Forgive/ Forget?

Never Forget

            Is forgiveness forgetting? How can anyone not forget and yet forgive? Surely, these questions have pondered through the minds of anyone that has wrongly suffered at the hands of others, yet at some point choose to love instead of hate. Recently viewing the film entitled Forgiving Dr. Mengele, I learned about the Holocaust. People of Jewish descent suffered horrific mistreatment at the hands of German Nazis. The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines Hate Crimes as crimes committed against an individual or group due to prejudice of the targets religion, disability, sexual orientation, race, creed, or nationality. Often times after people have experienced and survived distressing situations they feel that the rest of their life is out of their control. Yes, there are conditions and disorders that may result after a major negative exposure in some but not all cases. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is one example that I will further discuss. However, emotional healing has a major impact. Choosing to forgive can help a person have a more positive outcome and it takes personal effort and support

            The documentary Forgiving Dr. Mengele tells the experience of Eva Kor, a holocaust survivor. Eva was around ten years old when she and her family, forced into a concentration camp at Auschwitz, Poland. Once there Nazi soldiers immediately separated Eva and her twin sister Miriam from her parents and older siblings. Eva never saw her parents or older siblings again. Jewish twin children were used a guinea pigs in the ruthless unregulated experiments of German Scientist Dr. Mengele. One of Eva’s first memories that expressed the cruelty of the situation was that of after separation from her family then taken to a room where corpses of children lay on the floor. The narrator described the bodies to have emaciated appearance, flies all around, and eyes open. At one point Eva received some type of drug and a prognosis of two weeks to live. “I concentrated on how to survive one more day and refused to die! (Kor)”  I don’t know many if any one that could experience similar conditions these days and not be committed to an insane asylum. Yet this documentary started with Eva Korr, now an older woman, wife, mother, activist, business owner, advocate announcing during a speech that she give personal Amnesty to all Nazi Germans for their treatment of  Jews during the Holocaust. Once during a peace forum in Israel that included Israelis and Palestinians, Eva stated, “Sometimes people don’t know what to do besides get angry.” “People cannot heal while fighting.” Although Eva was unable to make any progress at the peace forum, these statements in relation to what is and has been going on in the Middle East are monumental.

            The Jewish culture has many strict laws and customs. The way that some people interpret and carry out laws can be a roadblock against healing, progress, and resolution. Fighting and wars continue to reign in the Middle East between Arabs, Palestinians, and Israelis since about 1000 BC or earlier (mideastweb.org).  A negative environment for a substantial period can have lasting effects on the human body. Post-Traumatic stress disorder is a new, twenty years or less, medical condition that is a result of exposure to stress related experience with life threatening or at least threat of severe injury (Liness, Rogers). PTSD can be acute (sudden, short term) or chronic (on going, long-term). Psychological effects of PTSD include behavioral, psychological, emotional, and cognitive. The Jewish Federation of Greater Orange County notes that many Holocaust survivors unknowingly suffer from PTSD and do not seek proper medical treatment.

In the film Forgiving Dr. Mengele, Eva Kor’s best friend tells how Eva displays habits like “never leaving food on her plate,” takes an unofficial doggy bag (food packed to go) from restaurants, excessively chain locks doors, and sleeps on her purse. Although Eva earns a success income as a Relator, she worries about going hungry (Forgiving Dr. Mengele).  

            Anyone that has wrongly suffered at the hands of others, and made the choice to forgive, moved on to a successful life and positively helped others has learned what it mean when people say forgive but never forget. When confronted of her choice to forgive amnesty to Nazi Germans for how they treated Jews during the Holocaust, Eva Kor, a holocaust and Mengele twin survivor stated, “ Victims heal themselves, victimizers take responsibility,” “Forgiving has only to do with victims empowering themselves and taking their life back” (Forgiving Dr. Mengele). People always have a choice. Instead of trying so hard to forget, people can turn the negative around as a tool for education, peace efforts and helping others cope.

           

Works Cited

            Forgiving Dr. Mengele Bob Hercules, Cheri Pugh, Eva Mozes Kor, Sami Adwan, Dan Bar-On | 2006 Documentary.

           

             Barel, E., Van IJzendoorn, M. H., Sagi-Schwartz, A., & Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J. (2010). Surviving the Holocaust: A meta-analysis of the long-term sequelae of a genocide. Psychological Bulletin, 136(5), 677-698.

           

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/ucr-publications#Hate.

           

http://mideastweb.org/timeline.htm

Ozick, Cynthia. "Life Isn't Beautiful." Newsweek 15 Mar. 2010: 54. Academic OneFile. Web. 29 Apr. 2013

           

Tampa Tribune http://www.tampatrib.com.

http://www.jewishorangeny.org/page.aspx?id=199249 April 30, 2013