Forgiveness. What power does it have on us?
In yesterday’s article “The healing power of forgiveness” by the always-perceptive Professor Chong Siow Ann, he wrote about this gift of ultimate release from the prison of our own soul.
He puts it best with these words: “Just as the inability or refusal to forgive has the tragic effect of tethering the victims to the bitter past, and an obsessive and futile wish for an imagined better past without that trespass; for an unforgiving penitent, it can also be a psychic imprisonment that chains him to that original trespass.”
But psychic prison or otherwise, forgiveness for untold grief committed is easier said than done.
Some hurt goes so deep that the victims are understandably struggling with the anger from the original trespass that they are unable to take the next step of the healing process, that is, forgiveness.
It is not that they can’t, or do not want to, even after the perpetrator has served his time in prison.
But this disability arises from that sense of deep grief and pain that paralyses the victim for years, even decades. I believe it is a feeling only the one bearing the hurt can fully understand.
A few years ago, I read a book “Mission at Nuremberg” by author Tim Townsend. It tells about a Holocaust survivor, Simon Wiesenthal. After the war, he dedicated his life to being a Nazi hunter. Professor Chong also made mention of Simon in his article.
In the book, Tim narrated an encounter that Wiesenthal had with a member of SS named Karl. The year was 1941 and the place was Janowska work camp. Wiesenthal was only 31 years old when he worked in the camp.
One day, he was assigned to a nearby hospital and a nurse approached him. “Are you a Jew?” the nurse asked. Wiesenthal nodded and followed the nurse to a Red Cross building.
They walked up a flight of stairs and into a room where a man lying on the bed called out to him softly, “Please come nearer. I can't speak loudly.”
As Wiesenthal drew nearer to the man, he introduced himself as Karl and told him that he has not much longer to live. He added that he is “resigned to dying soon.”
But before he die, he wanted to tell Wiesenthal something that has been tormenting him. Karl specifically asked for a Jew so that he could confess to him what he had done to his people.
He started off with a brief background of his life. He told Wiesenthal that he was 21 years old when he joined the Hitler Youth.
His faith as a Catholic altar boy faded away during the war. Karl insisted that he was not born a murderer but one day he was assigned to join a unit of SA storm-troopers somewhere in the Russian front.
His unit found a deserted town and everything in it was either destroyed, bombed or burnt. As they searched the place, they found a large group of civilians huddling together and under guard. They were all Jews.
The next part of the story is described in the book with details unsparing: -
“The order was given and Karl, along with the rest of the unit, marched toward the huddled mass of families – 150 people, maybe, 200. The children stared at the approaching men with anxious eyes. Some were crying. Women held their infant children. A truck arrived with cans of gasoline, which were taken to the upper stories of one of the small houses on the square. Karl and his unit drove the Jews into the house with whips and kicks. Another truck arrived, and those Jews, too, were crammed into the small house before the door was locked.”
At this point, Wiesenthal wanted to leave the room as he was all too familiar with the ending. But Karl begged him to stay and allow him to finish. Reluctantly, Wiesenthal returned to his seat and Karl continued.
In the book, the author wrote: “The order was given, and the SS unit pulled the safety pins from their grenades and tossed them into the upper windows of the house. Explosions, then screams, then flames and more screams. The men readied their rifles, prepared to shoot any of the Jews who tried to flee the fire. Karl saw a man on the second floor of the house, holding a child. His clothes were on fire. A woman stood next to him. The man covered the child’s eyes with one hand and jumped. The woman followed. Burning bodies fell from other windows. The shooting began. “My God,” Karl whispered. “My God.””
Therein ends Karl's confession.
To Wiesenthal, God had on that day taken a leave of absence from that god-forsaken town. And in His place, Hitler and his ideology stood as a testament to the evil of humanity. What Karl was asking from Wiesenthal, a Jew, was forgiveness.
In his own words, Karl said, “In the long nights while I have been waiting for death, time and time again I have longed to talk about it to a Jew and beg forgiveness from him…I know what I am asking is almost too much for you, but without your answer I cannot die in peace.” After he had finished, Wiesenthal stood up and left the room without saying a word.
Professor Chong wrote that “in the story, Wiesenthal did not absolve (Karl) but was haunted afterwards by uncertainty about whether that was the right thing to do. He closed the story by suggesting the reader mentally change places with him, and asks: “What would I have done?”
Honestly, I can never fully answer that question for what hurt have I suffered that qualifies me to even stand with people like Wiesenthal.
I live in a secure modern state and have most of my Maslow’s hierarchy of needs satisfied to a large extent.
The only “war-like” experience for me is the struggles with parenting, their academic results, some workplace politics that are resolved within a few days, my egocentric self at times, and the usual misunderstanding and petty grievances over largely trivial issues concerning human relationships.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trivialising our pain and personal wounds in a reasonably secure nation-state. For what is a “molehill” to some war survivors living in a different time can be a ”mountain” to people living in our modern era.
Each person experiences their pain personally, differently and viscerally, and indeed, only the one who wears the shoe knows where it really hurt.
But “what would I have done?” in Wiesenthal’s shoes is a soul-wrecking struggle, and the depth of the pain brooks no easy answer.
That is why the powerful story above moved me deeply because the symbolic juxtaposition between Wiesenthal, representing the murdered Jews, and Karl, representing his tormentors, shows without a doubt the insufferable pain of humanity in their bid for personal redemption.
For Karl, he was seeking to find redemption from the guilt by seeking forgiveness. And for Wiesenthal, he was struggling with the same hope for redemption from hatred by forgiving. Their pain is real and I have learned that we all struggle with this pain to a certain extent.
In our lives, the hurt we experience may be the hurt we have inflicted on others (as in Karl) or the hurt that have been inflicted on us (as in Wiesenthal).
On either side of the divide, the question is the same: How do we move forward with our life carrying the burden of this hurt?
And we all seek complete forgiveness and it comes easier when it is mutual, that is, as Professor Chong puts it, “For a victim to truly let go of his or her anger, the perpetrator must first admit responsibility and culpability, acknowledge that what he has done was hurtful and wrong, show remorse for it, apologise and offer emotional and/or material recompense.”
Yet, we know the reality apple falls far from the ideal tree. For some of us, our experience is that the perpetrator doesn’t even know he or she was being unbearable, malicious, unfair or self-serving. And will never admit to being so.
So, often, the ball is in our court. Apart from withdrawing from such people to avoid being hurt, we have to make up our mind to let it go. At some point in our life, we have to forgive in our heart and move on for our own sake - because unforgiveness is infectious, toxic.
For by not burying the hatchet, it would mean that we have to use it to dig a grave for those who have hurt us. In so doing, we are unknowingly digging a grave for ourselves.
It is no less an emotional and mental prison in our soul as we tether our life to the original trespass.
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