Terrible choices - *

Yesterday I wrote about John Demanjuk, who was deported to Germany to face charges that he was an accessory to 29,000 counts of murder in his capacity as a death camp guard. I’ve been mulling over the story for several weeks, but in a sense, it’s merely a continuation of years of wondering and reflecting.

The people of Nazi Germany have always perplexed me. All of them, really. I’ve read accounts written by and about people who lived through the Holocaust, and I am at a loss to understand. I see the old newsreels of Hitler, and I can hardly believe that people blindly followed that ranting, evil man. I simply can’t fathom the mindset of people who would take an active role in the murder of millions. I am appalled to think of physicians who would conduct inhuman experiments on helpless human beings. I do not understand how people allowed themselves to be packed into cattle cars when it was becoming apparent that they were traveling to their death. I ask myself how countless “good people” could close their eyes to the atrocities, and I wonder how others summoned the courage to risk their lives to hide Jews or to assist in smuggling them to safety. No matter how much I read, the questions remain.

For me, there is a special reason to ask these questions. I am of German heritage. My family emigrated to the US well before Hitler’s rise to power. But I can never hear about the history of that time without wondering what role I would have played. I like to think that I would have done the right thing. But I don’t know for certain. It’s easy to know the right thing, but I know through long experience that I don’t always do the right thing.

I pray if I’m ever faced with such terrible choices, I will make the right one.