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I have been listening to an audio book, Man’s Search for Meaning, written by Viktor E. Frankl a neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor. Like many books written of experiences involving extreme suffering and trauma it’s extremely powerful and I tend to have to stop just to contemplate and dwell on certain passages or just sentences. I like your “thought experiment” as it’s not unlike how I go about reflecting on these kinds of books. Frankl talks about being on a train being moved from one camp to another, and upon seeing there were no chimneys at this new camp there was a silent celebration among the prisoners. For whatever inhumane reason, that night the newly arrived prisoners were made to stand (I believe naked) throughout the whole night in the freezing cold. Yet they were all still greatful not to be at Auschwitz or another camp with chimneys. There is a separate passage where he describes the types of prisoners, the last he describes are those who had lost all meaning, spirit and would walk up to and grab the electric fence. I can’t tell you how much heart it gives me to think of the human spirit in these conditions that can’t be broken. It’s very similar to some of the slave narratives I read, and on occasion coming across passages with descriptions of slaves on a plantation celebrating the opportunity to sing and dance together around a fire at night. I have shared with others I wish if push came to shove I’d have that type of spirit, to your point about brainwashing, I’ve received similar responses that I am romanticizing it and even that my mental impressions reflect racism, but The reality is I could have pointed to many other counter examples from my readings like the prisoners that lost meaning and grabbed the fence, but for better or worse that doesn’t lift my spirits and it’s not the examples I tend to pass on. I often ask myself what I think I would do in a camp or on a plantation, what actions would make me the most proud and if I would have the courage and spirit to make them, but I never pretend to know what I would actually do and I’d never once judged the actions of any of them...even the most deplorable acts, like the prisoners that worked on behalf of the guards for the slightest of comforts. Even more challenging is trying to put myself in the shoes of some young German or Southerner born into and inheriting the evils of these situations, it’s a lot easier to say what I hope I would do, but just the same I have to admit no one knows what they would do, after all how many people do you really encounter that are willing to go against the grain rather than fall in line much less when it means death? |