Written by Jerry Elman, May 10, 2023
Forgiveness is a complex issue that we all face throughout our lives. The situations and magnitude of the harm or hurt make the question even more complex. Things happen daily. We forget something we promised. A breakup. Emotional hurt. Cheating. Stealing. Lying. Abusing. Road rage. Raping. Robbing. Physical harm. Killing. The list can go on forever! These are the things that individuals do that hurt other individuals. The magnitude and impact can be all over the map.
Then there are organizational things. Cruel jokes and pranks. Harassment and bullying. Abuse of children. Bullying. Sexism, Racism, and hate of others within the organization because they are different. Lower pay for women. Promotions only for white men (or only for white Christian men). Organization politics. Organizational norms that are unfair, unjust, and even cruel. Religious organizations that violate their values and practice hypocrisy. A leadership team or board that looks the other way when crimes are committed, or employees are mistreated or harmed. A corporate board lets a CEO destroy a company, impacting tens of thousands and an entire community, and then adds to the injustice by paying the CEO a huge “golden parachute.” This stuff happens every day to lots of people.
Then there are systemic things within society at large. Systemic Racism, Sexism, and hate of others who are different. Policing that creates the fear of being pulled over and shot because you are Black. A legal system that applies differently depending on who you are. Education, healthcare, and other systems that apply to people differently because of who they are. Hunger and lack of housing for those who are the most vulnerable. Voting rights apply differently depending on who you are. Others control the body of someone they don’t even know. You can only read books approved by others. Again the list can go on!
Then add war, genocide, and the Holocaust! How can forgiveness apply in such horrors and mass killings of people? How can anyone expect Ukrainians to forgive and forget as their families and entire country get destroyed? Even when there is peace, how can they ever forgive the Russians?
As a Second Generation Holocaust Survivor, I have lived with the question of forgiveness all my life. For most Holocaust survivors, the question of forgiving the Nazis and their collaborators was always a non-starter. How do you forgive people who deliberately destroyed your family, town, country, and people? How do you forgive all you endured to survive? How do you forgive ghettos, slave camps, and death camps? Gas chambers and incinerators? For most Holocaust survivors, it was a cruel question even to ask. “Do you forgive the Nazis? “Most responses were no, let them burn in hell!” And that was a kind response!
Those who did not experience the Holocaust or have family connections to those who did are often shocked at the refusal to forgive, especially after all these years. Religion is one of the biggest drivers of unconditional forgiveness. People are judged as not being “good” if they don’t forgive.
But shouldn’t the focus be in reverse? Shouldn’t there be accountability for what the Nazis did? Shouldn’t individual Nazis show remorse, do something to make the world better, and earn forgiveness? Not just for the Holocaust but for any injustice.
Our society looks down on any emotional response to being wronged or harmed. To express anger and not forgive is looked down upon. To be sad and cry is also looked down upon. But humans are emotional beings. Not expressing our feelings and emotions is dishonest and unhealthy in many ways. Society views “strong people” as those who suppress their emotions. So silence is the acceptable response. And when horrible things happen in our society, that is the typical response, silence. And then we question why everyone is silent! Crazy shit!
Then add to this craziness that there is hypocrisy when it becomes personal and not someone else. Then it ok for “me” to be angry at others, but others better not dare to be angry with me if I do something to wrong them!
We all go through this. Someone screws us over, and they then project and reverse things where they get pissed because we are pissed at them! How dare we! Reversing things is most common in abusive or harassment-based relationships. (Abuse or harassment can be physical, mental, financial, or a combination. The perpetrator blames the victim in these relationships, and the abuse worsens.
Meanwhile, the media and our society love stories of forgiveness. Holocaust survivors forgiving Nazis. Rape victims forgiving rapists. Black families forgiving the white murderers of their children and siblings. Parents and victims forgiving clergy who molested their children. An employee forgiving a boss who harasses or bullies them. A family member who forgives another family member for stealing from them. A woman forgiving her partner who who keeps beating her. People forgiving the very people who spew hatred against them because of their color, sexual preferences, or religion.
I want to point out that there is a big difference between anger and hate. Anger is justified and deserves acknowledgment and respect. Hate consumes people and is destructive to everyone. We all can cross that line and must pull ourselves back when we do.
Again, I am not saying that no one should ever forgive the person who harmed or wronged them unconditionally. People should have free will. If forgiveness is healing for them, it’s not on any of us to tell them they’re wrong. However, it is on us to tell each other that celebrating these forgiveness stories can be a feel-good choice that mutes our obligation to look hard at what needs to be fixed in our world, organization, business, house of worship, family, etc.
When employees are mistreated by those who hold power over them, forgiveness is not warranted until the employer takes action to acknowledge the mistreatment and fix the situation. When someone is a victim of domestic violence and abuse, that should be a crime with criminal system consequences. But the system does not work that way. The victim does not owe their abusive partner forgiveness unless they own up to their problem, seek help and overcome it.
When bad cops mistreat Blacks, forgiveness will not drive the systemic change needed to stop the mistreatment and killing. Anger drives change and is justified for those who choose the path of anger to drive that systemic change. Note that I am talking about anger as being justified, not violence! Violence just makes people no different than the bad cops! Violence is destructive to all, just like hate.
When Brandt Jean, the brother of Dallas police shooting victim Botham Jean, told his brother’s killer, former police officer Amber Guyger, that he forgave her and hugged her in the courtroom, the media celebrated.
But when a relative of a murdered Black person reacts with anger instead of hugs and biblical sentiments, the public response is often furious. For example, after the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner with an illegal chokehold apologized, a reporter asked Garner’s widow, Esaw, whether she forgave him. She responded, “Hell, no!” A national news headline accused her of “Lashing Out at the Cop.” But that “Hell, no” was completely justified. Anger in the face of injustice is warranted. That anger is a demand for justice and change!
If anger can help us understand our place in the world and drive us to better the world we occupy, then anger serves a positive purpose. The most important feature of anger, properly directed, is the recognition that a wrong has occurred that needs to be fixed. To the extent that one’s anger motivates one to right wrongs, anger can be the correct tool for achieving justice.
Anger is also tied to self-respect. Anger recognizes that one deserves just treatment. Anger demands just treatment
Eva Mozes Kor, a Holocaust survivor who, in 2015, very publicly forgave a Nazi, has been celebrated as a hero. She was among the many pairs of Jewish twins upon whom Dr. Josef Mengele did terrible medical experiments.
Fifty years after the Holocaust, she connected with a Nazi doctor who’d worked at Auschwitz. At her urging, he wrote a letter of apology; she then wrote him a letter of forgiveness. A short BuzzFeed video about her has been viewed almost 200 million times. How noble! How marvelous!
Kor, who’d long spoken to schools and synagogues about the Holocaust, decided that for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, she wanted to reach out to a former Nazi doctor she’d seen in a documentary that she’d also appeared in. She said she wanted him to write that letter as proof to future generations that the Holocaust was no myth or exaggeration.
The doctor did as she asked, writing, “I am so sorry that in some way I was part of it. Under the prevailing circumstances, I did the best I could to save as many lives as possible. Joining the SS was a mistake. I was young. I was an opportunist. And once I joined, there was no way out.”
This was a terrible apology. It doesn’t take responsibility. It doesn’t offer specifics (“in some way, I was part of it”). It offers excuses (“I did the best I could” and “I was young”). The doctor did have a choice. Other “young” (and even old) people joined the resistance, hid Jews in their basements and attics and barns, and even elected to stand by passively without actively taking steps to join the Schutzstaffel, the top-tier political soldiers of the Nazi Party, as this doctor did.
Kor, however, was happy with the apology. And if she was happy, who are we to argue? Forgiveness is a choice. But the media and the world celebrated her forgiveness. While Kor was now happy, other survivors were mortified. Many were then also approached to forgive. They refused. Were they wrong to refuse? I say no, they were not!
A decade later, Kor also forgave Auschwitz’s accountant. (he counted the killing, not just the money!) She publicly held his hand and graciously allowed him to kiss her cheek. She wrote a book, The Power of Forgiveness, which came out in 2021 (she died in 2019, but a colleague finished it in her name). In the book, she describes her healing process: She wrote down all the bad words she wanted to say to Dr. Mengele, and once she ran out of words, she realized she’d also run out of anger; she was able to forgive. She decided to write a letter.
“I, Eva Mozes Kor, a twin who as a child survived Josef Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz fifty years ago, hereby give amnesty to all Nazis who participated directly or indirectly in the murder of my family and millions of others.
I extend this amnesty to all governments who protected Nazi criminals for fifty years, then covered up their acts and covered up their cover-up.
I, Eva Mozes Kor, in my name only, give this amnesty because it is time to go on; it is time to heal our souls; it is time to forgive, but never forget.”
She asked the United States, German, and Israeli governments to stop investigating Nazis and to open all their files to survivors so they could perhaps read about what had been done to them and learn useful information for their medical records. (Her twin, who had also survived, had terrible health problems; it would have been helpful to know what substances had been injected into her body.)
Kor read the following out loud on the ramp to the gas chambers at Auschwitz:
“I am healed inside. Therefore, it gives me no joy to see any Nazi criminal in jail, nor do I want to see any harm come to Josef Mengele, the Mengele family, or their business corporations. I urge all former Nazis to come forward and testify to the crimes they have committed without any fear of further prosecution.
Here in Auschwitz, I hope in some small way to send the world a message of forgiveness, a message of peace, a message of hope, a message of understanding.”
The press and public ate this up. But just as the footage of Brandt Jean hugging and forgiving his brother’s killer dismayed plenty of Black people, Kor’s actions again horrified many other Holocaust survivors.
As Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt (now President Biden’s Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism) noted, “I watched them grimace as audiences gave her standing ovations and the media described her as someone ‘who found it in her heart’ to forgive, the implication being that survivors who did not follow her lead were unable to rise above their resentment. Survivors told me they felt they were being depicted as hardhearted, while Kor was being celebrated as the hero, someone bigger than they.”
In her book, Kor says she did her forgiving in her own name only … but calling for amnesty for Nazis can’t be considered acting merely for herself. “I know that most of the survivors denounced me, and they denounce me today also,” she says in the video. “But what is my forgiveness? I like it. It is an act of self-healing, self-liberation, and self-empowerment. All victims feel hopeless, feel helpless, feel powerless. I want everyone to remember that we cannot change what happened … but we can change how we relate to it.”
This is true. In the book, Kor elaborates on how forgiveness made her “free to discover that she had power over her own today and tomorrow, again and again. It hurt no one. It doesn’t hurt me. And it is free. Everyone can accomplish it.” She then adds, “Also, there are no side effects. It works. But if you do not like feeling like a free person, it is possible to return to your pain and hatred anytime.”
Again, our addiction to these narratives of forgiveness is problematic because these narratives enforce the status quo. They make us feel better about a world rife with inequality and injustice.
Kor’s statement was fine until that last sentence … which is judgmental and dismissive. Kor’s strategy of writing a letter to someone who harmed you, calling them all kinds of names, and then never sending the letter could work beautifully for some people. But her insistence that it will work for everyone is very simplistic.
To a woman who was raped and found it impossible to forgive her rapist, Kor suggested, “Write the letter again. And again. There’s no limit. Maybe you need to write it ten times, maybe 20. You might even need to write 100 letters.”
But couldn’t doing this also prove more hurtful than helpful to many trauma survivors? Is the expectation of accountability, remorse, and change before forgiveness wrong and unreasonable?
Many people admire Kor and find her generosity of spirit beautiful because of the belief forgiveness leads to a just world. What gets overlooked is that only accountability, consequences, and change lead to a just world. The status quo leads nowhere new or different!
My mother lived her life angry and bitter. Forgiving would have never changed that. Forgiving would have never brought her family and past life back. Forgiving would not have fixed her depression and PTSD. She wanted justice and accountability. She wanted to get her teen years back. She wanted the hate of Jews to end. She wanted to be treated with dignity and respect as an immigrant in a new country who spoke with an accent. An expectation that she forgive would have made her mental state even worse.
My father, my most important mentor, told me forgiveness is important if forgiveness is earned, whether it be the Holocaust or even a small injustice in anyone’s life. But to forgive when it is not earned only tells those who wronged you that they can get away with it with no consequences. And that, over time, leads little injustices to grow into big ones. And they keep growing until accountability is demanded and obtained or something huge and horrible happens.
My parents did forgive many people associated with the Holocaust and in their subsequent lives. But that forgiveness was earned by accountability and change. There were many people they never forgave accordingly.
I have forgiven most of the people who hurt me in numerous ways. They were people who owned up to what they did and then improved the situation or world. I don’t waste my time on those who refuse to be accountable or at least meet me halfway. But I will check in occasionally with these people to let them know I am still here, angry, and still expect accountability. That is not going away. “Never Forget” applies to a lot of things.
The bottom line is that silence and forgiveness without accountability and change will not improve the world for anyone. That is when history usually repeats itself for us as individuals and society.