The Hardness of Our Hearts

The documentary Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State shows various interviews with people who are associated with the death camps and with World War II.  Some of the interviews were with the Nazi SS guards who actually ran the camps.  I was particularly disturbed to hear some of the SS guards who, even as they acknowledged their part in the atrocities that took place at the camp, seemed to express no remorse.  Many of those interviewed spoke of what they did as just being part of the events that were going on.  It was much like listening to someone recount their days at college some 40 years ago.  Whatever "mischief" took place, well, that's just what happens in college.  It seemed to be a kind of "boys will be boys" mentality.  One guard even chuckled as he recounted stealing the valuables of the Jewish people who were being sent into the gas chambers.  

I wondered as these men talked, if there callous attitude even some 50 years later, was true to who these men are.  I wondered, had they really not learned anything in the 50 years since this war ended?  Had they not realized what an horrendous violation of human dignity the holocaust was?  Or perhaps their callousness was merely a coping mechanism?  Perhaps it had become easier to have a cavalier attitude about the whole thing then it was to honestly face what they had been a part of? 

I also wondered, to what degree do we become cold and indifferent to the suffering around us?  To what degree do we "cope" with the suffering by becoming as callous as these men appeared to be?  Even as I believe that most of us find it disgusting that a man would laugh about stealing from Jews going to a gas chamber, I also have to wonder if we  often harden our hearts to those who are suffering in our world because the reality of facing the truth is more then we can bear.  

But let us be clear, that what we cannot bear is not the truth of people suffering for we all live with the knowledge that people suffer.  We know (and if you didn't know this you do now) that nearly 30,000 children die each DAY from preventable causes. Yet what we, if we are honest, cannot bear is our unwillingness to do something about it.  You see, our hearts grow hard toward the suffering of others because we are protecting ourselves and what we our protecting ourselves from is the knowledge that we could do something.  And when we don't, we know it is wrong and it is selfish and no one what's to be thought of as being wrong and selfish.  So we dismiss the suffering.  We dismiss the idea that we can do something about it.  We say the problems are too big and perhaps too far away.  We put it aside and perhaps even promise that we will somehow get involved later.  

So let me say this: Don't let your heart be hardened.  You can do something.  Yes it may hurt.  You may have to sacrifice.  You may not be able to change the world for everyone, but you can change the world for at least someone. Open your heart.