Choices at Auschwitz (by Danny Rabin)

Hi, everyone. This is Danny Rabin writing. Long story why I'm using Jorge's account, but anyways this is Danny. While reading The Kingdom of Auschwitz this week, we read the story of a Nazi officer named Flacke who chose to treat his prisoners with kindness rather than cruelty. This reminded me of a story that my former Hebrew teacher told me years ago about when her mother was interred at Auschwitz. She worked in a factory assembling machine guns. It was considered a good job to have and she was thankful she wasn't doing hard labor. She would sit at a table and put the firing pin in each gun, then when she was done, she would put the gun in a drawer which opened on both ends. One day, an SS officer came in to inspect the factory. He walked around and when he came to her station, he started yelling at her furiously. My teacher's mother was absolutely terrified. She didn't speak German so she had no idea what he was saying and she had seen this sort of thing happen before and it usually ended with the person being yelled at being beaten or even shot. The officer finished his tirade and stormed out of the room. Before he left, however, he discreetly pointed at the gun drawer and smiled. My teacher's mother looked in the drawer and saw a fresh apple. The officer had slipped her an apple! One apple may not seem like much, but she was emaciated and to her, an apple seemed like a feast. She believes that there is no way that she would have survived without the officer's kindness. This story shows that, even when in absolutely horrible situations, people are capable of rising to the occasion and letting good triumph over evil. Like Flacke, this officer had a choice of whether he wanted to do nothing, do something awful or do something good. He chose to be an upstander and do something seemingly minor, but which had such great results. He saved a young girl's life because he chose that he would rather do something good than evil. The stories of Flacke and this officer show that even at Auschwitz, sometimes the best in human nature could triumph and people were able to defy the pressure to treat other human beings with extreme cruelty and instead act out of altruism. Thanks, Jorge for letting me use your account!