On the good and the bad

At the reunion I got into a discussion with a former classmate about evil. This was the classmate to whom I clumsily revealed the events of late April. We bounced around a bit, but I wanted to share a few of the details. Like any good conversation about evil we discussed the holocaust. I had taken a graduate course: the holocaust and film. She had read a few books on the subject, and visited one of the camp sites. The holocaust was about …well it was about a lot of things. Without going off on a tangent it is, among other things, about the capacity of human beings to inflict suffering and to cope with suffering, and the strange microcosm formed by representatives from both groups as they etch out a gaunt coexistence.

This, in turn, led us to talk about goodness. I’m afraid I can’t do her story justice—and I might get the details wrong-- but here goes. In the barracks a woman preached: God, etc. There were insects in these barracks, nasty ones torturing the prisoners. The woman said that even the insects should be loved. Of course the prisoners scoffed. These bugs were hateful things, eating them alive.

There was a cruel SS guard (there usually is in these stories). But the guard wouldn’t bother the women, while they were in their barracks, thus allowing the women to practice their religion. As it turned out, she refused to enter thPublish Poste barracks because of the same bugs.

I suppose the power of the “good” in this little ditty depends on which you’d rather be, eaten by bugs or at the mercy of an SS guard.