Been thinking a lot about forgiveness today.
This past weekend marked the 65th anniversary of the bombs on Japan to end World War II. And I watched a documentary about Auschwitz surivors used by Dr. Mengele (the purported angel of death) in medical experiments. The key thing is that they were children, all twins.
Their entire family had already been murdered and if one twin died during the experiments, the other twin would be murdered as well. Eva Moses Kor and her twin sister, Miriam, both survived; they were just ten years old. They are picured in liberation photographs at the head of the group during the Soviets’ opening of the camp being led out of the barbed wire.
Miriam died in 1993 in Israel from kidney failure as a direct result of the experimental drugs given to both of them in Auschwitz. It became Eva’s quest to find as many answers as she could about those experiments, which led her to the only SS doctor acquitted after the war because he had saved so many Jewish lives while at Auschwitz.
Dr. Munch joined Eva at Auschwitz in 1994 in order to heal (his own post-war nightmares were just as terrifying) and Eva took the step of publicly forgiving him for his part in the horror. She remarked that she had never thought that a Nazi would have nightmares about those events. Dr. Munch also went on public record as a witness to the Auschwitz gas chambers as a member of the SS medical team.
The thing that moved me about this documentary was Eva. At ten years old she decided to prove Dr. Mengele wrong and live, even after he told her she would die in two weeks’ time. She had been injected with some poisonous bacteria just like her twin. She decided at ten years old to keep her sister alive if at all possible. And 50 years later, she decided to forgive not only Dr. Munch, but Dr. Mengele himself.
This woman is a force of nature; in her walk, in her talk, in her determination to survive and to not let anything destroy her. She knows who she is and where she’s been. And the best part, she knows where she’s going–to freedom from Auschwitz, from persecution, from the memories. During the documentary, other twins who survived Mengele’s experiments remark that they cannot forgive because it is too painful. They even lash out in anger at Eva for forgiving when the rest of them cannot. I have nothing to say. Until I’ve lived through the same thing, how could I judge anyone for refusing to forgive?
I just found myself remembering how I have taken hold of some hurtful thing in my life (so much less hurtful than Auschwitz; trust me, I realize this) and refused to let go of it. I remember how much bondage and limited movement I had while I carried all that around on my shoulders like a smelly carcass.
How in the world can we forgive when we are hurt? Because to not do it is to continue to torture ourselves. I am not saying this lightly. I have been hurt, manipulated, lied to, emotionally abused by so-called “spiritual advisors” until I thought I had nothing left to live for. I could not let go of it for a very long time.
Perhaps time is the answer. Eva worked through her memories for 50 years after all. But what if we could imagine a life free of the hatred and bondage, a life of creative strength? She says to the camera at one point, “Getting even never did anybody any good.”
Eva Moses Kor is a strong woman. But it’s not her physical appearance or even her voice or eyes; there is something from her very core and her heart that exudes strength. I felt awed by her presence on a television screen. She will not let anything stand in her way ever again.
Trust me that I don’t mean forget. No.
We must not forget, but we must forgive. How much creative strength are we losing by hanging on to things that (while pale in comparison to medical experimentation at Auschwitz) still are only hurting us, wounding us, limiting us. I don’t know the answer and I don’t know how to wave a wand and grant everyone the ability to forgive.
Can we forgive the little things just as Eva Moses Kor forgave the big things? Is a fear of letting go of those hurts holding us back from what we were put here to do? Kor defines forgiveness as letting go of something painful so that it no longer has power over you. Something worth thinking about.
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