Nuremberg, the movie, dogs my footsteps. More accurately, Howard Triest, the reliable but almost invisible interpreter at Nuremberg, has begun keeping me company.
Triest, known as Howie in the movie, was crucial in getting the Nazi hierarchy to trial for their war crimes. But his value relied on him seeming to be in the background, not the star performer.
It is this shadowy figure who now walks beside me.
Inside Streicher’s cell
As Nuremberg nears its end, we enter the cell of Julius Streicher, publisher of Der Stuermer, the German newspaper devoted to antisemitic propaganda. He has an appointment with the gallows that he would prefer not to keep.
Dressed only in his underwear he is distraught, screaming and swearing at the guards tasked with getting him to execution.
“Let him go”, says Howie as he walks across the cell to the weeping Streicher.
“Julius”, he says, “sei ein Deutscher” (be as a German) encouraging the man to dig deep into his German identity. “You … you have been a friend”, Streicher responds to the man he believes is a true Aryan. 1
Revenge wells up in Howie. He wants to reveal that all this time Streicher has been trusting a German Jew. But he doesn’t.
Instead, Vanderbilt, the film’s director, has him act compassionately towards, “a nearly naked old man staring back at him, terrified to die”. 2 Howie helps the frail old man dress and walks alongside him to the gallows.
Compassion towards the enemy
Why, I wondered, did Vanderbilt have a Jew whose parents had been killed in the camps, act so compassionately towards the Nazis.
This perplexing question stays with me, along with Howie, as I go in and out of prison with a restorative justice programme based on the prodigal son story and Rembrandt’s painting of it.
We watch and discuss two stories of violent death and forgiveness.
In the first, Danny and Leila Abdallah forgive the man who killed three of their children and their cousin. Samuel was driving drunk, annihilating them as they walked to the shop for ice cream.
Iafeta Matalasi’s son Sio was gunned down. Through the trial of Sio’s killers, Iafeta was filled with rage, seeking only revenge.
Then he heard Sio’s voice reminding him that nothing could bring him back. At sentencing, he stunned everyone by saying, “Without any reservations, Shane and Dylan, I forgive you“.
Listening as sacrament
As we cleared prison security Howie said, “I suppose you think that by now I should be able to forgive them”. Good question.
“Not necessarily”, I replied. “But … you listened to those men for hundreds of hours, then accurately translated their words to the military.”
I took a deep breath, “and as listening is a kind of sacrament perhaps you underestimated how much you achieved”.
Drawing out the poison
Akaash Maharaj said, in relation to South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that he “wildly underestimated the human capacity to forgive” and that it’s “less about absolving those who have harmed us and more about drawing their poison from our own souls”.
There’s truth to ponder.
- Sande Ramage loves exploring, one word at a time, what she and others mean by God, spirituality, and religion. She’s a healthcare chaplain, restorative justice facilitator, pastoral supervisor, and wordsmith. Inspiration arrives through pondering dreams in Jungian analysis, walking, movies on the big screen, live orchestral music, sopranos, and devouring books.
Footnotes