Uncomfortable

I'm currently watching the film The Reader on TV. It’s the second time I’ve seen it and I’ve read the book too. It’s just now at the part where young Michael is at university and is attending Hannah’s trial. One of his classmates has brought up a point that everyone at the time knew what was going on and did nothing. He said that if he was handed a gun in the courtroom, he would shoot Hannah and the other five women on trial with her without question.

It got me thinking: What would I do? What a horribly uncomfortable question. If I, like the character Hannah, had taken a job for the SS and found myself suddenly in the middle of something I didn’t expect, would I try to get out? Would I run - desert my post? Would I stand up for or decide against killing the people I was there to guard? Would my sense of compassion and true morality be able to overrule my base human nature to protect my own life? Could I stand in front of a bullet aimed at a woman whose only crime was that she was born into a religion other than my own?

I’d like to believe that I would be brave enough to know that what was happening around me was wrong. I’d like to think I would be like those generals who plotted against Hitler from inside his own army.

But if I’m being fully honest with myself, I don’t know if I could. Could you?

One of my goals while living here in Europe is to go to an internment camp. Not for some voyeuristic view of what happened or to selfishly get a glimpse to satisfy my curiosity of what a camp might look like. No, I want the shock of it. I want to see for myself the buildings and the wire so that I don’t ever begin to feel comfortable about this topic. No one should ever feel comfortable about it.