For a while I didn't understand why the Jews were being so optimistic and hopeful about the situation, even as it progressively got worse. Then, it finally made some sense to me when Wiesel stated that "the ghetto was ruled by delusion." This statement made me think of something I heard a long time ago about relationships.
I heard that people tend to go back to bad relationships because they, for some reason, think things will be different, be better. I don't think that they go back because they think things will be different, but because they want and hope for things to be different. Their want and hope for a good outcome is what makes people return to bad relationships; It is what kept the Jews from leaving town out of fear. Their hope for a positive outcome kept them from leaving when things got bad.
This is totally a new way to view the situation. I saw the Jews dismissing the warnings because they just didn't belive that the Germans were capable of the torture that Moishe described. However this is also a logical explanation for why the Jews didn't flee when they had the many oppurtunities. They dismissed the sistiation because of the hope they had that everything would go back to the way they were.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Erik, your post was very deep and insightful. It is so true that people believe what they want to believe in. I hadn’t accredited the Jews denial to what was happening to their overwhelming desire to believe that it wasn’t true, I had only thought they believed Moishe’s story was too absurd. But I now agree that it is a strong argument and likely factor to why they didn’t leave.
ReplyDeleteMarisa, I think you are pretty much right about the Jews not wanting to believe that things will get bad or worse at all. What I mean is that if we try to put ourselves in their shoes (the Jews) we can only to an extent try to feel the way they felt. So as I tried today to put myself in their shoes, I came to realize that they had hope for tension to dissolve and for better days to come and to become normal once again. I realized that perhaps the reason was because they couldn't possibly believe that Hitler would want to obliterate an entire race that contained millions of people. They just couldn't believe that there could be such an evil person. Also, I think that they hoped for things to get better because if things didn't get better then they would be in serious trouble. What I mean is they have lived in their residence their entire lives. What would become of them? I mean if someone was trying to convince me that tomorrow someone was to come kill me, I too would be in denial and hope with all my heart that that was a lie-a horrible lie. Why? Well, because what if I was someone who was working hard to get a living and my life was finally improving and things were going well for me. So, I wouldn't want to hear something like that because it would frustrate me and I would feel that a warning from someone else wasn't true. Because I would have had worked really hard to have a good life. That's why I think that they had so much hope, it's because they had worked really hard to get where they were at and for someone to just take that away from them would be unfair and cruel.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all the comments listed, and I'd like to take it even further to say that it's our belief in humanity which continues to make us hope and believe in the goodness of others even when in the most dire situations. Even though we can recognize that they're "bad" people in the world who may take actions that we can neither acknowledge or comprehend, generally speaking, we're still able to possess this optimistic point of view. And it's not because we're oblivious to sorrow or hardship, I think anyone who's done Euro notes totally understands hardship, but rather it's because we choose to believe in the best in people.
ReplyDeleteIt's part of our humanity, perhaps you could say that we possess some innate ability to want to be optimistic and retain our hope. After all, there's 7 billion of us here on the planet, so if we don't allow ourselves to be optimistic about one another and to have faith in each other, the alternative will be to fear everyone. And as our trust for one another dissolves, we lose the ability to truly live life because let's face it, living in constant fear, isn't truly living. It's existing. Going along with what Marisa said, it's not that the Jews in Hungary expected life to remain perfect, but rather they needed to retain their hope for a brighter future because as I said before, enduring constant fear is not life, it's merely existence.