The problem of evil. Part 1.

Whence evil?

I don’t know if there are many parents who read this blog and share it with their kids. Heck, I don’t know if there are many people who read this blog at all. But –

PARENTAL ADVISORY: The following contains material that is graphic, and may not be for all stomachs. Probably want to keep the kids away from this one.

Before Halloween a friend and former colleague posed a question on Facebook: What was the scariest horror move? My response was that I have never really been frightened much by horror movies. I just can’t suspend disbelief to the degree required, so I watch the goriest scenes thinking, “Gee – nice special effects. I wonder how they did that!” The second thought followed: Real life offers horrors enough. Who needs a movie? Schindler’s List was a truly terrifying move because its basis was reality, and because, if we were paying attention, it says something about all of us, not just the Nazis in World War II Germany. Any time one group of people is given absolute, unfettered control over any other group of human beings, there will be those who abuse the power, and may not even be aware that they are abusing both people and power.

Elie Wiesel was a Jew who lived in Romania before the War. He was a teenager when the Nazis invaded. He and his family were sent to the camps. Elie survived and wrote a book about the experience, Night. It’s a small book – my edition is 109 pages long. If you haven’t read it yet, go get a copy and read it. You can read it easily in one evening. You may sleep with difficulty that night.

Scenes that stand out in memory: Wiesel describes the hanging of a boy. There were three gallows set up on the occasion; adults were hanged on either side of the boy. The hangings occurred with all the inmates of the camp assembled. When the assembly was dismissed the adults were already dead. Their bodies had sufficient bulk so that the rope applied enough pressure to finish the job fairly quickly. The inmates all had to file past the gallows, all had to look the victims in the face. They were making an example of them, you see – corpse as object lesson.

The boy was not yet dead as the inmates filed past. For upwards of thirty minutes he hung there, in the agony of his struggle against death. And the voice of one of the inmates asked a question that has, ever since, haunted those who were there: “God, where ARE you?” And the answer that came to Wiesel internally: “Where is he? Here He is – He is hanging here on this gallows. . .”

Later, Wiesel’s father fell ill. In the Nazi camps, that was usually a fatal mistake. Why would the camp officials want to feed someone who could do no work? Wiesel’s father was not sent to the crematorium, as so many were. He was allowed to endure the pain of his slow death. On the night of January 28, 1945, Wiesel slept in a bunk right above his father. On the morning of January 29, 1945, when Wiesel awoke there was another inmate in the bunk where his father had been. Thus did this teenager learn that his father had died.

After the liberation of the camps, Wiesel relates:

One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto.

From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me.

The look in his eyes, as he stared into mine, has never left me.

It would be so easy to attribute the horrors of the Holocaust to the insanity of individuals. A striking thing, though: When the monsters that created all of this were examined later, many were observed to be completely sane. Just folks that lived In and adjusted to the society they lived in. Thomas Merton wrote an essay about Adolph Eichmann that presented this information. Folks would do their day at work in the camp, then go home to their families.

I think I’m doing more than one post about evil and its origins. It’s such an involved subject! But I do think that one area worth considering as a source of evil is societal. German culture had a history of anti-Semitism that long predated Hitler. Martin Luther, when he argued against the overabundance of religious rules and regulations, wrote publications inviting Jews to join his branch of Christianity. Look – none of those silly Catholic laws and rituals! Luther overlooked something: Jews were not not leaving  Judaism just because Catholicism wasn’t appealing; they weren’t just waiting for a new Christianity in order to become Christian. No – Jews were remaining Jews because that was the faith of their ancestors, and because they liked being Jews. When Luther realized that, he published tracts that included some of the most vituperative anti-Semitic material imaginable.

Anti-Semitism ran deep in German culture. Hitler didn’t invent this; he tapped into something that had been there for a long time. Thus, society as a source of evil.

I’ll be revisiting this topic, sources of evil. Hope you accompany me.

I’d love your thoughts.