness in any situation?  For instance, whenever I ask myself whose life is being made better by my unforgiveness - in any situation - the answer is always the same: no one's.

As Dale Carnegie once said: "When we hate our enemies, we are giving them power over us: power over our sleep, our appetites, our blood pressure, our health, and our happiness. Our enemies would dance with joy if only they knew how they were worrying us, lacerating us, and getting even with us! Our hate is not hurting them at all, but our hate is turning our own days and nights into a hellish turmoil."

Why, therefore, would I continue to nurture an unforgiving attitude that benefits no one and in the process afflicts my own well-being rather than that of those whom my unforgiveness is intended to do harm?
****
You have provided an opening for me to share what psychologist William James called a "white crow" - i.e., that the existence of a single white crow is sufficient to disprove the statement that all crows are black.

The white crow in this instance was the consistently forgiving attitude of a Dutch Jewish woman throughout the ordeal that eventually led to her extermination, thereby disproving the axiomatic position taken by many that genocidal holocausts are unforgivable. 

We know of this woman, named Etty Hillseum, via the posthumous publication of her diary and letters. Being no less remarkable in her testimony than was Anne Frank - and some would say more so - her final proclamation was, "We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds." 

a Dutch Jew who became a beneficial presence to those with whom even she herself faced impending extermination. Though she did not come across as a forgiving person in her diary's early entries, she ultimately demonstrated one of the greatest examples of forgiveness-while-*in-extremis* that is a matter of historical record. Her experience of the Holocaust was in such contrast to Wiesenthal's that the question is thereby posed: Is it possible to forgive even the "unforgivable"?

For more on Etty Hillesum see:

Brief bio: http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/08.14.97/cover/lit4-9733.html

Quotes from Etty's letters and diaries: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/etty_hillesum.html

Reviews of the book, “An Interrupted Life,” compiled from Etty's diaries and letters (be sure to cut and paste this entire URL in your browser if it doesn't come out "hot"): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805050876/qid=1020955302/sr=1-1/ref=
sr_1_1/102-8507617-9648937 

A lyceum dedicated to Etty's memory: http://www.ettyhillesumlyceum.nl/engels/index.html 

Reading “An Interrupted Life” is always an emotionally cleansing experience for me, and I recommend it to everyone who seeks a deep understanding of compassion.

There is additional testimony as well, which is suggestive that forgiving perspectives were accessed by others who were immersed in the hellacious conditions of the Holocaust. 

Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is evidence of such possibility, for it was during his own death camp experience that he gestated the transpersonal therapy (logo-therapy) presented in that book. The essence of logo-therapy is grounded in Nietzsche’s proclamation that one can put up with any “how” if one has a “why”?

Bruno Bettelheim’s book, The Informed Heart, is likewise in part a “product” of the Holocaust experience. Bettelheim described in great detail the varieties of psychological adaptation to death camp living, ranging from redemptive to collaborative. Interestingly, those who adapted most heathily (physically, mentally, and emotionally) to death camp living, and who thereby won the respect of their Nazi overlords and were therefore often allowed to live longest even though they utterly refused to collaborate, were the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

And yet another "diary" of redemptive death camp accommodation was left behind by the scores of small children who drew butterflies on the walls of the corridors in which they knowingly awaited their turn in the gas chambers or ovens.
*****

What I consider to be the relative rather than absolute nature of unforgiving feelings is illustrated by the accounts of some survivors of the Holocaust, and of at least one who became its victim.  Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, is evidence of such forgiveness, for it was during his own death camp experience that he gestated the transpersonal therapy (logotherapy) presented in that book. Bruno Bettelheim's book, The Informed Heart, is likewise a "product" in part of the Holocaust experience. And yet another forgiving perspective was left behind by the children who drew butterflies on the walls of the waiting rooms in which they knowingly awaited their turn in the ovens or gas chambers.

One forgiving perspective on the Holocaust is absent from Wiesenthal's book, because the person who held it was among those who perished therein. We know of her only because she left behind a diary that some consider to be even more remarkable than Anne Frank's, a diary that concludes with the sentence, "We should be willing to act as a balm for all wounds."

The author of that diary was Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jew who became a beneficial presence to those with whom she faced impending extermination. Though she did not come across as a forgiving person in her diary's early entries, she ultimately demonstrated one of the greatest examples of forgiveness-while-*in-extremis* that is a matter of record. Her experience of the Holocaust was in such contrast to Wiesenthal's that the question is thereby posed: Is it possible to forgive even the "unforgivable"?

In keeping with Dr. Luskin's definition of the purpose of forgiveness, Etty also wrote: "Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will be in our troubled world."

For more on Etty Hillesum see:

A brief bio entitled "Thinking with the Heart": http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/08.14.97/cover/lit4-9733.html

Quotes from Etty's letters and diaries: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/ettyhilles127232.html

Reviews of the book, "An Interrupted Life," compiled from Etty's diaries (be sure to cut and paste this entire URL in your browser if it doesn't come out "hot"): http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0805050876/qid=1020955302/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-8507617-9648937

A lyceum dedicated to Etty's memory: http://www.ettyhillesumlyceum.nl/engels/index.html

[NOTE: I have reproduced the above material in a fourth thread to this week's discussion, entitled "Whose well-being does my unforgiveness serve?" and look forward to your responses to the questions raised.]

Putting forgiveness first,

Noel McInnis