Lary Bloom
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Sunday, December 04, 2005
"But There's Nothing I Can Do"
In an era of deadly political lies and of twisting honest truths into the machinery of destruction, we might look to an unlikely source for courage, as the example of the power of a lone voice in the wilderness and as a demonstration that one person, no matter how unlikely, can make a difference. In short, we should study the work of a Nazi.We are not accustomed to this, of course, nor should we be. But here is a lesson, fetched from six decades ago, for our generations.
For, if you are of a notion that your country is out of control, and that its policies are leading us down a path of treachery, put yourself in the untenable position for a moment of Major Karl Plagge, of the Wehrmacht, the German Army, in the early 1940s. There you are, as commandant of a labor camp in Vilna, capital of Lithuania, and it is your job to murder Jews. You have no choice. Not only your career, but your life, depends on it. And yet you don't. You do the opposite. You protect Jews from the SS. You do it, as Plagge later admitted, nervously, in your own way, by being pragmatic. But also by being clever and courageous. In all, you keep one thousand Jews from perishing over a period of three years, although many of them will die during periods when you are not in control of the outcome.
The story of Major Plagge came to light when a Connecticut physician, Michael Good, uncovered the facts behind his mother's Holocaust survival. His book, The Search for Major Plagge, tells a remarkable story. But it isn't just the story you expect to read -- about Nazi horror, or even about redemption. It is a story for the 21st Century.
It would be wholly irresponsible, of course, to suggest that the National Socialist Party of Germany resembles our national politics. Nor would it help my point to do so. Our national politics are extremely tame and monumentally enlightened by comparison. And yet, even with that going for us, we feel a certain helplessness, a certain what's-the-use? attitude.
One voice. One person. One act. These can make a difference in the darkness.
Here are Karl Plagge's own words, summed up in a letter a year before his death in 1957: "People are more good than bad, but they are more or less ignorant....The most hopeless vice is ignorance, which believes it knows everything and for this reason presumes the right to kill. The soul of the murderer is blind. To true goodness and love belongs also the greatest possibility of clarity of vision."
Posted by:Lary Bloom at 9:22 AM
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