What drives some people to forgive but not others? I believe from my reading, that people are driven by different factors in their lives. While some rely on their struggles and remember their suffering, like a rope to pull them through trials, others I have read about use the trials as stair steps, climbing ever upwards. I agree with Sidney Shachnow in that the young SS man’s actions were, “…the ultimate and irreversible denial of his humanity”, but in this sense, I wonder if forgiveness lends more to the healing of the victims, not for the redemption of the soldier (Wiestenthal 242). I believe that the soldier’s future after death is not for me to ponder over, rather, how might the victims’ response to his death aid their personal recovery? When concerning forgiveness, “…one senses the no, and the necessity of finding a yes” (243). This statement from Doeothee Soelle portrays some of the emotions people wrestle with surrounding forgiveness. It is difficult to free your perpetrator, but humans by nature seek to resolve turmoil, because ultimately, we want to be happy. Forgiving sees beyond the present state of the person in wrong and discovers, or at least believes in, the potential for good within. My mother taught me to see people this way because of the eight billion humans on this planet, it could have just as easily been one of us driven by eight billion and more factors to become any kind of person.
Many people questioned their spirituality and abandoned their religion during the Holocaust, which is a completely valid action. Adversely, other people relied on their spirituality for strength through their trials. For some, spirituality enables “…an opportunity for the inner transformation of both victim and perpetrator” (235). If a murderer reconciles with God, they must still accept the consequences delivered by justice, else what justice would be delivered in fairness to the offense of the victims? Some argue that murderers sacrifice their humanity in the act of slaughter. I think that is certainly an argument to consider, but I do not have a firm opinion on it either way since I have no way judge by. Forgiveness after some debacle action is an act of compassion because it is due where it is not deserved. It is not mercy, because forgiving should not mean amnesty. For people relying on their religion, they become a forgiver in light of their God or well wishing expressed within their religious beliefs. The influence of one imprisoned Tibetan monk's emotions shaped by his beliefs is illustrated best when discussing his imprisonment in that “…what he most feared was losing his compassion for the Chinese" (130). Instances like these and more show how religion can act as a source of power during times of uncertainty. Perhaps it is these very traits, expressed in his Buddhist beliefs, saved him from hate.
Some people do not rely on religion at all when concerning matters of the present time. Some people forgive others on their personal path to self healing, which is another kind of strength in itself . When people cling to painful memories as a source of fuel for daily life, they become ruled by the very memory of the people who hurt them. Eva Korr is a woman famous for her forgiveness extended to the Nazi soldiers. As a Holocaust victim, her relationship with a Nazi doctor has helped form a mutual understanding of both people involved. She is a justice seeker, in how she simultaneously sued a medical company, Beyer, for using Holocaust victims in medical experiments. This is an instance where forgiveness, which is not amnesty, has occurred. When one allows oneself to forgive, that dominion is released and yes, the memory will always remain, but the oppression will leave. Forgiveness for the benefit of self, for the remembrance of a time that a victim refuses to be trapped in, steals power from hate and returns fulfillment to the forgiver.
When people are empowered within themselves, driven by self, God, or otherwise, to forgive a wrong that does not deserve compassion, verity and love become traits that can not be ignored within the forgiver. Adopting hope and banishing despair does not bury the past, but enables people, both victims and outsiders, to look at a situation of such wrong doing and see through veils of hate to meet the demands for a better future. There is power in forgiveness, and people draw from many sources to transform themselves from victims to advocates and it is those people who educate and change the world that we see. When I met a woman from Uganda named Jacqueline, who came with Invisible Children to speak with at my high school, my whole perspective about forgiveness was altered. Her son was taken when he was ten years old and she never saw him again. That same night, her son's captors also killed her husband. She told us that she could not hate the captors, the murderers, because they were only teenagers themselves. Instead of hating the people that destroyed her family, she hurt for them. And for those children and her own son, she became a public speaker, to help them. That woman's story changed my life. People like Jacqueline, like Eva Korr and like my mother are those who inspire my own self and others to see within people the possibilities of what could be.