"Each of us has our own Nazi": how to turn anger and hatred into sympathy

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

An excerpt from the book by Edith Eva Eger, a psychologist who survived Auschwitz.

Dr. Eger survived in a concentration camp after losing her family, and then began to help other people face the trauma of the past and heal. Her new book, The Gift, recently published by MYTH, focuses on destructive patterns of behavior and how to get rid of them. Lifehacker publishes a snippet from chapter 10.

I was silent, hoping, among other things, to protect my children from the pain that I had carried in me for many years. And least of all I thought that my past experience could have at least some kind of resonance or influence on the minds. I didn't think about it until a certain point in the early 1980s, when a fourteen-year-old boy was sent to me by court order.

He walked into my office dressed in brown - brown T-shirt, brown high boots - leaned on my desk and gave a tirade that it was time for America to go white again, that it was time to "kill all Jews, all blacks, all Mexicans and all narrow-eyed." Rage and nausea boiled through me at the same time. I wanted to grab him and shake all the crap out of him. I wanted to shout right into his face: “Do you understand who you are talking to? I saw my mother going to the gas chamber! " - but I yelled to myself. And so, when I was about to almost strangle him, an inner voice suddenly sounded, telling me: "Find a fanatic in yourself."

I tried to shut him up, that inner voice. “Incomprehensible! Which fanatic am I? - I reasoned with him. I survived the Holocaust, I survived the emigration. The hatred of the fanatics took my parents away from me. At the Baltimore factory, I used the colored restroom in solidarity with my African American colleagues. I went to the civil rights march with Dr. Martin Luther King. I'm not a fanatic!

To stop intolerance and obscurantism, you need to start with yourself. Let go of judgment and choose compassion.

Taking a deep breath, I bent down, looked closely at this boy with the kindness that I was only enough for, and asked him to tell more about himself.

It was a subtle gesture of recognition - not of his ideology, but of his personality. And this turned out to be enough for him to talk sparingly about loneliness in childhood, about the always absent mother and father, about their blatant neglect of parental duty and feelings. After listening to his story, I reminded myself that he did not become an extremist because he was born with hatred. He was looking for the same thing that we all want: attention, love, recognition. This does not excuse him. But it made no sense to bring down his rage and contempt on him: condemnation would only strengthen in him the feeling of his own insignificance, which had been methodically nurtured in him since childhood. When he came to me, I had a choice of what to do with him: push him away, making him even more implacable, or open up the possibility of a completely different consolation and feeling of belonging.

He never came to see me again. I don't know at all what happened to him: whether he continued on the path of prejudice, crime and violence, or was he able to heal and change his life. But what I know for sure: he came willingly to kill people like me, and left in a completely different mood.

Even a Nazi can be sent to us by the Lord. This boy taught me a lot: I finally realized that I always have a choice - instead of condemnation, to show compassion and love. To admit that we are of the same breed - we are both people.

A new wave of fascism is going on all over the world, which is assuming rampant proportions. My great grandchildren face the prospect of inheriting a world still gripped by prejudice and hatred; a world in which children, playing in the playground, shout insults at each other, full of racial hatred, and when they grow up, they bring weapons to school; a world where one people is fenced off from another by a wall in order to deny shelter to people like them. In an atmosphere of total fear and insecurity, it is always tempting to hate those who hate us. I have compassion for those who are taught to hate.

And I identify myself with them. What if I were in their place? If I was born German and not Hungarian Jewish? If you heard Hitler proclaim: "Today is Germany, tomorrow the whole world"? And I could join the ranks of the Hitler Youth, and I could become an overseer in Ravensbrück.

We are not all descendants of the Nazis. But each of us has his own Nazi.

Freedom means choice. This is when every moment depends only on us: whether we reach for our inner Nazi or our inner Gandhi. Whether we turn to the love we were born with or the hate we were taught.

The Nazi, who is always with you, is one of our hypostases, capable of hating, condemning and denying people mercy; it is what keeps us from being free, what gives us the right to persecute others when things don't go our way.

I am still gaining experience in the ability to send my inner Nazi away.

I recently went to a trendy country club, having lunch with women who each looked like a million dollars. The first thing I thought was, "Why would I spend time with these barbies?" But then I caught myself thinking that, having condemned my interlocutors, I dropped to the level of thinking that divides people into "they" and "we", which ultimately led to the murder of my parents. I looked at them without any bias, and it was immediately revealed to me that they are interesting, thinking women who have experienced pain and experienced difficulties, just like everyone else. And I almost admitted without hesitation that time would be wasted.

Once I spoke among the Chabad Hasidim, and a person came to the meeting, just like me, a survivor, one might say a fellow in misfortune. After my speech, those present asked questions, to which I answered in detail. And suddenly the voice of that man was heard: “Why there, in Auschwitz, did you submit to everything so quickly? Why didn't they riot? He almost screamed asking me about it. I began to explain that if I had started to resist the guard, I would have been shot on the spot. Rebellion would not bring me freedom. It would simply deprive me of the opportunity to live my life to the end. But as I said this, I realized that I was overreacting to his indignation and trying to defend the choices I had made in the past. What is happening now, at the moment? This was probably the only opportunity for me to show concern for this person. “Thank you very much for being here today. Thank you for sharing your experience and your opinion,”I said.

Being held captive by condemnation, we not only persecute other people, but also become victims ourselves.

When we met Alex, she was filled with self-pity. She showed me a tattoo on her arm. The word "rage" was there. And just below - the word "love".

“This is what I grew up with,” she said. - Dad was rage, mom was love.

Her father served in the police and raised them with his brother in an atmosphere of discontent and drill. “Get this expression off your face”, “Don't become a burden”, “Don't show your emotions”, “Always keep your face as if everything is in order”, “It is unacceptable to be mistaken” - this is what they heard from him. He often returned home nervous, bringing all his annoyance from work. Alex quickly learned that as soon as his anger starts to build up, you need to immediately hide in your room.

“I always thought I was to blame,” she told me. “I didn't know why he was so upset. Nobody ever said that it was not about me, that I had not done anything. I grew up in the belief that it was me who made him angry, that something was wrong with me.

The feeling of guilt and fear of condemnation from the outside was so deeply rooted in her that, as an adult, she could not even ask in the store to get the goods she liked from the top shelf.

“I was sure they would think what an idiot I was.

Alcohol provided temporary relief from feelings of depression, anxiety, and fear. Until she ended up in a rehabilitation center.

When Alex came to see me, she hadn't drunk in thirteen years. She recently quit her job. She has been an ambulance dispatcher for more than twenty years, and every year it has become increasingly difficult for her to combine a rather strenuous service with caring for her disabled daughter. Now she is opening a new page in her life - she is learning to be kind to herself.

Alex has a strong feeling that the achievement of this goal is frustrated every time she gets into her own family. Her mother still remains the embodiment of love, kindness, reliability and home warmth. She knows how to defuse any situation - she has always had the role of a peacemaker in her family. Throwing all business, she comes to the aid of children and grandchildren. And even a familiar family dinner turns into a wonderful holiday.

But father Alex also remains the same - gloomy and angry. When Alex visits her parents, she closely monitors his facial expressions, every gesture, trying to predict her father's behavior in order to be ready to defend herself.

Recently, they all went camping with an overnight stay in tents, and Alex noticed how caustically and maliciously her father treats completely strangers.

“Several people were gathering tents in the neighborhood with us. The father, watching them, said: "This is my favorite part - when the idiots try to figure out what they are doing." That's what I grew up with. Father watched people make mistakes and laughed at them. No wonder I used to think people thought terrible things about me! And it’s not surprising that I peered into his face, looking for the slightest hint of a twitch or a grimace - as a signal to do everything possible so that only he did not get angry. All my life, he scared me.

“The nastiest person can be the best teacher,” I said. - He teaches you to explore in yourself what you do not like about him. How much time do you spend judging yourself? Bullying yourself?

Alex and I investigated step by step how she closed in on herself: she wanted to take a Spanish course, but did not dare to enroll; wanted to start going to the gym, but was afraid to go there.

We are all victims of victims. How deep do you need to dive to get to the source? Better to start with yourself.

A few months later, Alex shared with me that she was working on adequate self-esteem and developing courage. She even signed up for a Spanish course and went to the gym.

“I was received with open arms,” she said. - They even took me to the women's group in powerlifting and have already been invited to the competition.

When we refuse to obey our inner Nazi, we disarm the forces that held us back.

“One of your halves is your father,” I said to Alex. - Try to assess it impartially. Analyze objectively.

This is what I learned at Auschwitz. If I tried to repulse the guards, they would have shot me right away. If I risked running away, I would have been electrocuted on the barbed wire. So I turned my hate into compassion. I decided that I would sympathize with the guards. They were brainwashed. Their innocence has been stolen from them. They came to Auschwitz to throw children into the gas chamber and thought they were ridding the world of a tumor. They have lost their freedom. Mine was still with me.

Dr. Eger says that the worst thing was not the prison to which the Nazis sent her with her family, but the prison of her own mind. The author identifies 12 common harmful attitudes that prevent us from living freely. Among them are shame, unforgiveness, fear, judgment, and despair. Edith Eger offers ways to overcome them, and also shares stories from her life and the experience of patients.