no virtue
confession of an unjustified justified sinner
“But there's no virtue in crying and no virtue in trying
To deny I would stand by the tracks and never see the trains” 1
I recently spent a week in Krakow with my friend, staying in a flat in the district of Kazimierz. This was the old Jewish Quarter in Krakow, and as we walked around there were several sites of synagogues, including the Stara Synagogue which is now a museum of Jewish culture. During our visit, we crossed the Vistula River into the district of Podgórze – the Jewish Ghetto during World War II. We saw remnants of the wall which enclosed the Ghetto, shaped grimly like Matzeivah (tombstones.) We also visited the Jewish Ghetto Memorial, in the former Zgody Square where the entrance to the Ghetto was situated and where countless atrocities occurred as people were rounded up for transport to Auschwitz. On a corner of the square stands the Apteka Pod Orłem (Pharmacy under the Eagle) where Catholic pharmacist Tadeusz Pankiewicz served the Ghetto's inhabitants and secretly aided them by smuggling in food and information and even hiding people during Nazi roundups.
My story takes place in the museum of Apteka Pod Orlem, where my friend and I visited. As we entered the museum, my friend stepped aside into the square to take a phone call, so I went in by myself and explored the small rooms where displays commemorated the Ghetto history. One small room was set back in an alcove, and as I examined a display cabinet, I became aware of the sound of weeping. The other occupant of the room at that time was a woman, perhaps in her sixties, who sat on a bench in the room with one hand covering her face as she wept. My first instinct was to go to sit beside her, and I imagined reaching out to hold her other hand which trembled by her side – but I hesitated. Would I be intruding upon a private experience of grief? Would she feel observed and cornered if I approached her? I didn't want to add to her distress, so instead I squashed my impulse and discreetly left the room so that she could mourn in private.
I wandered through the rest of the small museum, and a short while later I returned to the doorway of the small room – this time I heard voices. Beside the woman sat my friend, listening patiently as the woman – who was English – explained that her son had very recently been killed in a terrible accident. The Holocaust themes of death and loss had struck her as particularly poignant and painful. My friend consoled her, while I hovered nearby watching them. They chatted for a few more minutes, and when she got up to leave my friend reached out and stroked the woman's cheek in a gesture of comfort.
As we left the museum and walked along, I couldn't bring myself to confess to my friend my own part in this small drama. I felt overwhelmed with remorse. I had chosen to dismiss my gut response of compassion for the weeping woman, and had argued myself out of it with the twisted logic that she must prefer her grief in solitude. My friend is one of the most generous, loving souls I've ever met and I know that she will have made a beeline to the woman, the moment she walked into that room and clocked a person suffering. She responded without hesitation to the calling of her heart, rather than allowing her head to intervene with its trepidation over potential social awkwardness.
So here's my confession: if I'd lived during those years of the Holocaust, I would have been complicit. I would have watched my neighbours rounded up and beaten, shipped off into transports and murdered in the hundreds of thousands – and I would have been too frightened to protest or rebel. I may even have allowed myself to create arguments inside my head to justify my inaction; I may even have believed them. I can honour the heroes of the Holocaust – like Tadeusz Pankiewicz – for their courage and compassion; I can bear witness to the monuments and the museums which remember these events; but I cannot pretend I would have been heroic myself. I understand fully how it happened: the impulse of one's heart to reach out and connect with another human being is overcome by one's reservations and fears. Love for other people is eclipsed by fear of other people.
My friend also took me to visit a well-known site in Krakow: St Mary's Basilica in the main market square. The interior of this church is ornate and filled with gold-painted statuary illustrating scenes from the New Testament. It's beautiful in its own way, certainly, and speaks to centuries of history. What caught my eye in the first instance, however, was a modest corner near the entrance with a sign inviting the faithful to “Confession.” In the Catholic religion, the sacrament of Confession occurs when one privately admits one's sins to a priest and receives a penance to perform in order to demonstrate contrition.
I won't lie: I did consider going in and confessing my shame about the woman in the Apteka museum. But I'm no longer a practicing Catholic and I decided that going into a confessional after all these years would open a can of worms and make a mockery of my agnosticism. Surely forgiveness isn't regulated by a priest... surely the point of forgiveness is to find compassion in one's heart for oneself, to recognise the inevitability of one's human shortcomings? I always tell my friends: “you are perfect in your imperfections.” Now I must be my own friend and remind myself of this essential wisdom. We are exactly as we are meant to be.
When we returned to the flat in Kazimierz, and retired to our respective beds, I lay awake in the dark and listened out for the ghosts around me. Who had lived in this flat, back during the war all those years ago? Had they been lying in this same place, asleep, when the Nazi guards had come banging on the door? And had the Nazi guards doing their duty felt any twinge of remorse, for the chaos and suffering unfolding at their hands? Were they too perfect in their imperfections?
In Catholic theology, justification occurs when a state of sin is absolved by a state of grace. A justified sinner is one who has been forgiven and returned to the grace of God. But in my own understanding of morality, we are both justified and unjustified simultaneously – a complex and paradoxical existence in which our human nature allows for both good and evil and all shades of grey in between. Personally, I think our redemption lies in our ability to reflect and to learn, and to love the parts of ourselves that disappoint.
So I return to that room where the woman is weeping, and I reach out to her in my mind to take hold of her hand. I am offering her my compassion from here and from now. And I realise that I’m holding my own hand, they are clasped together and I can feel my hand holding hers, and hers holding theirs. We are holding hands across the years. There is no virtue, but there is learning and there is love.
Words from the song White Rose by Freakwater.
What a beautiful piece, Julia.
I too have struggled with impulses to offer support that get lost in a tangle of other impulses, including to not intrude in someone's private world. I can also think of times when I was the upset person wanting to be alone in my feelings, as sometimes the support offered to me drowns out my own feelings (especially if advice is being offered) and I feel an obligation to support the supporter rather than to continue feeling my own feelings.
Meanwhile I continue to work on my capacity to respond to others even when I am unsure what would be the "best" response. Once my analytical mind kicks into action, I can get very lost.
I like to think of the ecosystem of our actions. This grieving woman both received the gift of space for her grieving and the comfort of strangers. I love what you uncovered here in the shadows of yourself and that you listened to the call to share it, in-spite of the great risk of rejection and shame. As a reader, we both got the benefit of being moved by someone who can act on their impulse to love, connecting and sharing in a strangers pain as well as being enriched by someone who was willing to be chillingly honest and courageously share their insights with others. Neither was more right than the other because both were deeply resonant. Thank you so much for your reflection and sharing.