This sounds so difficult and fascinating. For those of us lucky enough to grow up with loving parents - is there anything they could do that would make us stop loving them? I'm not so sure anything could make me stop loving my parents, though I was never as tested (obviously) as the child of a murderer.
This is where I think most people struggle to wrap their mind around how complex people are. Its a good example of the people who knew Ted Bundy and were shocked he wasn’t such a nice guy. People can both do horrendous things and do nice things for people.
I’m not surprised hear that Nazi’s came home from a long day of killing Jews, kissed their wives and tucked their kids into bed and read them a story. Unlike Ted Bundy, a large majority of these Nazis were not psychopaths. They were just regular people who were heavily indoctrinated. So why would it be surprising that Nazis loved their kids? and those same kids remembered their parents fondly.
Now it would be very interesting to me if this guy saw what was happening at the camp and still all these years later was minimizing it. Indoctrination can be very durable.
I can't help but wonder about the smell. Nobody noticed the stench of burning human flesh? Did the children think this was normal and the rest of the world smelled strange? Did they, as adults, not figure this out or did they not care?
Have you ever lived near a crematorium? Odds are you have and simply never noticed - there’s usually at least one near every major cemetery. People aren’t inherently good or evil but they do - especially as children - tend to live selfish lives focused on that which immediately impacts themselves.
It is not surprising that that they loved their kids like regular people, however, these kids are no longer kids, and they are adults, fully capable of recognizing and making moral judgements about their parents behavior. You can love your father as your father, but that does not make him a "good man" nor does it excuse or absolve his inhumane behavior.
“He may have done terrible things,” she says of her father. “But he was a good man.” - no he was not! The degree of evil terribles he did?! The attitude displayed is the definition of the "banality of evil".
I like to think I’d have acted differently in his shoes, but his job was not to establish policy - it was to carry out orders.
By the time I was in uniform, we had the luxury of rejecting unlawful orders without worry of summary execution or the immediate loss of my family’s welfare.
I’m not denying that he was party to evil acts, he was even an agent of such… but there are psychological studies done in the shadow of the Holocaust that suggest the average person would have gone along with the whole scheme by an overwhelming degree.
Good is a relative term (at least in many cases), and a subjective one. Was she speaking of good as opposed to bad, or good as opposed to evil? I’m not denying that he was party to profound evil, but it’s an evil that consumed entire nations of men. Is the nature of a man so zero-sum?
From the perspective of a child, seeing a loving father and caring husband at home first-hand is going to inform that view more than a generally vague understanding that her father is some kind of leader of soldiers, respected by his country and peers.
People are nuanced and, while I never knew him nor his overall qualities as a man, I cannot say she’s disingenuous about her opinion.
If you truly are worthy of judging strangers’ souls, Madame, then I salute your virtue. You understand the nature of goodness better than I.
Again, she is no longer a child, and yes, people judge people every single day, I am sure you are not excluded from that behavior. So please spare me your judgement of my opinion. Reality sucks. It does not make her responsible for his behavior, nor should it mean she does not love her father, but please do not excuse such behavior. There may be reasons for someone's behavior, but that reason is not an excuse.
Yes, we need to talk to solve issues, but do not hide behind excuses. We live with a conscience. Each of us is required, thank goodness, to take responsibility for our actions, pay the legal price for misbehavior and live with those consequences. And, we each have to deal with those situations in which we should have said something but didn't. Today's mayhem is a perfect example. Sit on the side and just read TFP articles and tut about what is happening? Or say something, do something? There is not escaping the bad and only the looking at the good. Humans are complicated andm made up of both motives, so do we get to look away from our bad behaviors and only focus on our good? I think not. That is what we are supposed to teach our children - personal responsibility. We do good things, we own them. We do bad things, we still have to own them. Bur the process is to learn from our mistakes (&we learn more from them than we do from our successes) and move forward to seek better solutions, but do not whitewash your's or anyone else's past or let adults wear rose-colored glasses. I do not claim to be that virtuous, but I hope I recognize bad behavior when I see it. I get called out on mine, this guy doesn't get a pass!
I’m making no excuses, just trying to see the whole picture.
Funny that you bring up legal responsibilities when his was to do exactly what he did. It was a horrible system, but such was his reality. Not an excuse for what he did, but recognition that he didn’t do it in a vacuum.
For all we know, he vociferously argued his orders but ultimately followed them because that was his legally defined duty. Admittedly, he could just as well have been a true believer who relished in his work. Ultimately, you don’t know but still hold him to a standard he was powerless to meet. Yes, he did what he did and that will forever taint his legacy. That does not sum up the entirety of his character. His daughter claims he was a good man despite that shadow - she may mean it or she may be doing everything she can to protect herself from a different and devastating reality. You judge them both based on a very short and one-sided glimpse of their lives, and find them wanting. I judge you as sanctimonious and less understanding than the woman who directly suffered at his hand, but I’m willing to bet that you have many positive attributes as well. I do understand your judgment, but you’ve given me no reason to spare you mine.
Look again at the Milgram experiments - the larger implications are debatable, but they do demonstrate otherwise-good people are quite susceptible to becoming party to evil - despite the visible discomfort it caused them. Must the children of those test subjects turn their backs on their parents, also, to be worthy of your approval?
This is the right response. Recognize the history, learn from it, mourn its failings, memorialize the good and remember the awful- but embrace the beauty of today.
This sounds so difficult and fascinating. For those of us lucky enough to grow up with loving parents - is there anything they could do that would make us stop loving them? I'm not so sure anything could make me stop loving my parents, though I was never as tested (obviously) as the child of a murderer.
A mass murderer.
So were Eisenhower, FDR, and Churchill by that logic.
This is where I think most people struggle to wrap their mind around how complex people are. Its a good example of the people who knew Ted Bundy and were shocked he wasn’t such a nice guy. People can both do horrendous things and do nice things for people.
I’m not surprised hear that Nazi’s came home from a long day of killing Jews, kissed their wives and tucked their kids into bed and read them a story. Unlike Ted Bundy, a large majority of these Nazis were not psychopaths. They were just regular people who were heavily indoctrinated. So why would it be surprising that Nazis loved their kids? and those same kids remembered their parents fondly.
Now it would be very interesting to me if this guy saw what was happening at the camp and still all these years later was minimizing it. Indoctrination can be very durable.
I can't help but wonder about the smell. Nobody noticed the stench of burning human flesh? Did the children think this was normal and the rest of the world smelled strange? Did they, as adults, not figure this out or did they not care?
Madam, I suggests you are being unfairly harsh.
Have you ever lived near a crematorium? Odds are you have and simply never noticed - there’s usually at least one near every major cemetery. People aren’t inherently good or evil but they do - especially as children - tend to live selfish lives focused on that which immediately impacts themselves.
It is not surprising that that they loved their kids like regular people, however, these kids are no longer kids, and they are adults, fully capable of recognizing and making moral judgements about their parents behavior. You can love your father as your father, but that does not make him a "good man" nor does it excuse or absolve his inhumane behavior.
C
In their idyllic childhood, with their father, did they play “Hide andSeek” amongst the crematoria?
It is very humbling to hear that we need to talk to each other and understand each other. That’s wisdom.
“He may have done terrible things,” she says of her father. “But he was a good man.” - no he was not! The degree of evil terribles he did?! The attitude displayed is the definition of the "banality of evil".
I like to think I’d have acted differently in his shoes, but his job was not to establish policy - it was to carry out orders.
By the time I was in uniform, we had the luxury of rejecting unlawful orders without worry of summary execution or the immediate loss of my family’s welfare.
I’m not denying that he was party to evil acts, he was even an agent of such… but there are psychological studies done in the shadow of the Holocaust that suggest the average person would have gone along with the whole scheme by an overwhelming degree.
That is not an excuse to be able to say “he was a good man”. You are actually making my point.
Good is a relative term (at least in many cases), and a subjective one. Was she speaking of good as opposed to bad, or good as opposed to evil? I’m not denying that he was party to profound evil, but it’s an evil that consumed entire nations of men. Is the nature of a man so zero-sum?
From the perspective of a child, seeing a loving father and caring husband at home first-hand is going to inform that view more than a generally vague understanding that her father is some kind of leader of soldiers, respected by his country and peers.
People are nuanced and, while I never knew him nor his overall qualities as a man, I cannot say she’s disingenuous about her opinion.
If you truly are worthy of judging strangers’ souls, Madame, then I salute your virtue. You understand the nature of goodness better than I.
Again, she is no longer a child, and yes, people judge people every single day, I am sure you are not excluded from that behavior. So please spare me your judgement of my opinion. Reality sucks. It does not make her responsible for his behavior, nor should it mean she does not love her father, but please do not excuse such behavior. There may be reasons for someone's behavior, but that reason is not an excuse.
Yes, we need to talk to solve issues, but do not hide behind excuses. We live with a conscience. Each of us is required, thank goodness, to take responsibility for our actions, pay the legal price for misbehavior and live with those consequences. And, we each have to deal with those situations in which we should have said something but didn't. Today's mayhem is a perfect example. Sit on the side and just read TFP articles and tut about what is happening? Or say something, do something? There is not escaping the bad and only the looking at the good. Humans are complicated andm made up of both motives, so do we get to look away from our bad behaviors and only focus on our good? I think not. That is what we are supposed to teach our children - personal responsibility. We do good things, we own them. We do bad things, we still have to own them. Bur the process is to learn from our mistakes (&we learn more from them than we do from our successes) and move forward to seek better solutions, but do not whitewash your's or anyone else's past or let adults wear rose-colored glasses. I do not claim to be that virtuous, but I hope I recognize bad behavior when I see it. I get called out on mine, this guy doesn't get a pass!
I’m making no excuses, just trying to see the whole picture.
Funny that you bring up legal responsibilities when his was to do exactly what he did. It was a horrible system, but such was his reality. Not an excuse for what he did, but recognition that he didn’t do it in a vacuum.
For all we know, he vociferously argued his orders but ultimately followed them because that was his legally defined duty. Admittedly, he could just as well have been a true believer who relished in his work. Ultimately, you don’t know but still hold him to a standard he was powerless to meet. Yes, he did what he did and that will forever taint his legacy. That does not sum up the entirety of his character. His daughter claims he was a good man despite that shadow - she may mean it or she may be doing everything she can to protect herself from a different and devastating reality. You judge them both based on a very short and one-sided glimpse of their lives, and find them wanting. I judge you as sanctimonious and less understanding than the woman who directly suffered at his hand, but I’m willing to bet that you have many positive attributes as well. I do understand your judgment, but you’ve given me no reason to spare you mine.
Look again at the Milgram experiments - the larger implications are debatable, but they do demonstrate otherwise-good people are quite susceptible to becoming party to evil - despite the visible discomfort it caused them. Must the children of those test subjects turn their backs on their parents, also, to be worthy of your approval?
It's a good example to sit down and speak.
What kind of cake?
This is the right response. Recognize the history, learn from it, mourn its failings, memorialize the good and remember the awful- but embrace the beauty of today.